A quiet night, a stack of books, a tuna melt on rye

So back in October (or was it late September) of 2003 I left to study abroad at the University of Sussex.  I had backed all of my favorite CDs and was thus listening to the second tier right up until I left.  I departed with Annie Warbucks in the CD player.  Nine months later, I return to find my CD player has taken up residence in the bathroom (apparently my brother was unable to take a shower without musical entertainment) and my CD nowhere to be found.  Annie Warbucks is not a great show by any stretch of the imagination, but it does contain my favorite love song of all time, It Would Have Been Wonderful, which isn't really a love song at all, and which probably says a lot about my psyche.  I look everywhere for that CD

Anyway, I'm sharing this because this weekend, I went home and there it was sitting on my brother's desk.  I've been looking for the CD for seven years (trust me, if it were available in iTunes or your standard CD store I would have re-purchased it many times over by now) and there it was, just sitting there.  Of course, the second half is all scratched up, but my song survives.  Yay!

( icon meme from sneakyangel )

glowwormtu and I once again participated in our annual viewing of Godspell after our post-liturgical luncheon of curry.  Really nothing says Eastern like a good helping of Indian food followed by Victor Garbor playing Jesus. 

In case you are interested in joining us in our tradition, I though would provide everyone with the soundtrack.  Enjoy.

Today at work I was listening to the Broadway Bullet podcast and they said that Andrew Lloyd Webber is writing (or I guess by this point has written) a sequel musical to The Phantom of the Opera.  I just have to say NOT COOL Mr. Webber, not cool.  I had almost found it in my heart to forgive you for Whistle Down the Wind (Guy in our barn, must be Jesus), but this is just too much.   Thankfully Sunset Boulevard (my favorite) is not popular enough to get this sort of treatment. 

Today I did the ritual watching of the Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar movies in honor of Good Friday.   This was the old 70s version of Superstar not the newer version that I didn't even know existed until today, but which I now need to rent in order to compare "wussy, baptist-Jesus" to "wonky-eyed-Jesus".  What? It's not at all unreasonable to spend a movie discussing the main actor's wonky eye and parental obsessions with odd songs.  Apparently Arynne's father is all about Simon the Zealot, while my mother cracks up every time the "then when we retire/We can write the Gospels/So they'll all talk about us when we die" bit. 

I did not sit outside and wait for the sky to get dark as a fiend's mom made me do as a teenager.   I'm not sure whether there was supposed to be a wave of darkness that descended as each time zone reached noon or if my friends mother just forgot to take into account the time difference between Jerusalem and West Chester, but the sky never did turn dark. 

I also managed to find these shoes at the Buffalo Exchange for $15, which made me ridiculously happy.  There was even an Easter Egg hidden nearby, so I got a piece of gum. 

Finally, for work this week I get to fly to Nashville on Tuesday.  Kat and I wii do some previous investigation research, take a look at a parking lot, and then fly back Wednesday.  Quite possibly this will be the most pointless project I've ever been on, but It will add another entry to the list of states I've worked in. 

Over Thanksgiving my father decided that we should do one "cultural" event as a family before Christmas and one after Christmas  as part of the whole holiday season.  (It's worth noting that our season is already more packed than some others as my birthday is the 28th)  Since, thanksgiving involved watching my brother's football team play, I was given the task of selecting our pre-Christmas outing.  I initially requested that we go see (listen) to a full concert of The Messiah.  I often fell like a bad choir person because I've only actually heard the "For Unto Us" and the "Halleluja" both because I preformed them with my University Choir so I didn't hear a whole lot more than the Alto part anyway. 

That plan fell through since no one was actually preforming The Messiah on the days we had available, so my father sent me an email with all the events that were happening.  One stuck out immediately.  The Bryn Mawr Film institute was hosting a sing-a-long Sound of Music.  I love The Sound of Music.  As a child, it was the movie I put in and watched everyday (well that and Mary Poppins and the live action Pooh movies).  I've stopped watching the movie on TV because I can quote the whole thing and it ends up annoying me when they cut bits out.  I was really nice to see the movie a) on a full sized movie screen in a theater setting and b) with a group of people who clearly love it as much as I do.  I will say however, that in the future I will probably stick to watching my DVD copy.  Apparently I don't hate the Baroness nearly as much as everyone else does, as it kind of upset me everytime people booed her. 

