On the Stage

This is more or less what it'll look like. It'll change a bit before alls said and done, but not much.

RENT-themed post ahead...turn back now if you must.

This is Anthony Rapp's new book. I just got it in the mail on Tuesday, and I'm excited to read it. The theatre-based web site I frequent has talked a lot about it, and so it sounds as if it'll be a good read! It's about his time with the show, he was the original Mark in RENT on Broadway, then in LA, then in London, and is also Mark in the major motion picture. Also, his life, not just about RENT too, and it sounds like he really has a good writing voice.


Also, RENT: The Movie came out as well on Tuesday and we picked it up (with Godspell!) at Best Buy. I saw it opening night in the theatres, so I haven't popped it in my DVD player yet. But there are a lot of good extras that I am pretty excited to watch...just haven't gotten to it yet. The movie...it's good. It could have been better. Some of the scenes don't work very Well (What You Own anyone? Today 4 You Tomorrow 4 Me anyone?) but I liked it. I'll see how much I like it after I see the deleted scenes of the songs and scenes Chris Columbus took out. Also there is an alternate ending that everyone is talking about that I'm curious to see. I haven't read what happens in the alternate scenes or really what happens in the cut scenes, though I know what was cut just not how it was approached, so I can have a fresh look at them.

I'm a bit frustrated at North Grand 5 in Ames. They are the dollar theatre here in town. They get everything, just after it's been out for a while. Well, they haven't had RENT. My wife didn't get to see it with me because our daughter wasn't feeling good and my best friend was in town and he loves RENT with me and so we wanted to go see it together, and V let us, but she was a little frustrated. Well, when it comes to the dollar theatre we were going to see it, and it wasn't there yet. So I e-mailed them and they replied saying they just found out it would open there Feb 24...tonight. Well, I checked their web site on Monday because it shows the movies playing and RENT was not listed. So I e-mailed them again and they said:

The distributor came back to us and said a print was not available at this time.
I hate to drive away business, but the film does come out on DVD either Next
Tuesday or is out already. Sometimes we just can't get a hold of a print to
show. Sorry for the mix up.

Well, no shit it comes out on DVD, I know they were just trying to be nice by telling me this, but 1.)I already know and 2.) We want to see it on the BIG screen, way different than seeing on our stupid home TV.

I just wanted to take V to see it on the big screen because she missed it originally and I feel bad about that. The whole time it was at the normal priced theatre we just didn't get out to see it, money, time, etc. so were going to catch it on the dollar theatre....but no. Maybe they'll get it still? But I doubt it.

ALSO, side note of disappointment...the 12 screen theatre here in Ames NEVER got The Producers movie. What the F??

My daughter is going to this today with her daycare!! How awesome is that?! I'm so jealous...I bet it's going to be great. It's a children's musical revue at Stephen's Auditorium. I can't wait to pick her up and hear all about it!

---

A sparkling musical revue based on popular children’s books, including:

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
by Laura Joffe Numeroff
When a boy shares his snack with a hungry, demanding mouse, he learns a hilarious lesson about cause-and-effect.

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
Follow young Grace as she attempts to break down stereotypes in an effort to play the title character in her school’s production of Peter Pan.

Borreguita and the Coyote by Verna Aardema
The classic Mexican tale of a little lamb, or borreguita, who uses her wits to escape a hungry coyote.

Imogene’s Antlers by David Small
Young Imogene is delighted to wake up with “cool” antlers but soon discovers that her parents and school principals do not share her enthusiasm.

Martha Speaks by Susan Meddaugh
The adventurous tale of a family dog who literally becomes “outspoken” after dining on alphabet soup.

Math Curse by Jon Scieszka
This story playfully addresses the phobia some kids have when tackling seemingly impossible math problems.

Owen by Kevin Henkes
When Owen just can’t bear to part with his beloved blanket, Fuzzy, his understanding mother provides a clever solution.

