I’m only posting this to make Debbie pout, but last night I dreamed I was in a hot tub with Michael Weatherly and three other guys. I was naked, everybody else was wearing trunks. (damn… or something). And what were we DOING in the hot tub, minds without shame wish to know? Waiting for Obama. Yup. I wish I was making this up, but I was waiting for Obama. Also there was a bit of byplay about Michael Weatherly swimming with dolphins, and he said they had noses like a policeman’s truncheon. No subtext there, move along!
When we got out of the hot tub, (Obama being a no-show) we realized we were in a Bavarian village, and somebody was trying to get married on a balcony (I saw my old boss François as a groomsman) at the same time there was a movie being filmed about Hitler, and the crew wanted to use the balcony at the same time as the wedding party, and I got out of Bavaria before there was a total riot. Note how all my major concerns of late are shoved into one untidy dream. Woke up smiling, even if I didn’t get to see Michael Weatherly naked.
Worked late last night. It’s boring as hell, what I was trying to do, but I tried to do it a week ago and all my scans disappeared, and then I tried to do it yesterday, and that part of the network went offline just as I was trying to complete it, so I stayed for an hour and got it done. The guys in IT are screechingly busy these days what with moves and upgrades but they are still unfailingly helpful and polite, so here’s a blessing on the lot of them. I will miss them…. after the move I won’t be sitting close to them anymore. Sigh.
I’m seriously grieving about my job change. It’s LUDICROUS. I’ve done nothing but complain about it for the best part of ten years, but now I’m realizing I secretly loved it and was just whining for attention. This makes me feel like an ijjut. We grow too soon oldt und too late schmardt.
The LHC did not trigger the end of the world; I slept fine last night, as my dreams could attest.
Katie’s here contemplating what to raid the fridge for at lunch. It’s so cute. Especially now that I know she’s sharing her lunch every day with women who forget to eat. (Women who forget to eat…. didn’t Rita Rudner have a brilliant line to do with that??)
I’m seeing Mr. Music on Friday and we’re going to run through the tunes; he’s planning on feeding me. Any guy who has a vault for a pantry HAS to be able to cook; I await the prospect with happiness. The work too.
Last night I asked Paul, mOm, Mr. Music and Katie ‘what makes a great musical’. Paul said “The tunes and how it’s put together,” Mr. Music said, “Song, story, presentation,” mOm said, “Singing and dancing!” and Katie said “Pacing and variety”. I’m going to keep asking people what they think, but I’m using Mr. Music’s useful and terse guidelines for practicality’s sake.
I light a candle for the swift recovery of my former boss Owen’s son Ryan, who’s recently out of surgery. On a less compassionate note, here’s a little squib for the swift arrival of the plumber; we’ve been waiting for a couple of days. It’s okay, it merely confirms Jeff and I in our belief that we’d be better served in a different location. Our own.
… and Mark Harmon wasn’t in the hot tub, too? Jim loves Mark Harmon’s character on NCIS — I think he too watches the show mainly to see Mark Harmon in action.
I think the operative words are “in action”! I can’t imagine Mark Harmon sitting still long enough to enjoy a hot tub.
pOp says the following: a) he’s the wrong person to ask because he’s old, and b) he loathed Chicago, which won Academy Awards. Consider Chicago on one end of the spectrum and Top Hat on the other. He’s at the Top Hat end, good singing, great dancing, wit and humor in abundance, implausible but delightful plot, excellent minor parts (he ADORES Helen Broderick) and Lucille Ball in her first ever speaking part… Plus: ALL the characters were likeable, and unlike Chicago, the performers could actually sing and dance. And the singing and dancing moved the plot along…
Takeaways….Dad’s gonna hate this musical. That’s okay, you’ll be there on opening night. Well, I’m trying to do a LOT with this. 1 – it will be scalable. I am hoping to be able to do it with a cast of ten, but that it could be done effectively with a cast of fifty. I am hoping to have dancing in it, but that the dancing would be illustrative and not necessary so that if you have a group of amateurs who can’t dance, it would still work… except it really should have tap dancing in it. 2. I want to do it so that you could do it cabaret format with a synthesizer or Broadway style with a pit orchestra. 3. I want to do it so that there is a running gag of a tap dancer with narcolepsy that the MC has to keep kicking awake to do his / her job (which is dancing while the scenes change or folks prep for the next number. 4. I want to do it so that every single role could be done by a person of any gender or colour without seeming forced, with only minor rewrites as required. 5. And most of all, I want it to be a creative commons show – every part of it publicly available, and designed to be altered however people like. If some poor misguided and religious soul wishes to take out the red ball gown and the references to queerdom, oh well; it would happen anyway if the tunes are any good, so why not bow before the inevitable. And besides, the idea of musicals without elaborate costumes and queerdom is simply impossible – that church youth group leader didn’t pray away the gay, no matter what you think he did. The notion of a freeware musical appeals to me no end. The only people who have to pay are professionals; amateurs can have it for nothing.
This musical will have a plot so thin you could read a headline through it; it’s essentially a long dream sequence, in which the older, experienced individual walks a younger, less experienced individual through many manifestations of love, changing course occasionally as the younger person insists on love being happiness, while the older person insists that love is a right royal pain in the ass. The resolution is friendship, family and platonic love, as they settle their ongoing difference of opinion by agreeing to disagree. Christ, now I’ve made it sound like the first Unitarian operetta, but knowing Unitarians as I do, I’m sure it’s been done. The younger person insists on bringing a fairy story to life but traps the hero in the wrong part of the story, before the happy ending; the older person accidentally unleashes a Bob Fosse sequence which is about love far from divine, straight or narrow. The younger person counters by hauling out grandparents to demonstrate what love looks like after 50 years; the older responds with the presentation of a song that appears to be about love but you find out in the last line is about internet addiction. There is a song tentatively called “Go ahead and leave me” which is a plea for the audience NOT to leave and check their messages or call the babysitter, but to stay in the room with the players. Yeah, I’m planning on messing with that fourth wall so bad it’ll need months of psychiatric treatment.
If your musical does deal with platonic love, please remember that what Plato said was that the best love is love between equals, and not the victorian corruption. (Of course, in Plato’s time everybody knew that men and women weren’t equal.)
Okay, I guess it’ll have to be agape, pron. a gah pay. Thanks for the course correction.