The Super Bowl is here at last! Yay! The fact that I don't give a crap about football doesn't stop Super Bowl Sunday from being one of my favorite days of the year. You see, the Super Bowl isn't just the biggest day of the football season- it's also the last day of the football season. And that's worth looking forward to.
Bring on Spring Training!
What I'm reading today: Rainbow Six, by Tom Clancy
Today when I checked the Replacement Level Yankees Weblog for updates, I was startled by a little tidbit of information in the left margin:
Pitchers and catchers report in 18 days, 3 hours, 43 minutes, and 13 seconds.
Seriously? Just two and a half more weeks of the dead zone of football, basketball, and hockey before Spring Training finally begins? Woohoo!
What I'm reading today: The Musical: A Look at the American Musical Theater, by Richard Kislan
Despite my horror of most things involving numbers, I went to a science high school. Once there, I took lots and lots of science classes- I didn't have much of a choice. But eventually, I, Humanities Girl, found I science I kind of liked- biology.
It's amazing what a little sleep deprivation will do to change your mind.
I swear, Biology is ruining my life. It's my first class in the morning four days a week, but Thursdays really take the cake. Biology Lab from 8:00 in the friggin' morning until 11:00, then I have time to do absolutely nothing before I stumble off to Computer Science at 11:20. Then, a short break- just enough time to eat- before I have to go to History, which I actually like, but my appreciation of the Italian Renaissance is kinda muted when I'm literally prying my eyelids open. Today I got to follow that class up with the delights of a Unix tutorial, because what I really need is to learn a third operating system, and a super-user-unfriendly one at that. And just to make my week complete, my musicals class was cancelled yesterday due to professorial illness, so most of what I've been studying has involved factors affecting heritability or declarations of variables or good ol' standard deviation, which brings up horrible memories involving far too many peanuts.
I just read that last bit again. I really need to sleep. But the part about the peanuts is true, I swear...
What I'm Reading Today: C Programming: A Modern Approach, by K.N. King
Okay, this ranks high on even my Weird-O-Meter.
Ooooh, shinyyyy....
What I'm reading today: Take Me Out, by Richard Greenberg
Okay, so the music only fit into the story about half the time and the lines were occassionally groaners, but I still really liked The Boy From Oz.
The show's greatest assets were, without a doubt, its performers. Mitchel David Federan was completely fearless and charming, and a fine dancer. Michael Mulheren excelled as both Peter's father and his manager, and Beth Fowler and Jarrod Emick were quite affecting as Peter's mother and partner, respectively. Stephanie J. Block managed to shine as Liza Minelli despite somewhat unflattering makeup and hair, and Isabel Keating was an uncannily accurate and ocassionally hilarious Judy Garland.
And then there's Hugh Jackman. (Cue girlish sighs) Everything the critics said is true- he's spectacular. In addition to all the traditional acting demands of his role, he managed to convey Peter's tranformation from an energetic 16-year-old to an AIDS-infected 48 over the course of the musical almost purely through body language. Impressive stuff. His dancing was fine, too- he tapped, shimmied, and even pulled off those Rockette-style high kicks without missing a beat. I have to comment on his singing, though- he seemed more nasal than he was in Oklahoma. I guess he did that to adjust to the fact that he was singing pop rather than Rodgers and Hammerstein, so kudos to him for taking his Peter Allen impersonation so seriously. Make no mistake, Hugh's singing was still gorgeous. But I like the songs in Oklahoma! better.
So that covers all three of the theatrical "threats"- the acting, singing, and dancing standards by which musical theatrical preformers are traditionally evaluated. But what makes Jackman special is the "fourth threat"- he's got that intangible something that ensures an audience can't take their eyes off him when he's on stage. Call it charisma, glamour, star power, whatever- the crowd loved him, and he loved them right back. His audience interactions were great, from solicitously asking after the welfare of latecomers to doing pelvic thrusts on demand. He shone just as much as a narrator- a host- as he did when he was actually acting out Peter's life. He wasn't just an actor, singer, or dancer- he was a performer. That's why he can so easily make the transition from stage to screen and back- he knows the difference between acting for a camera and acting for a living, breathing crowd.
That, and he's gorgeous. I think I mentioned that before. Did I mention that before? Well, he is. So seeing him with his shirt off didn't hurt either. :)
In any case, I'm quite exhausted, but I guess I can comment (from my decidedly amateur perspective) on the other aspects of the show. I haven't a clue about lighting or direction, but I can say there was nothing so egregiously bad about either that I noticed. The costumes were fine, but then Hugh Jackman would look fine in a paper bag, wouldn't he? The showgirl costumes at the end, though, were really impressive, a stunning piece of razzle-dazzle to end the show. The sets were alright, but my favorite and least favorite elements were both in the same scene. When Peter sings and dances with the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall to the tune of "Everything Old is New Again," I want Rockettes, dammit, not a painted chorus line. Later in the scene, though, the fake dancers were gone and Robin Wagner pulled off some truly impressive trickery with revolving mirrors. It was almost enough to make up for the fake Rockettes. Almost.
