Dorking Out at The Nutcracker

Those who know me are aware that I'm kind of a music junkie -- especially for music of the vinyl variety. Actually, that's a tame description. I've been known to go to estate sales and buy hundreds of records at a time, much to the consternation of my wife and the aggravation of my lower back. I'm like a cat lady, except for records.

Some of the records I buy are obvious favorites -- everybody loves Frank Sinatra. Some are a little more obscure -- do you really need to know how to speak conversation Russian in seven easy lessons? One thing that might surprise people to know is that I am an avid collector of Christmas albums. Yes, I am that big of a nerd. I do this without a hint of irony. I like Christmas music. OK, maybe a bit or irony ... but I really do love the Ernest Tubb Christmas album.

Of course, the cornerstone of all Christmas music is The Nutcracker, that jaunty little ballet from Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. With the arrival of the Texas Ballet Theater's version at Bass Hall last weekend, it was time for my family to make its annual visit to the land of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

I must confess, I feel like a big dork being this enthusiastic about The Nutcracker. The ballet is sort of nostalgia for an idea of Christmas that never existed. I mean, do you think Christmas was really that great in Czarist Russia?

But that dreamy, childlike vision of Christmas is what it is all about for me. There is so much ugliness in the world that I sort of think we all need to escape that and find the magic for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon.

Half the audience is made up of kids, and they are coughing, sneezing, scratching at their dress-up clothes and I for one don't care what they do. Half the fun for me is watching a little girl who is thrilled just to see a ballerina dance. So when Grandfather Drosselmeyer's beard came off halfway through the first act, it mattered not. The magic remained intact.

So, is anyone else out there as big a dork as I am? I didn't think so.