Part of my viewing now may be colored by the fact that I listen to the Original Broadway Cast Recording of the show more often than the movie.  There were three songs in the original show "An Ordinary Couple," "No Way to Stop It" and "How Can Love Survive" which were cut for the movie version and replaced with "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good."  Both "No Way to Stop" and "How Can Love Survive" are both sung at least in part by the Baroness, the first with Max and Captin Von Trapp and second just with Captin Von Trapp.  Both are songs I like a lot (they're both pretty funny) and have made me enjoy the character more. "Ordinary Couple" directly replaced by "Something Good" which is unfortunate as I think the former is actually the better song.  IMDB tells me this is a change that most theater companies now include in the stage play which I find sad, although the version I saw for my eleventh birthday retained the original (that's how I knew the extra songs existed). 

On a completely different subject, my Aunt has decided to do Tapas for Christmas dinner and each member of the family is supposed to bring a small appatizer like dish to include in the Tapas spread.  I am offering up Samosas, which I made for the first time yesterday.  They turned out pretty good (atleast the four people who tried them all liked them and my brother had to be cut off for fear that I wouldn't have any left for the actual christmas meal); altough, they do have interesting and decidedly not pyramidal shapes.  I think I started getting the hang of folding the dough correctly toward the end of my second batch of 14 Sumosas.

I have the bestest friend ever!  I had mentioned the other day that I had Cole Porter's "You're the Top" stuck in my head and that I was enjoying giggling about cellophane.  She wrote me my very own, extremely geeky verse.  I am so proud. 

( The geekery )I will admit there are some awkward portions, but then have you heard the original?


Also I finally got to see Sondheim's Assassins which makes me super happy.  That soundtrack is one of the first things I ever got through inter-library loan after I realized that someone at the Tredyffrin branch had my exact taste because every time I couldn't find something there it was at Tredyffrin.   I've wanted to see the show since hearing the spoken track "November 22, 1963" and reading on the old newsgroup rec.arts.theater.musicals that live it was possibly the most moving thing ever in musical theater.  It was pretty mesmerizing.  Though I did have a problem with them going for a laugh and having Booth act like Oswald touched him inappropriately while searching him to make sure he wasn't with the FBI.  The first two thirds of the show are pretty funny and that works for the "footnote" assassins, but I think the director lost the importance of the transition of the Balladeer into Lee Harvey Oswald.  Up until that point, the Balladeer is the one character arguing for hope and peaceful answers, when he transitions, and all hope is lost, the show needs to become serious real fast.  I also had a problem of the visual of Sarah Jane Moore pointing a gun at her child being played for laughs. 

Yesterday, we were listening to <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17207234"</a> on the way to the site. I'm a little annoyed by the bit when Teri Gross calls attention to difficulty of singing Sondhiem's music and the fact that none of the main actors are trained in voice and Richard Zanuck says that he gave Tim Burton the freedom to chose real actors instead of goind with stage actors.

I have developed a new obsession.  Since they canceled Veronica Mars, my tuesdays became wide open.  I had long been avoiding House because I knew obsession would follow.  Oh, my love is great...

1.  Snark - Arynne first sold me on the path to this show with the words "He's snarky and you are the Mistress of Snark, there will be much love."  Arynne is quite an insightful individual.
   
2. I have a name sake (see icon).  One who I like and is not Benny's wife commonly called Muffy. 
   
3. It reminds me of home.  Persistive Vegetative State Guy asks for a hoagie when he wakes up.  People look at me funny when I ask for a hoagie.  Also PVSG lived in the same town as my Grandmother. 
   
4. They showed a bag from the Princeton Record Exchange.  That place was the best part of going to choir camp (or as they liked to call it The Westminster Choir College Summer Vocal Institute for High School Musicians).  Yes, I was enough of a dork to go to choir camp for two summers in a row.  Yes I still have the Linda Eder CD's that I bought from the Princeton Record Exchange.  Really, where else can you walk in and get used Linda Eder.  Just saying. 

    I'd just like to say that musicians should learn to mark their own scores.  What exactly is it about joining the union which suddenly up people's stupidity level.  Actually, cutting out pieces of paper to cover the measures that the music director cut was kind-of a little fun.  Or maybe I just really, really miss being a part of a performing arts type group.  Damn having a strange schedule and no permanent living quarters.

    Also, if you are in the NOLA area you should go see the Summer Lyric shows.  (Though from what I saw today you might want to miss Little Me.  Just Saying.)