I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

I added this little Flickr doodad to the side here that randomly shows designs and illustrations from my “pool.” Some real ancient history in there.

What was the greatest musical of 2006? Well, if you’re asking me I only can really speak with authority on two, since that’s how many Broadway musicals I saw last year. A 200% increase over 2005 (Sweeney Todd) and an infinite increase over 2003 and 2004 (0 musicals). I think I saw Hairspray in 2002, but I don’t remember when exactly.

Here’s a conclusion I reached… I think Broadway is stupid. For a while I was giving it the benefit of the doubt… there’s a lot of “production” and look at the lights and many dancers and oh its so unusual to see live shows these days and 100 years of American tradition…standards and showtunes and bla bla bla. There’s a lot of confessed Broadway nuts around who can’t get enough of it both straight and ironically, but I gave up the ghost of appreciating Broadway last year. If I want to carry on a tradition of paying too much money to see grand productions I’ll go see an opera, so then at least I can feel smart after sacrificing 3 hours sitting in a dark room.

That said, I do appreciate the 2 shows my friend Silvija procured free tickets too in mid-December through her work. She admitted she didn’t like musicals particularly either, so I wouldn’t be stomping on her joy if I wasn’t into them. We saw Spring Awakening and then two days later saw High Fidelity, which closed the day after we saw it.

Spring Awakening is the musical adaption of a Victorian-era play about teen angst and societal repression that is well known that I had never heard of. The music is by Duncan Sheik, a well known songwriter who I had never heard of. The cast is all teenagers and early twentysomethings; I know what those are. It had a couple rows of screamy Rent-style girl fans already even though it had opened pretty recently (after an off Broadway run). It was ok.

High Fidelity is based on a book that I read and a movie that I saw. I like both the book and the movie so I was predisposed to liking the musical I suppose. Silvija said the musical had gotten shitty reviews, so it wasn’t worth the cost of keeping the show running. She also added it’s a show aimed at an audience that doesn’t go to musicals—straight dudes in their 30s. It also was ok.

My biggest shortcoming is that I don’t judge by any standards or Broadway standards or anything. I thought the leads in both shows were beyond snoozeworthy—bland to the blandest degree. Silvija and the reviews of both shows disagreed with me and they found both leads charming (and “better than the material” in HF’s case). I liked the manic spazzy overacting “best friend” in SA with the snotty Lookout! Records voice; sensible people disagreed. I find the big solo climax “showstopping” numbers lamer than lame, but the repeated standing Os laugh in my face. So, take these opinions with a grain of Broadway salt

High Fidelity had a set, which puts it higher in my opinion than the “blank brick wall” look of SA (and Sweeney Todd). There’s a really funny running gag (appearing both in the book and the movie before) where the “non-Jack Black clerk” Dick is trying to say he’ll tell Barry (the Jack Black clerk) later but keeps stumbling over his words. It takes up half a page in the book… in this version they make it into a song out of nowhere… first lullabye like with chimes, then when you think its done, the key changes and it becomes this huge sweeping number, the content of which boils down to “No Problem, I’ll tell him later.” That’s the third beat of a gag (assuming each media a beat) done well. The rest of the numbers are all “guess the genre” parodies and not remarkable. The Bruce Springstein number/”showstopper” bored me endlessly.

I took issue with the star (Jon Cusack), for being blander than bland, and you get a LOT of him. I mean, the poster for the show is just his big dumb headshot with text—that’s the reason for the failure of the show right there. He narrates the show, and is in every scene. The girlfriend character (some Scandanavian girl) is actually even worse… she made my skin crawl with her perfect Venn Diagram placement “I used to be a brassy standup/shortform improviser” (check the Playbill, it’s true) and “I studied Musical Theatre at NYU” vapidity. Again, I hate Broadway, so these qualities were probably appealing to the rest of the audience.

The other weird thing about the show is how stuck in time it is. All of the references will be headscratchers in 10 or 15 years, and these references are not cosmetic, they’re the bulk of the show. The book is now 15+ years old, so they changed (and Americanized) of them, the movie did the same thing. Some substitutions were fair, though others seemed lame (“I Just Called To Say I Love You” changed to “My Heart Will Go On” and the shameful fandom for “Simple Minds” changed to “John Tesh,” which is too old a reference to be real.) Silvija said there probably will be a lot of college productions of the show after it leaves Broadway, but those kids are going to need footnotes in the not-to-distant future to remember who Lyle Lovett and Neil Young are.

Spring Awakening is still running and will run at least until the Tonys. It will not win anything and then close shortly afterward. This show has simulated masturbation and intercourse on stage… you can see the lead’s bare ass if you’re sitting stage left. Some of the songs are really catchy and fun, a lot of them seem like a joke to me though… especially the showstopper in the second act “You’re Fucked!” which ends with a frozen tableau of all the performers flipping the bird. “You’re my Junk” also seems like a joke, as does the masturbation song with the choreographed hand-jerking under a nightshirt while the female cast swirls around the masturbator.

But then there are all these deadly serious torch songs and one song where the male cast imagines what it’s like to be female and penetrated and writhe around on stage stroking their “wombs” and feeling themselves up. That was my big issue with the choreography… a lot of songs had “womb stroking” motions. Another number (may have been “Fucked”) had the cast line up facing the audience and all do their own spastic repeated action like a double-speed Charlie Brown dance number.