I'm in a bad mood and seriously, I think a good hour session of hacky sacking and talking about nothing in general would fix it...but I don't have anyone to do that with, and V wouldn't be home to watch Kaia so I COULD do it anyway...

This is my current footbag of choice (but mine is green and yellow/brown/orange sort of color)...

Well, I got the logo made for Into the Woods. I love it, I'm really happy with it. I drew the tree myself with the pen tool in Photoshop. The font is Papyrus font.

When I showed V what I had come up with she likes it a lot too, because she's going for kind of a shade-iness for her production, using shadows in some places. She likes how the tree is jagged and a little sketchy. I asked her if she wanted me to add color anywhere and she said no, she liked the idea of it being black and white...so ok!

It'll be cool to see it on a t-shirt when we get the t-shirts for the cast and crew. I took care of that yesterday and it's going to be an orange (like a burnt orange) t-shirt with that on the front and the JSTT logo on the sleeve. So that'll be fun too. It, of course, won't have the white background on the t-shirt, it'll just be the black stencil on the orange shirt, but the white background is just there for the jpeg.

I just realized I never posted on how the babysitter with Kaia went.

It went awesome!! :-D Man, I couldn't have been any happier. Babysitter K came over at 5 pm. We went through the house and showed her everything and did the whole schpeel of what goes on and when stuff happens for Kaia and all this and that and we were good little parents and we left numbers and told her our house is her house and all this good stuff. And then when we were ready to go we were giving Kaia hugs and kisses and she was READY to play with Babysitter K and so she shoed us out the door!!! She was all, "Ok, have a good time! Bye bye." ha! That felt good, in an odd way, to know that she loves us and will miss us but she is OK with us leaving :-)

We called during intermission and Babysitter K was just getting Kaia to bed and everything was going smoothly, no crying for us at bed time and no being a brat!

We got home and Babysitter K reported that all was well, Kaia only got out of bed for various things 3 times, which is Kaia's limit, and she was asleep when we got there at 10:45ish.

We paid Babysitter K (someone please tell me how much babysitters should make nowadays?? We had no idea) and she told us some funny stories and how Kaia knew everything she was suppose to do at bed time (of course! We do it the same every night :-) )

Now, if we need a babysitter again, we are good to go! So exciting. The only problem is they cost money :-) So, whatever we're doing that night that needs a babysitter tack on the cost for the babysitter and that's how much the evenings is going to run us.

Oh, and Thoroughly Modern Millie was really good, of course! Loved it :-)

Skipped.

We have NO money and problems with our house that requires money...so no V-day this year. We were sitting pretty ok until her car died and we needed to get her a new used car...now we're out of money until we get our taxes done and our check back, which I will do this week.

If there was V-day at our household this year I would have gotten her something from The Body Shop someone here at work has some stuff from there and it smells good! I'm sure she would have liked it.

As you all remember we saw Kristy Cates, when we were in Chicago to see Wicked instead of Ana Gasteyer, and just loved her! Well, she was an understudy on Broadway before that and was at that time a standby in the Chicago cast, and Ana has left the show now and Kristy moved up to full-time Elphaba! VERY good news. I'm very happy for her, I think she deserves it. In my circle of theatre people I talk to some of them don't like Kristy but I loved her, so I'm happy about this. And also with this promotion to full-time Elphaba comes pictures of her on the Wicked Chicago web site, so here is who I saw!

I am PUMPED! I love Olympics. Summer and winter, though there is just something about the Winter Olympics that I like more. Luge, skeleton, speed skating, skiing, hockey, ski jumping, curling, love it all!

I will have my TiVo CLEARED by tomorrow night so that I can TiVo hours upon hours of the Olympics. I already have a good 40-60 hours of Olympics taping, I know I have to. But, since my TiVo is only a 40-hour TiVo it'll be ok because I'll be watching them as more are taping, so I can keep up. Because barely anything normal is on TV for the two weeks the Olympics is on.

Can't wait! Anybody else pumped?!

