Journal Entries
So, um…
Posted Feb 3, 2008
…I sort of half-forgot about this place. It's been about two years since I last posted here, and while it's true that I probably needed to cut down on the amount of time I spent here to the detriment of my schoolwork, I didn't really intend to disappear entirely. Anyway, it's really hard to jump back into a community like this after so long--I've forgotten all sorts of things about the structure of the community and the customs and everything. And I hope the friends I made here haven't forgotten me. Anyway, I'm going to take it slow and get back in the swing of things here, because of all the online communities I've been a part of, this one has been one of the most fun as well as the most educational!
I'm also somewhat of a different person than I was two years ago--I don't burst into song quite as often, though I still love showtunes, and I've gotten a lot more serious about some of the issues that I think are important. Plus I'm even more of a math geek than I was.
So hopefully I can moderate my usage of this wonderful site better than I have in the past, not too much or to little, and have some fun!
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Latest reply: Feb 3, 2008
On the approach of spring, and being high on musicals
Posted Feb 19, 2006
Everything feels like spring is coming, even though it's only February--there is no snow, and although it's been freezing the last few days, the sky is clear and bright. Best of all, all the spring bulbs are beginning to sprout, so everywhere there are green stems poking out of the ground, and I'm so excited! I want to dance around and sing!
In other news, I'm on a musical high! (This is a fairly common state of being for me, but still…) I am, of course, totally obsessed with Stephen Sondheim, and I finally decided I needed to hear all of his musicals I haven't yet heard, so I went over to the library and checked out every Sondheim cd they had. I also borrowed Assassins from a friend, which is part of the source of my musical high. EVERYONE WHO HASN'T HEARD ASSASSINS NEEDS TO GO OUT AND LISTEN TO IT RIGHT NOW. Wow. That's one intense, amazing musical--that last scene with John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald especially--they build it up so subtly, until you actually find yourself rooting for them, hoping he'll decide to kill JFK. I'm still shaking, and I've listened to it like five times straight through.
I also decided to clean out the library's DVD collection of musicals I haven't watched yet. They have a fair number I've already seen, but a few I'd been resisting for one reason or another. First, the stage production of Sweeny Todd, with Angela Lansbury and George Hearn. Wow. I know the music, but I've never gotten to see it live. Wow. Wow. (See, this is what those idiots who staged Jekyll & Hyde on Broadway need to study. muttermuttergrumblegrumble) I think this was recommended to me by David the SL, so thanks!
Next, the movie version of A Chorus Line. Now, I LOVE the stage musical, and I've heard mostly bad reviews of the movie (one from someone who had already seen it on stage, and one from someone who hadn't seen it before). Sadly, I've got to agree. The whole musical is so inherently theatrical that it just didn't work for me. Plus, what's with the AWFUL new songs? They didn't just add them, they replaced other perfectly good songs! Why, why, WHY get rid of "The Music and the Mirror", especially if you're just going to rip off the lyrics for the replacement? The other thing is, they tried to make the backstory between Cassie and the director much, much bigger, and that's a mistake in my opinion. It became a story about them, and it's supposed to be about all of the auditioners. And the most heinous crime of all, THEY TOOK "WHAT I DID FOR LOVE" AWAY FROM DIANA and changed the meaning completely! It's supposed to be about their love of dancing, not about Cassie and Zach! Argh! (Wow, I didn't even know I was that mad until I wrote this!) But I'm still on a high from the music, because come on, it's A Chorus Line!
Finally, against every instinct that was screaming at me to run very fast in the opposite direction and bar the door, I watched the movie of The Fantasticks. And I was pleasantly surprised. Actually, I'm very impressed! The thing is, I love the play soooo much, but I'm sure many would agree that it's simply impossible to make a movie out of it. The theatricality is so fundamental to it, and the simplicity of it is part of what makes it so great (and you just can't have minimalist sets on the big screen, it's impossible). So Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt (who were actually allowed to write the screenplay of their own musical, which is why I even gave it a chance in the first place) did the smart thing: they didn't even try to preserve the original style. All the non-singing verse is gone (with the exception of one or two intros to songs), and El Gallo and all the "adventures" in the second act become a travelling carnival, which sounds pretty awful, but actually it worked very well because of how well they put it together. The characters are a lot more grounded in actual time and place--Luisa and Matt become a specific girl and boy, instead of The Girl and The Boy representing all young lovers. Watching the deleted scenes, they almost went too far in making El Gallo into mysterious-magician-who-comes-around-to-teach-lessons-to-those-who-need-it, but they got smart and cut those scenes so it didn't become cheesy. All in all, a purist who loves the real The Fantasticks would hate the movie, but accepting it as a completely different realization of the basic story, I am very impressed and I'm going to watch it again.
