24 August
Well, I survived my 36th birthday! One step closer to death, that's me.
It was great, of course, because birthdays are always great. Even though it was beautifully sunny on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and it managed to rain on my birthday, everything about every birthday is perfect, simply because it is my birthday!
You know, so long as nobody dies or is maimed. Or that birthday where I had a particularly revolting stomach virus.
I got up early early, a horrible thing to do on any day, let alone one's birthday, but I decided to get me a rush ticket for Jesus Christ Superstar.
Now, I have said it before and I'll say it again, I love Superstar, it's one of my favourite shows, I love the score and I love the libretto and I love everything about it. The movie absolutely is just the suckiest thing in all the land, but I love it anyway because I love the show. So when I read some of the reviews (and this one and this one), they didn't deter me, because hey, the show always sucks!
When I was talking to Mo before we met, she said that she was about to see it and that she was pretty much on my wavelength--great show, bad movie, worst Jesus ever in Ted Neely, real good Judas in Carl Anderson, looking forward to the show.
The next day, I asked her, "How was the show?"
She said, "Bring back Ted Neely."
She expands on that capsule review here.
But wait, I've gotten ahead of myself!
So, after hitting snooze for half an hour, I ended up leaving the house later than expected, and only got to the theatre at 9a rather than 8.15a, but since they were selling tickets for both the matinee and the evening shows, I not only got a seat, I got a great seat.
I was planning on trying to go to the matinee so that Tracing and Sara and I could go out in a combination Birthday/Welcome Back to NY dinner, but when I asked, the best available ticket for the mat was an obstructed view box, and the best for the eve was front row, centre section, it would have been silly of me not to go in the evening, so now we're going out on Monday, and Anne is coming, too, which will be great fun.
After getting my ticket, I ran home to open my presents.
There is nothing, and I do mean nothing like opening a really enormous pile of packages, and this pile was huge! Like I said, I was saving all of my eBay packages and the stuff that I got for myself from Amazon, cdnow and bn.com for about the past month, so basically, I had forgotten what I had bought, and everything was a surprise.
The real presents I got were Weird Al Yankovic - The Videos from Lucy, To Say Nothing of the Dog from Jessie, The Making of a Chef : Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America from Stef and Outlander from Caoimhe. And then from my Mom I got an electric toothbrush (don't laugh, it's really cool!), a black dress with little blue flowers and a matching shirt, a pair of black trousers, and a pair of light green trousers that were made from a jumper that didn't fit over the chest, but will easily be my favourite trousers in all the land, a little black makeup bag, a black Fox Movie Channel ball cap, a Rollie Pollie Ollie doll, a Son of the Beach keychain, three flashlights, Family : The Ties That Bind and Gag, and When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time to Go Home.
Not bad, eh?
And I also started reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at long last, which I wasn't exactly saving for my birthday on purpose, it's just too big to carry around and read on the street. And I also started eating the candy that Tracing brought back from England for me. It was very hard not to eat it since she gave it to me on Saturday, but I managed!
I love saving things for my birthday. Who are these freaks who open things early? What is wrong with them?
Anyway, I puttered around for a little bit before going into town to check out the exhibits at the Whitney, and there was some great stuff--Barbara Kruger's work (she does that white lettering on red background over photos stuff, you know) and Alice Neel's portraits and Susan Meiselas's photos of carnival strippers and Alexander Calder's circus.
The latter was just the greatest thing ever. Alexander Calder was a guy who made sculptures out of wire and found objects, and he made an entire miniature circus like that, and they showed a video of him playing with the circus, most of which would move if pulled or pushed, alongside the actual circus, so I was breaking my neck looking back and forth, seeing what was on the video and then trying to find it in the display. I wonder if the circus is sad that nobody plays with it anymore?
I only had an hour and a half before the museum closed, but that was enough time to see everything but the permanent collection. I love seeing shows on a certain artist, because that artist becomes a part of you even if you don't remember their name.
Then I had steak and lobster at Rosie O'Grady's (pretty good for an (I think) chain restaurant and ran to the theatre.
The show was...not exactly good. Pretty horrible at times, actually, but I loved it because, hey, see above! The line that I thought of as I was watching it was, ahem...:
If the real Jesus Christ were like the actor playing Jesus in this production then we'd all be Jews today. Christianity would never have caught on.
