Saturday Nine: Hello, Dolly! (1964)

This week's Saturday Nine:

1. This song is about a woman returning to the town where she was happiest. How many towns have you lived in? Technically, three different areas of one city (the Greater Toronto Area); one for 20 years, one for one year, and I have lived where I am now for seven years.
   
   
2. Crazy Sam played Ernestina in her high school production of Hello, Dolly! and still remembers one of her lines: "Hey, you with the big ears! What are you doing after the show?" Tell us something that you memorized for school that is still rattling around in your brain? I have only ever had one detention in my life (I think maybe Grade 10?), and it was an English teacher that was heading it, and she made us memorize and recite Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 individually before we could leave detention. I still remember the first eight lines: 
   

   Let me not to the marriage of true minds
   Admit impediments. Love is not love
   Which alters when it alteration finds,
   Or bends with the remover to remove:
   O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
   That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
   It is the star to every wandering bark,
   Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

   
   
3. This week's featured artist, Louis Armstrong, got his start entertaining diners on riverboat dinner cruises. Have you ever taken a dinner cruise? No... but I have had many dinners on cruises. Those midnight buffets were indeed wondrous.
   
   
4. Armstrong took his nickname, "Satchmo," from "Satchel Mouth" — a slang term for someone with a wide mouth, which Louis believed was his most distinguishing feature. What do you think people notice first about you? Usually my eyes.
   
   
5. In 1936, Louis became the first African American to get featured billing in a Hollywood movie. Have you seen any of this summer's big movies? I don't watch a lot of movies in the theatres anymore, but I did watch Ted 2 and Trainwreck. What can I say, when I go out to watch a film these days, I want something stupid and light-hearted.
   
   
6. When "Hello, Dolly" composer Jerry was growing up, he was close to an aunt named Belle who encouraged his love of music. Tell us about one of your aunts or uncles. My dad's sister married my mom's brother, so I am related on both sides of the family to their children (my first cousins).
   
   
7. Though famous for composing the scores of Hello, Dolly!, Mame and La Cage Aux Folles, Jerry Herman can't read music. Can you? I used to be able to read both treble and bass clefs because I played piano until I was 10, but then I switched over to violin (which I played until I was 18), so I can only read treble clef now.
   
   
8. Now retired, Mr. Herman lives in Miami. This is Miami's "wet season," which lasts into October. When did it last rain where you are? There was a thunderstorm a couple days ago.
   
   
9. Random question: Have you suffered a sunburn this summer? No. I don't think I ever have. But nowadays, I don't spend enough time in the sun to possibly get one. I do have a wicked driver's tan, though.