Manny Laureano

You can't make this stuff up.

I'm going to have to omit names to protect the guilty but it'll be interesting to see what responses and subsequent experiences "waft" up out of this.

Yesterday, when I came back into work after lunch, my nose crinkled at a pungent aroma in the backstage wings. People have a habit of bringing lunch from home and heating it up one of two microwaves we have. I figured someone had brought in a "unique" curry and heated it up.

The smell got stronger and revealed further some B.O. mixed in with it. Immediately I knew who it was. The usual suspect must have biked (as usual) somewheer for lunch and biked back without showering that morning and the combination of his lunch and that were... overpowering. This is the same idiot that takes his showers at the hall (because his showerhead doesn't work right) and douses himself with this Rosemary essence that make it impossible to use the bathroom it's smell is so strong. Yes, I told him off once because I had absloutely had it. He hasn't used it since.

Our brass section sits against the back right side wall just off the back of the second violins. The smell was foul. During the first movement of the Dvorák, I leaned over and gave the bass trombonist ten bucks and asked him to go across the street to buy some of those little pine tree air fresheners you hang in cars. He had two tacet movements and was chosen to make the run.

He showed up five minutes later with two Renuzit airfresheners which were put to good use on stage right away. He also bought a Hertz Flea and Tick spray but I couldn't get close enough to spray his nasty butt.

While this was one gnarly affair, apparently it doesn't hold a... ahem... candle to what happened to one of my section mates when he was playing with another hemi-semi pro orchestra early in his career.

There was a second violinist who decided to start up a macro-biotic diet. This wreaked havoc with her digestive system and resulted in a new explosive side to her personality. From what I've been given to understand there was an incident where she let go with such a breathtaking fury that the half of the violin section that was around her literally got up and left...

... during a concert.

The personnel manager, a friend of my section mate, confided that she was the first person in that orchestra's history to receive a "flatulence memo" from the management.

ML