The past couple of weeks
Sep. 7th, 2005 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurHaven't done much diarizing lately, so let's catch up on the interesting bits...
Last weekend,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
msmemory and I went to New York to see Spamalot as her Xmas present. (Thanks to mknauer for pointing me at a date that had a couple of tickets left!)
The show's self-description of "lovingly ripped off from the movie" is pretty accurate. Many individual bits are directly lifted from the film, sometimes word-for-word, but a lot of the story has been changed and/or rearranged to suit the new medium. Just as a bunch of the movie is a parody of movies, the musical is very much a parody of musicals. The play often breaks down the fourth wall and dances in the rubble, and the character of The Lady of the Lake exists largely to inject self-referential humor scattered randomly throughout. A lot of the humor of the movie is mutated to fit the new form -- for example, the movie's credits (replete with Finland jokes) get transmogrified into the Playbill for the show.
The writing and acting were both solid and consistent -- never exactly deep, but you don't expect deep from Monty Python. Tim Curry was born to play King Arthur -- his bemused grin and supreme confidence suit the part well. I'd been rather mystified through much of the show why David Hyde Pierce (playing Sir Robin) got first billing, but he walks off with the show in the second-act number "You've Got to Have Jews". Indeed, many of the characters (including Alan Tydyk's Lancelot) get their big numbers in the second act, when the plot begins to wander far afield from the movie.
Other than that, New York was New York. I was mostly struck by the transformation of Times Square into a set from Blade Runner, with multi-story screens wrapping around almost every building in a frenzy of commercialization. We did get a chance to spend an hour prowling around The Strand (the largest used bookstore anywhere), which proves to have been rearranged for the better -- the organization within sections is a lot more consistent than it used to be (not that it could have been worse), and they've opened a whole new floor for the now mammoth art-book section. Sadly, Forbidden Planet, once one of our favorite SF bookstores, has gone a bit downhill: their comics selection is still supreme, but the bookshelves are almost a footnote at this point.
Now that we're into September, Demo Season is in full swing.hfcougar has blessedly taken over the official Borough Liaison role, but I'm still helping out when I can. There have been two activities so far.
The MIT Midway was last Friday, and was the same chaotic fun I expect from it. As usual we had too many people and too much stuff, but that's generally a strength -- we were eye-catching, and got a pretty good crop of freshman potential. (Including one guy at the beginning who must have said "This is so *awesome*!" at least 30 times in five minutes.) Hopefully a fair number of them will be intrigued enough to show up tonight for the first meeting.
Fenmere's first meeting was last night, and seemed to go quite well. I like the new co-provosts -- one is the quiet-but-organized type and the other does the infectious enthusiasm game perhaps even better than me, so they look to make a good pair. There was a reasonable crowd of interested newbies, and several of them look likely to stay. I suspect that having the Novice Schola there this weekend will prove to be really great timing, and there was a lot of interest in it. And it's looking like there may be a serious fighting core there that could gel nicely.
This past weekend was mainly focused on the house project -- the slow-but-steady movement towards finding a house that suits us better. Having discovered that Susana has become a professional buyer's agent, we decided to team with her: we know and trust her, and are confident we can work with her on that. I suspect that that step will help to move the project along; we spent a long time talking about how the process works, and which steps we ought to be taking in which order. And I spent Monday priming the bathroom -- two decades of neglect had done the paint job no favors, so we're sprucing it up. It's a little thing, but getting my hands a little dirty working on the house does feel good...
Last weekend,
msmemory and I went to New York to see Spamalot as her Xmas present. (Thanks to mknauer for pointing me at a date that had a couple of tickets left!) The show's self-description of "lovingly ripped off from the movie" is pretty accurate. Many individual bits are directly lifted from the film, sometimes word-for-word, but a lot of the story has been changed and/or rearranged to suit the new medium. Just as a bunch of the movie is a parody of movies, the musical is very much a parody of musicals. The play often breaks down the fourth wall and dances in the rubble, and the character of The Lady of the Lake exists largely to inject self-referential humor scattered randomly throughout. A lot of the humor of the movie is mutated to fit the new form -- for example, the movie's credits (replete with Finland jokes) get transmogrified into the Playbill for the show.
The writing and acting were both solid and consistent -- never exactly deep, but you don't expect deep from Monty Python. Tim Curry was born to play King Arthur -- his bemused grin and supreme confidence suit the part well. I'd been rather mystified through much of the show why David Hyde Pierce (playing Sir Robin) got first billing, but he walks off with the show in the second-act number "You've Got to Have Jews". Indeed, many of the characters (including Alan Tydyk's Lancelot) get their big numbers in the second act, when the plot begins to wander far afield from the movie.