I know I'm late...but that halftime show SUCKED. Man, it was horrible. The stage was way too big for them. He looked like a fish flopping out of water. Keith Richards looked like the walking, guitar-playing dead. He sounded not so fancy. It wasn't horrible sounding, but it wasn't that good. He was constantly out of breath. Bad. But, then I've talked to a read both sides. Some LOVED it. Others agreed with me and thought it was less than impressive.

I know we've all seen it by now, but her ass better get in some kind of legal trouble over this. I don't CARE if you say the paparazzi was harassing you (which I doubt is true enough for her to do THIS) you better strap your damn kid in his carseat before you even touch the gas. The paparazzi could be snapping photos (OH NO!) or surrounding my car with their cars so they can take pictures (OH NO!) or whatever paparazzi do that is "harassing" and I will still take my time to load my child into the proper restraints and then deal with getting out of there in my car. I can understand how paparazzi can be annoying and overbearing and what not, but who gives a shit if they take a picture of you in your bad clothes after you just had a colonic? You don't need to put your baby at risk.

***UPDATE: A yahoo news article says charges will not be filed! How can that be?! Shit...

Iowa Stars Hockey. That was a LOT of fun. I loved it!! I've always thought hockey was awesome, but I've never gotten to go to any game of any sorts. Well, then my sister in AZ marries a hockey player, so while we were out there we got to go to one of his games (he just plays in leagues). It was great, but I knew a professional hockey game would be awesome, and it was!

So much fun. I would love to be at a game with more people. I"m sure the atmosphere is even better than it was last night. There were a little under 7500 people there.

I bought an Iowa Stars baseball cap. I want to go to more games now. Now I'm sad I didn't get to go to the one before that I had to miss because I needed to pick up Veronica when she got back from her trip. And then my sister's company is doing a game, but it's the 18th and I'll be out of town :-( dammit! I need to get on and see how expensive tickets are normally though, because I probably can't even afford to go to hockey games, if I usually am saving up my money to go to theatre events when they come around.

Either way it was great! And they won 6-4! There were almost some fights...but the stupid refs stopped them at holding and talking trash. And one of the goals was off a face-off, which was sweet.

Ok, so I found out I'll be coming up at about 3:30 everyday...so, yeah, it'll only give me 1 hour to contemplate blogging and then never get around to doing it.

Four jobs I've had:
1.McDonalds - Did it all
2.Subway - Sandwich Artist
3.Waldorf College Theatre Department - Graphics
4.Oakland Corp. - Sales

Four movies I can watch over & over
1. I can't...I have a hard time putting a movie in after I've seen it, unless it's been a month, or more most times, yet I have so many movies...does that make sense?

Four places I've lived:
1. Iowa - Story City
2. Iowa - Forest City
3. Iowa - Ames
4. Iowa - Story City

Four TV shows I love:
1. - How I Met Your Mother
2. - Lost
3. - Scrubs
4. - Medium

Four highly touted TV shows I detest: (I don't detest them, I just don't watch them)
1. - 24, Ok, don't like this one much
2. - CSI
3. - The Office - ok, I do detest this show
4. - ALMOST everything on ABC

Four books I'd recommend to anyone, anytime:
1. - The Left Behind Series
2. - The Myst Series
3. - Anything by Robert Rodi (gay fiction -- not for everyone)
4. - Anything by Gregory MaGuire - specifically Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch

Four places I've vacationed:
1. - Florida
2. - California
3. - South Dakota
4. - Chicago

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. - Chicken Fetuccini Alfredo
2. - Hamburger Helper
3. - Cheeseburgers
4. - Thanksgiving meal in general

Four sites I visit daily:
1. - CB
2. - swankified - it's a theatre site thank you very much
3. - hotmail
4. - gmail

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. - NYC
2. - Boston
3. - Sleeping
4. - On Stage

Four bloggers I am tagging:
1. Whoever...