The only problem now is that I can't decide whether to sing "A Little Priest", "Everybody's Got the Right", "One", "Try to Remember", or "Spring is Here".
(Well, maybe not that last one, since it's actually rather depressing, but I'll find a good happy spring song!)
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Latest reply: Feb 19, 2006
I LIVE!
Posted Feb 15, 2006
My goodness, has it really been over a year since my last post? Sorry, all, it wasn't because of you! Sadly I will still have to restrict the amount of time spent puttering around the lovely H2G2, but I've missed the community and the conversations, and before the swamp of schoolwork submerges me again, I want to get back into things over here. If I can just learn to wait until AFTER the work is done before going onto h2g2, then we'll be all set. 
In the meantime, hi!
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Latest reply: Feb 15, 2006
Musical Encyclopedia
Posted Jul 15, 2004
I have this game I started playing with my friend's English teacher a year or so ago, where one of us would sing or hum a bit of a showtune, and the other would have to figure out what musical it was from. She and I both stumped each other many times, because she is most familiar with the most classic musicals, and I tend to know everything about some composers/lyricists and nothing about others. So anyway, last night I went to see a musical called 110 in the Shade, which was WONDERFUL, and I started playing this game with two of the people I drove home with. But they kept stumping me with really good, ought-to-be obvious ones, while I had to cheat and do a series of Sondheim flops (known only to Sondheim fanatics like me) in order to find anything they didn't know. And then after they left and my friend Danielle and I were alone (same friend with the English teacher, and she was in the car with me last night), we both started to think of good songs that WOULD have stumped those two. So then Danielle gave me this really good idea: to make a list of musicals and good songs from them, so next time I wouldn't forget any good ones. So now I'm starting to take it further: I'm working on listing every musical I've ever heard of and everything I know about it, including good songs and composer/lyricist. That's when I got an even better idea: I'll expand this into an ever-in-progress encyclopedia of musical theater to be posted on this website. I'll start with just the facts, but I'd like to get some more interesting discussions, histories, and other tidbits about each musical as I go farther. This is, of course, related to some things David the SL and I had talked about, as well as one of the goals of SONG & DANCE, so I'm hoping I can get this up and going soon. Once I get some kind of structure, help from all my musical (and even nonmusical) friends would be welcome!
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Latest reply: Jul 15, 2004
Random Journal Entry Number Something-or-other
Posted Jun 21, 2004
Okay, so hi. Yeah, I was gone again. Not my fault! I had to move out of my dorm and had to pack the ethernet cable, and then I had to do various stuff at home and couldn't waste time on the computer! But okay, I'm back. All's better now. Now I will proceed to say some stuff at random, and ignore all the thousands of responses to threads that I have to read (yeah, right) in order to have a clue what's been going on in the last week.
Hi, everyone! First of all, thank you to David the SL, for consistently recommending Cabaret. I was just watching a thing on tv and it showed Joel Grey as the MC doing "Wilkommen" in the original Broadway production. Ordinarily I wouldn't have given it much thought, since Cabaret wasn't the highest on my list of shows I want to see, but remembering David's frequent plugs of the show, I paid more attention, and liked it a lot! I think I like that actor playing that character, and you'll be glad to know that Cabaret has officially been bumped up the list to tie with Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage Aux Folles for musicals I most want to see onstage. 
Speaking of musicals, I will eventually get to finishing that page on Forbidden Broadway, just as soon as I get the CDs from the library so I can read the liner notes and get the correct dates and names.
In other news, I will be starting work at Six Flags (an amusement park that prides itself on building insanely insane roller coasters) next week. I was a little nervous until I found out one of my friends has to dress up as cartoon characters for all the parades and decided that nothing they could ask me to do could possibly be any worse than that. So it'll be kinda fun!
So life is lovely and lively being back home for the summer, and hopefully I can manage to spend a goodly portion of it in front of this computer. But not right now, as it's late and the words are swimming in front of my face. So nighty-night to anyone who's actually bothered to read this far (and thanks!)
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Latest reply: Jun 21, 2004
MuseSusan
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