Thanks you! Drive safe and tip your waitresses, goodnight!
Honestly, the guy playing Jesus was just so hugely sucky that I could hardly believe my eyes, let alone my ears. He cannot act, he cannot sing, he has neither charisma nor stage-presence, he's a triple threat!
According to his bio, he has appeared in about a jillion West End shows, including playing Marius is Les Miz and apparently he just sucks Lloyd Webber's dick 24/7, 'cause he's played leads in every Lloyd-webber show ever written. he was also in the Les Miz TV show, and I've seen that several times, and don't remember screaming "My eyes! My eyes!" as I was watching it, so perhaps he doesn't always suck, but if you look at the two roles of Marius and Jesus, it makes sense that perhaps one could play one and not the other. Marius is a baritone role, and is in a very musical theatre style, Jesus is written in a rock scream and much of it is tenor. Also, Marius doesn't have to do what can only be described as liturgical dance.
Jesus isn't supposed to be chewing the scenery like it's being served at the last supper. He was an overacting ball of hair. Who needed a new perm.
Also horrible were Pilate, who is, I believe, an opera singer, which certainly explains the fact that he is almost unwatchable. He practically was twirling his moustaches like Snidely Whiplash. But I believe that the worst of all was the guy playing Annas. Actually, all of the priests were somehow even sillier than the priests in the movie (though I certainly liked the Hellraiser outfits), but Annas was just in a completely different show. Some sort of gay Dr. Suess panto thing. I could tell that he thought that he was really good, too, especially at curtain-call, when he bowed paired with Caiphas, who was terrific, and he gave this modest little smile, like he thought that the applause had anything to do with him.
On the good side, however, were Maya Days as Mary Magdeline, who was so real that she barely belonged in the show as well (but in a good way!), Paul Kandel as Herod (formerly brilliant and heartbreaking as Uncle Ernie in Tommy), and especially, the intensely, intensely sexy Tony Vincent as Judas. He overacted too, a bit, but you can do that with Judas, and he has such an astonishing rock voice that he could have been as appalling as Jesus and I would have forgiven him all.
I am slightly horrified that he is a Christian recording artist, since Christian Rock is usually synonymous with Bad Rock, but hey, I like Sixpence None the Richer, so maybe there is such a thing as good Christian Rock! I'm trying to figure out if I like him enough to get a Christian rock album. I know I like him enough to try to score a boot of the show from Steve when he gets back from London!
The ensemble was uniformly very good, especially a black girl with short hair and an orange sweater who has such star quality that I couldn't stop watching her. Also, she was dancing very energetically sans bra, but that wasn't the reason for the star quality, I'm pretty certain. Another of the guys was so thin, but built, that when he wore a crop top, you could see that he had almost no navel! No really, it was just the tiniest indentation. I didn't know that it was possible to be that thin.
O, and there was this other guy who looked so familiar that I checked out his bio, and actually I had seen him play the title role in Randy Newman's Faust in Chicago a few years ago, but then I realized that the reason that he really looked familiar is because he's in that commercial where the guy with the blonde dreads is at the Japanese family reunion because cousin Miyoki (or is it cousin Noki?) couldn't get a flight.
One thing when you have a young cast is you have alot of very silly bios, as bad as on Off-Off, and a surprising number were these big Christians, not to mention that everyone has a website! I've never seen that before on Broadway. Of course, no reason for me to make fun of the bios, at least these kids are on Broadway--I mean, who the hell am I?
There's a big difference between performing on 42nd between 9th and 10th and performing on 42nd between Broadway and 8th.
What is your favourite musical? Or, say, top ten?
Suzy wishes me a happy birthday!
And we're still talking about the worst remake ever, cartoon character crushes, what Amazon.com might come up with next, vacations, Russell and Meg's big break-up, our favourite kind of cake, what we did this weekend, insomnia, the defining current event of our childhoods, good web-based newsreaders for Kim, our jobs, classic books that we hate, seeing things differently as one grows older, weird injuries, dreams that we thought were true upon awakening, weeping at movies, true love, and swearing.
Today's horoscope:
Your ideals and beliefs may be tested today on the job. You may choose between your personal preferences and the good of the whole.
One year ago today:
I mean, nothing's gonna beat my Mom's 35th birthday, which was also her wedding day, but next to that it was pretty great.
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Last Updated Sat 26 August 01:48:09 2000