Other than that, New York was New York. I was mostly struck by the transformation of Times Square into a set from Blade Runner, with multi-story screens wrapping around almost every building in a frenzy of commercialization. We did get a chance to spend an hour prowling around The Strand (the largest used bookstore anywhere), which proves to have been rearranged for the better -- the organization within sections is a lot more consistent than it used to be (not that it could have been worse), and they've opened a whole new floor for the now mammoth art-book section. Sadly, Forbidden Planet, once one of our favorite SF bookstores, has gone a bit downhill: their comics selection is still supreme, but the bookshelves are almost a footnote at this point.
Now that we're into September, Demo Season is in full swing.
hfcougar has blessedly taken over the official Borough Liaison role, but I'm still helping out when I can. There have been two activities so far. The MIT Midway was last Friday, and was the same chaotic fun I expect from it. As usual we had too many people and too much stuff, but that's generally a strength -- we were eye-catching, and got a pretty good crop of freshman potential. (Including one guy at the beginning who must have said "This is so *awesome*!" at least 30 times in five minutes.) Hopefully a fair number of them will be intrigued enough to show up tonight for the first meeting.
Fenmere's first meeting was last night, and seemed to go quite well. I like the new co-provosts -- one is the quiet-but-organized type and the other does the infectious enthusiasm game perhaps even better than me, so they look to make a good pair. There was a reasonable crowd of interested newbies, and several of them look likely to stay. I suspect that having the Novice Schola there this weekend will prove to be really great timing, and there was a lot of interest in it. And it's looking like there may be a serious fighting core there that could gel nicely.
This past weekend was mainly focused on the house project -- the slow-but-steady movement towards finding a house that suits us better. Having discovered that Susana has become a professional buyer's agent, we decided to team with her: we know and trust her, and are confident we can work with her on that. I suspect that that step will help to move the project along; we spent a long time talking about how the process works, and which steps we ought to be taking in which order. And I spent Monday priming the bathroom -- two decades of neglect had done the paint job no favors, so we're sprucing it up. It's a little thing, but getting my hands a little dirty working on the house does feel good...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 06:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 08:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 06:30 pm (UTC)(eyebrows raise) Reeeally. Man, they squeezed a lot of my favorite comedic actors into this. Too bad they couldn't talk Kevin Kline into a bit part...
Hopefully the fighting at Fenmere will get solidified tonight. We're still out a room, but maybe with enough local clamouring that can be fixed.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 06:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 06:37 pm (UTC)So...we'll have to be more creative. I'll bring it up tonight.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 06:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 06:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 06:40 pm (UTC)I'm guessing the show is sold out until 2138?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 06:44 pm (UTC)We were willing to accept "Partial View" seats (front row of the balcony, far corner of the row) and only waited about 4 months. We could see everything except the French Taunter and the image of God, which were both way upstage center.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-08 12:46 am (UTC)Btw, I think Tim Currie's more impressive as an actor now that I've seen a concrete example of him playing a good guy versus a bad guy. His body commitment for King Arthur was totally from the chest and upper arms, whereas his body commitment for Count Rogan in Princess Bride was more head, maybe even just his left eye. At least, that's what I remember of the film. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-08 01:28 am (UTC)Tim Currie's commitment to Princess Bride was pretty minimal, since he wasn't in it. Count Rugen was played by Christopher Guest (of Spinal Tap, Best in Show, Mighty Wind, etc., fame).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-08 05:59 am (UTC)Serves me right for trying to sound educated! I never pay attention to the names on the screen, I just look at them and become enveloped in the story. Apparently, I also don't look very hard.
So where have I seen Tim Currie before?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-08 01:24 pm (UTC)Well, to begin where I should have last night, he spells it "Curry" like the food. Where have you seen him? Most famously, Rocky Horror Picture Show. Also tons of random stuff like Hunt for Red October, Clue, Muppet Treasure Island, Charlie's Angels, and many more. He also does lots of voices for animated movies and TV, but those would count as parts you haven't seen him in, I guess :-)
Complete story here.
:)
Date: 2005-09-23 02:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 08:52 pm (UTC)heh,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chaiya and i did exactly that this past weekend (and then proceeded to leave the area before either David Hyde Pierce or Tim Curry showed their faces). i think he was not quite as thrilled to meet me as i was to meet him, but he was gracious about letting each of us pose for pictures with him. :)
-steve
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 08:20 pm (UTC)Good luck on the room situation...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 09:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 06:48 pm (UTC)Finland? They were Sweden in the movie. (This isn't just trivia nit-picking - for me, it's of legitimately academic interest.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 08:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-08 12:50 pm (UTC)it was a vehicle for the opening number being a pastiche of the fish-slapping skit and “Finland, Finland, Finland”.
-steve
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 06:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-07 08:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-08 04:15 pm (UTC)