I am working on something that takes me away from my desk for 90% (or more) of the day...for a while now, so if I'm missing in action it's because I rarely log on to blogger at home and do all my blogging from here at work...and if I'm not at my desk I can't blog...not that I'm good at blogging in the first place...not that anyone is going to miss my shitty posts...but I will be missing in action I should think! Just a warning :-)

I'm going to the Iowa Stars hockey game tomorrow night
I'm going to Thoroughly Modern Millie Saturday night

I shall blog about both I should think...but I wouldn't get my hopes up ;-)

Ok! Off I go.

Heather Locklear and Richie Sambora are getting a divorce...now all I need to do is get her to meet me...

oh...my...gosh! We, of course, are having a food day today at work. Basically if you work in an office then you're thinking "What day ISN'T a food day?!" but anyway, someone brought MONKEY BREAD!

They are my personal hero today. I love monkey bread. I had forgotten all about monkey bread. I used to make monkey bread with my mom all the time because I love it so much.

Meritt, I bet you make a mean monkey bread right?

I'm getting sick of all the hatred in the world that I am directly hearing or reading. Hatred that I don't think needs to exist...I guess specifically three things right now.

I'm sick of Republicans HATING Democrats
I'm sick of Democrats HATING Republicans
--this is just some nasty hatred filled with nasty comments sometimes...politics is nasty and I just don't like the way it makes people behave and react.

and most of all I'm sick of people HATING gay people.

I can't believe the amount of comments I've been hearing, first hand, on hatred of gay people. And I know for a fact it's hatred of the people AND the acts they do in the privacy of their own bedroom, not just hatred of the act.

I'm a little more ok with people still liking gay PEOPLE but not liking their buiness in the bedroom, which still in my humble opinion who gives a shit?...but just hating all gay people simply for them being gay is horrible. Not wanting to be around a gay person, not wanting gay people in this country, I've heard it all.

And, I'm sorry, but I'm just not a confrontational person, so I don't stand up and defend gay people when I hear it, unless the topic would ever really be discussed when I would then voice my opinion, but I don't laugh with the person as they say nasty things about gay people, I just get uncomfortable and either leave or switch topics.

I know this is a hotbed topic, and I'm not getting into all the different topics of homosexuality, maybe a different day, I just know my views on homosexuality and I know they're not going to change.

I understand opposing views and peoples rights to their opinions, which is why I have the right to have my opinion and express it, and I understand how opinions work...I'm just expressing my opinion today.

Wooo! We're going! It's going to be in Ames on Feb. 11th! National Touring Company of Thoroughly Modern Millie.

The only nerve-wracking thing about it is it will be the first time Kaia is being babysat by someone other than my parents, and my sister once or twice. :-( I hope everything goes ok. I know this is normal, everyone has a babysitter. I know a lot about this girl too, who's watching Kaia.

She comes to Kaia's daycare everyday after she gets out of high school, with some other high school kids as well, to work and help out and play with the kids. Kaia absolutely loves her. She approached me about babysitting for Kaia if we ever needed someone...which is good! because we've only ever had my parents. I've talked to Kaia about it and she is excited to get to play with her, but we'll see how she reacts when we go to leave! I bet it's a different story then, I hope it's not, but I know Kaia.

This girls oldest sister was a good friend of mine in high school, I used to come over to their house and hang out in the summers and after school, so I know the whole family. Just great people all around. And this girls youngest sister plays Amaryllis in this past summer's production of The Music Man that I was in. So I don't think we could pick a better babysitter, she is so nice, so grounded, down to earth responsible young lady.

It makes me nervous just to leave my little girl with a babysitter :-( but it's also exciting to see if this works out, which I'm thinking (hoping and praying) it will.

I remember my sisters used to babysit all the time, I would come over and help them every now and then. Man, what high school girl HASN'T babysat! So...we'll see I guess! I'll definitely be calling at intermission to see if everything is going great!!

Read this on a co-workers white board:

The proper response to "Good Morning" is not "Prove it"