***
In the Playbill, after the cast list, a small note appears.
Hugh Jackman is appearing with the permission of Actors' Equity Association.
Well, it's a few years late, but it'll do. Jackman was supposed to appear in the Broadway transfer of Trevor Nunn's London revival of Oklahoma!, but seeing as he was Australian, Actors' Equity didn't allow it, insisting that an American be cast instead. Actually, that's only part of the story- I think Nunn wanted to bring his entire cast over from London, which Equity understandably didn't approve of.
But the part of the story that's fun to think about now is that there's a "star clause" of sorts in Equity's policy. That is, if you're a big enough star, you can come over and perform in American theaters, since presumably your performance and box-office drawing power cannot be replicated by some random American. In 1999, Hugh Jackman, despite his rave reviews and Olivier nomination, was not a star in Equity's eyes. So, he left England, did a little movie called X-Men, and never looked back.
Of course, after X-Men, Actors' Equity (and the rest of Broadway) was whistling a different tune- the American Theatre Wing actually recruited Jackman to host last year's Tony Awards before he'd ever set foot on a Broadway stage, and as that little Playbill note showed, Equity was more than happy to let the Australian perform in America.
I'm not blaming the union for not letting Jackman come over and do Oklahoma- letting an Australian play Curly the cowboy on Broadway doesn't exactly make sense. (Though it's worth noting that Nunn's very English Laurey, Josefina Gabrielle, did eventually make the transfer.) Still...it's funny how much things can change in a couple of years, huh? From "not a star" to king of Broadway in the blink of an eye. Well, Hugh deserved it- just like he'll deserve the Tony award he's likely to get in a few months. I'm just glad I got to catch the show.
What I'm reading today: The Boy From Oz Playbill
Ah, baseball. It's the middle of January, but once again my favorite sport is on my mind, thanks to one of my favorite players. Roger Clemens has signed with the Astros, joining his buddy Andy Pettitte for one last season in the sun. That's half of the Yankees' former Big Four, pitching in Houston. Guh.
What can I say? Roger, being older and right-handed, isn't as great a loss as Pettitte was. It isn't even close. He'll be pitching for a National League team that's unlikely to get to the World Series, so chances are this won't affect the Yankees at all. But it's still depressing. Clemens had so many special moments last year- getting strikeout number 4,000 and victory number 300 in the same game, basking in one last standing ovation at Yankee Stadium... I said goodbye to him twice, dammit- once at his last game at Yankee Stadium, and once watching his last World Series start on TV- and now he's coming back?
Of course, that's a pretty silly train of thought on my part. Clemens doesn't (and shouldn't) give a crap about the sanctity of his farewell tour last year. He loves to pitch, and loves to compete- the fact that he's still here at age 41 is a testament to that. But still...maybe this is the literature student in me, but last year brought a sense of closure to his career. All his demons were conquered- he got a standing ovation at Fenway, kept his cool and roundly outpitched Pedro in Game 3 of the ALCS, and overcame a rough start in the 4th game of the World Series to craft a fine final start. Heck, he even got his first World Series hit that night, and left to the cheers of everyone in an unfriendly stadium, right down to the opposing players. The man who had carefully carved a career out of being the meanest, toughest, most antagonistic pitcher around was being saluted by the very hitters he'd dusted, the managers he'd foiled, and the crowds whose favorite teams he'd tormented for twenty years. It was beautiful. And now it's almost meaningless.
Eh. Life goes on. And who knows what next season may bring? Good luck, Roger, in all that you do. Just seeing you hit on a regular basis might make this all worthwhile. :)
What I'm reading today: In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, by Peter Mathiessen
Woohoo! Thanks to the wonders of discount codes, I'm off to see The Boy From Oz on Broadway next Tuesday. For a musical geek, I don't go to the Great White Way nearly as often as I'd like- the last show I saw was Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme. But now I'm going to see two and a half hours of Hugh Jackman swishing around in very tight pants. Yay!
Oh, and in case anyone is in doubt, the guy can indeed sing. Just look at his performance in the 1998 London revival of Oklahoma! He isn't quite as smooth as, say, Gordon Raitt in the movie, but he's still my favorite Curly. Because really, who's going to believe that a young cowboy sings like Gordon Raitt, let alone Alfred Drake of the original Broadway cast? I realize they have more of a 1950's vocal style, but it feels so artificial to me. Jackman's Curly has the great virtue of making his singing seem like a natural extension of his speaking voice.
That, and he's gorgeous, of course. :P
In other news, my dad's head almost exploded when he watched the NBC Evening News a couple of nights ago. They claimed to have a juicy "exclusive" on Howard Dean and his pre-Presidential past. What was this story, you ask? An affair with another woman? A criminal record? Uh, no. Nothing so dramatic, really, but the TV station tried their best to spice it up.
The broadcast began by showing an unassuming building in Canada, then going in to an equally unassuming room. Then, they open the closet door to reveal the horror whithin. What could it be? A dead body? Gold bullion? You'd think it was Al Capone's vault or something. Well, we all know how Capone's vault turned out, and this wasn't much better. The closet was full of videotapes of a public television political discussion program that Dean would participate in as governor of Vermont. The network claimed to have looked through 90 hours of these tapes, and presumably they were showing the nastiest Dean quotes they could find.
