Perwinkle's Got Talent

Randall and Claire Nathan took their grandchildren, Johnny and Betsy, to their music lessons this week. Betsy is a pianist of note, several of them, in fact, and Johnny is known to everyone at “The Bill and Ludwig Monroe Studios” as “The Mando Commando.” Billy Ray Morris, Johnny’s mandolin teacher, came out to the waiting room, where students and parents gather before and after lessons, to tell Randall and Claire that they would skip the lesson on Rosh Hashanah, since he used to play with “The Texas Jewboys” band and still celebrates with them.

At the mention of Rosh Hashanah, naturally Randall and Claire got up and started dancing the Hava Nagila, right there in front of everybody. Billy Ray grabbed his guitar and accompanied them.

“Hey, you’re good,” he said. “You should enter the Periwinkle’s Got Talent show.”

“No way,” said Betsy. “I’m not as embarrassed by them as I was when I was little, because I’m getting used to it, but no way I’m going to let them be on national TV.”

So the show went on without her dancing grandparents, but it was a good show anyway.

Franklin and Eleanor, Jake and Jenny Newland’s potbellied pigs, did their particular rendition of “This little piggy went to market.”

Three-year-old Clara Wembley made Shingles the Dog, whom she still has not forgiven for stealing her blankie on Christmas eve, howl “The Hallelujah Chorus” by pulling on different ears, tail, etc to create different notes.

Ben “Seymour” Bottoms played “Pomp and Circumstance” on the ukulele.

Edith Whistle and “The Elvisettes” tap danced to “Pachelbel’s Canon,” having mistaken it for “Polly Belle’s Cannon.”

The winner, however, who will advance to Fargo for the finals, was a baby billed as Lady GooGoo. Even Simon voted for her, saying that her lyrics were not only more understandable than Lady GaGa’s, but that they made more sense.