Aside from the lead guy, I liked the cast. Well, the proto-Hippie girl and the one black girl who was getting battered by her papa was a little lame, but for the most part everyone in the cast was ugly enough to be German. They gave one of the chunky boys all of the Victorian costume accesories—shaved head with little curls on the forehead (like the Coney Island High mascot) and tiny wire glasses—so he wins in the awesome department.

The biggest issue I had with it was tone… it was so goofy in parts with mean teachers named shit like Herr Gloppenschlock and Frau Fanuchenbruch (and these names said repeatedly), imagined sex montages and high camp gay comeons between the boys, like a German 1900s Porkys or something—and the second act is all suicide, child abuse, abortion and ghosts rising from the grave to sing echo-y duets with the lead dude. Not to mention the simulated intercourse, on a pallet suspended from the ceiling, with the rest of the cast watching and pushing it around like the pointer on a Ouija board.

So, if you get $20 tickets, it’s worth it. Go high or drunk.

I bought a lot of stuff today.

A memory card for my digital camera (on eBay)
A messenger bag (on eBay)
A necklace
two shirts
A hairband
A belt
3 items of “lingerie and daywear” (according to the receipt)
2 pairs of tights
A 24” iMac with 2 Gb of RAM

I dislike shopping but often I make a valiant effort to leave my house once in a while and that’s inevitable the activity that comes to mind.

The messenger bag is what started the ball rolling. A week ago when I was riding in a cab with a drunk friend who is a millionaire screenwriter he blasted me for having the same “Hello Kitty purse” for eight years or something. It’s not a Hello Kitty purse… it’s a Paul Frank purse and I have had it for something like eight years. I have another bag too, but it also is very old and shitty looking. I don’t like pursey-purses and the “slouch” “hobo” bullshit bags that have been “in fashion” for the last year are eyesores. Way too big, no shoulder strap, lots of buckles and pockets and shit all over them.

However, most messenger bags look very high schooly (in a bad way)—I was ahead of the curve in high school on the backpack vs. messenger bag tip, but I don’t want to be carrying one around that looks like it’s stuffed full of alegbra books. Messenger bags are also way the fuck too big because now all of them double as laptop cases. All I really need to carry is a notebook (paper notebook, not computer kind), cellphone and wallet.

So I searched on ebay and found one that I hope will not be so huge a disappointment. I checked everywhere before… stores and online, etsy.com and brands I thought might be picking up the Paul Frank slack for vinyl, smallish shoulder bags.

By contrast, the iMac was an impulse buy.

Today’s the day when people who have jobs (lucky stiffs/poor slobs) have to return to them, after properly having dispensed with welcoming the new year and mourning Gerry Ford. For you desk monkeys, I give you something to stare at and count the days until your impending death—

January Desktop Wallpaper Calendar

1024×768 | 1280×1024

January was my favorite month in elementary school, because I liked making cursive capital Js. June and July I never had any reason to write out regularly on the tops of wide-ruled notebook paper, so January was my only shot.

At first I was going to take the blog down entirely… I don’t think it’s really time well spent (according to Will Hines’ productivity books) and I’m constantly feeling like I SHOULD be writing more. Most people can probably sympathize. I also don’t think anyone reads it.

I’m keeping it up but giving it a new name. I liked “Diary of A Bengal Lancer” or “The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama” but those are taken already. Now ‘Love, Drill Press’ is “I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’” (until I think of something else). I asked Mitch what to rename it and his suggestions were stuff like “If you’re in a good mood, slam the breaks on that and read this” or “Your Happiness is Offensive to Me.” Will just told me to write more complaints… or do a comic of complaints. I am sour.

I’m going to add a new header, a flickr plugin and some layout changes. I turned OFF comments, since they tend to encourage the thing I like least about the internet… anonymous bullshit “flames”. If I know you, you can say your comment to me in person. If I don’t know you, who gives a shit what you have to say… if you want to comment on something here, send me an email like a grownup. (I am being extremely hypocritical since I love leaving comments on other people’s blogs.)

I’m working on a new front page for Nobody’s Sweetheart, I hope to have it up this week. I’m purging a lot of old files from the site in general and make everything easier to navigate.

I made New Years resolutions last year and immediately forgot all of them. This year I’m keeping it simple and short-term. Right now I’m banning myself from internet message boards… not productive and depressing. I will also pledge to use my Sonicare toothbrush that I bought almost 2 years ago and never took out of the box.

Unambitious!

Don’t eat at Joe’s Shanghai… that’s good advice in general but more specifically don’t eat at Joe’s Shanghai at 10 PM on New Year’s Eve, after you were already feeling crappy earlier in the day and haven’t eaten since 11 AM.

Don’t order food because “Deep Fried Spiced Chicken Chunks (with Bone)” is a hilarious name, and then not eat it what shows up because it’s exactly what the name describes (and served with a little dish of MSG powder (?) on the side).

Don’t eat the second or third silty, watery soup dumpling after you knew you didn’t like the first one but we ordered too many so they’ll go to waste.

Don’t try to simultaneously “catch up” with the party mood upon entering a party 45 minutes to midnight by double-fisting bourbon while trying to forget about what feels like a kilo of road sand and motor oil in your gut.

Don’t continue to self medicate at the same pace even after the ball has dropped.

Don’t get the spins and then throw up in trash can for an hour, while still trying to be devastatingly clever and charming about it.

All lessons learned! Happy New Year Everybody!