The results? Clips of Dean saying the the Iowa caucus was overly beholden to special interests and not reflective of the opinions of the mainstream American public. Dean telling another man that his claim that 80% of children of single mothers end up on welfare is "crap." (Nice choice of words there, man.) And- gasp!- Dean saying that George W. Bush is a moderate. In 2000.
Um, okay. Where's the controversey? Where's the story? Where's the beef, dammit? So, Dean called Bush a moderate and now calls him an arch-conservative? How exactly is that hypocritical? In the time between the "moderate" statement and today, Bush has started two wars, cut taxes several times, increased our national deficit to previously unheard-of proportions, cut environmental regulations, and passed the PATRIOT Act, among other things. In 2000, Bush was still talking "compassionate conservatism." He hadn't even been inaugurated. So Dean isn't allowed to change his opinion of the man based on his actions? To use Dean's own words, "That is absolute crap. That is absolute unmitigated garbage." Much like the entirety of NBC's juicy expose. Just another example of that damn liberal media bias. Hey, wait a minute...
What I'm reading today: Hand Puppet Movie Theater, by Jerry the Frog *snicker*
One of the nicest things about being home from college, believe it or not, is the books. My school has a lovely library for studying and research, but its offerings in the fiction department are less comprehensive. Hey, I don't blame them. Those science journals and things cost a lot to subscribe to, and school is about studying, after all. But I've been abusing my home's library system every since I got here, and it's great.
On the book front, I've discovered the joys of Alan Moore. Watchmen is one of the most delightfully dark and twisted stories I've ever read- "comic" or not, it's absolutely not for kids. Moore regularly switches voices throughout the book, going from comics-style bubble dialogue to the inside of another graphic novel to a magazine article to a tell-all memoir by one of the characters, all without losing his footing or the flow of the story. There's action, philosophy, politics, genuinely interesting characters, and a mystery that weaves together so many threads of narrative it can get hard to keep track of them all. It's great stuff.
After that, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen didn't seem nearly as impressive, but judging from the reviews the movie did it an injustice. The story doesn't have half the complexity or weight of Watchmen, but it is a much funnier, easier read. The book is worth getting for the hilarious fake Victorian writing alone, right down to the author's biography, which describes him as a former circus exhibit. The biography of Kevin O'Neill, the illustrator, is even better. *snigger*
As for CDs, I'm wallowing in cast recordings right now, especially those of my beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein. I've got three versions of Oklahoma! alone, though I couldn't find the 1998 London version, which is what I actually wanted. Ah, well. I have the movie of that one in the Tivo. :) I didn't like the original Broadway Carousel nearly as much as I thought I would, but I might try a different version of it. Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, however, was just great- both funny and macabre. And it has Angela Lansbury singing "The Worst Pies in London." It doesn't get any better than that.
Yes, I'm a geek. But I'm happy that way, thank you very much. Now, when does the library open tomorrow?...
What I'm reading today: Tears of the Giraffe, by Alexander McCall Smith
I went to the Nets game tonight with my dad- a very strange bonding activity for the two of us, since I'm definitely the sports-oriented one in the family. We had pretty nice seats, but sitting by the aisle can get exasperating when you shift for the 673rd time so someone can get a soda or something. And the woman behind us had a voice that could shatter eardrums at 500 feet. Nevertheless, it was fun, and the home team won, so what more can I ask for?
The game was against the sad-sack Cavaliers, so the real excitement was in seeing LeBron James in action. I have to say, he's good. Kidd and Co. kept him under control, but he still made some very pretty plays. The thing is he makes me feel like such a pathetic underachiever-we're the same age, after all. And while he's playing in the NBA, I'm...going to college. Yup. Ah, well. We can't all be super-cool prodigies, I guess.
Anyway, LeBron couldn't carry the Cavs to victory, and that's what really mattered. Everyone was sure to boo and hiss when he went for foul shots, and mock him when he threw airballs (which he did, much to our amusement). He showed flashes of brilliance but couldn't sustain it against the Nets' defense. His only significant support seemed to come from Carlos Boozer (love that name), so in the end the Nets' superior talent won out without too much trouble.
Jason Kidd was his usual brilliant self. With 26 points, 10 assists, and 9 rebounds, he almost got another triple double, and his incredible 'fake-a-behind-the-back-pass-then-make-a-layup move in the third quarter helped spark the rally that put the Nets out in front for good. Kenyon Martin was everywhere on defense, rebounding, blocking and stealing with his usual...er...enthusiasm, and Richard Jefferson and Kerry Kittles contributed nicely on offense. (But for heaven's sake, can someone teach K-Mart how to make foul shots? Please?) The game was close for a while, but in the second half the Nets just found another gear and left Cleveland in the dust, winning by a score of 97 to 82. And there was much joy in the swamplands. :)
What I'm reading today: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter