Weekend
Friday: We had John and Jon over for a bit of a games night. I lost - but it was fun! We played a game theory game (Mall of Horror), two graph theory games (Bump in the Night and Drakon), and...Gloom. Which is a maximization game, I guess. I lost. It was all good fun.
Saturday: We went to More Different Steve's birthday party. We got him Red Dead Redemption for PS3 - which meant hanging out in Gamestop a lot in the morning. Joel-Henry picked up something called Two Worlds for pretty cheap, which looks like an Oblivion clone with really terrible voice acting. It might have potential though - we haven't gotten far enough into it to be able to tell yet. But it has been fun listening to Joel-Henry scream every few minutes "Holy crap I'm being attacked by bears! Everything's worse with bears!!"
Steve's party was good fun too. We played Bocce (I lost), didn't get too bitten up by mosquitos, and I mistook the drink name Venetian Sunset for Venusian Sunspot. Susan made amazing risotto with a balsamic glaze on the side, and we grilled shrimp and scallops and various mediterranean vegetables. Susan and I have way too much fun being mediterranean together...
Yesterday: We made pesto from the basil we had stolen from Steve and Ali. Our friends are under the mistaken impression that once basil blooms, it can't be eaten. So we picked a bunch of it saturday morning and turned it into pesto. It was the best pesto ever. We followed the Moosewood recipe (except that we had to add a lot of extra oil to get it to blend properly) and we held out half of the pine nuts to be put in whole afterward. I was afraid that the basil might be bitter, having gone to flower, but this was actually the smoothest pesto I've eaten. It was actually much less bitter than, say, the fancy pesto you can buy at the store. We will definitely make this again.
After dinner we went and saw "The Music Man" at the Ohio Theater as part of their summer movie series. Robert Preston, Shirly Jones - Ronny Howard and Hermione Gingold! And, of course, the Buffalo Bills. The one thing I don't really like about the movie is that they replace "My White Knight" - which is the counterpoint to "The Sadder But Wiser Girl" (which is one of the things that makes this musical SHEER GENIUS). It is common practice to replace one of the songs when you translate a broadway musical to screen though - some technicality about academy awards. The song it is replaced with is "Being in Love" which is just not as good - but I realized last night that it is the counterpoint to "Gary Indiana"! This makes me inestimably happy. And they maintain the bridge, which is the best part of either song anyway:
All I want is a clean man
All I want is an modest man
A quiet man, a gentle man
A straightforward and honest man
To sit with me
In a cottage somewhere in the state of Iowa
And I would like him to be
More interested in me
Than he is in himself
And more interested in us than in me
And...if occasionally he'd ponder
What makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great
Him I could love till I die
"The Music Man" is, without a doubt, the greatest musical ever written. One of the reasons is the musical sophistication. Nearly every song (that has music) in the show is a counterpoint to some other song in the show. Some of this is made explicit, in other cases it is not. The ones I know of are:
76 Trombones - Goodnight, my Someone
Pick a Little, Talk a Little - Goodnight, Ladies
Will I ever tell you - Lida Rose
Sadder but Wiser Girl - My White Night
[Gary Indiana - Being in Love]
It also contains some of the best love songs ever written. "Till there was you", "Sin in Sincere", and "It's You" all qualify in my book. It also manages to work the word carrion into a (nevertheless successful!) poem of seduction. When I needed to write a Love Story (and had no idea how to do it, not being terribly interested in such things at the time) the places I went for inspiration were this musical and HMS Pinafore ("God of Love and God of Reason" is a vastly underappreciated song).
Admittedly, lots of musicals have very good love songs. But none of those has ever been covered by the Beatles. Just sayin.
Meredith Willson is also a true rhythmic genius. "Rock Island" (the opening song in the show) should be taught in theory classes. I can only imagine how difficult that song must be to perform. It is a song entirely based on rhythm which accelerates and decelerates with the motion of the train. And there is just really wonderful conosnant sense, I suppose I should say. The "yessss sssssir"s at the end are one of the finest examples of immitating train sounds in all of music. But beyond that, most of the title character's songs are rhythmic sprachlied (Harold Hill is not a singing part - just like Henry Higgins and Nathan Detroit). And "Gary Indiana" is an exercise in prosodics. Can you imagine Frank Sinatra trying to cover "Trouble"? I'm glad I can't - it's taken long enough to get his rendition of "It's not easy, bein' green" out of my head.
"The Music Man" is one of only three (maybe four) major musicals where the book, the lyrics, and the music were all written by the same person. The others are "The Rocky Horror Show" and a lesser-known work by Frank Loesser (who is better known for "Guys and Dolls.") This is not meant as an insult to great teams like Gilbert & Sullivan, Rogers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Lowe, or the immortal Howard Ashman & Alan Menken - but its rarity makes it noteworthy. (For whatever reason, Meredith Willson is also one of only a handful of great musical writers who wasn't Jewish - the weird tidbits you pick up when you take a class from Tom Lehrer).
Moreover, "The Music Man" is a wholly original story. I haven't seen many musicals that were. Everything else I personally have seen I either don't know ("Sweet Charity" and "42nd St") or I know that it wasn't. *thinking* Okay, I'm pretty sure "Showboat" is original, but that's the only one. Not a condemnation by any means, but certainly yet another reason why "The Music Man" is so impressive. Meredith Willson's second best known musical, "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," is of course not an original story. But Kudos to him for making that woman into a musical. I should really see it. And kudos to him for writing a musical about the little spastic kid, even if nobody has ever heard of it and it was probably terrible (his third best known musical - which is to say, not at all). Interesting bit of trivia - the character of Winthrop was originally little spastic kid, but he got replaced by little lisping kid from the Wells Fargo Wagon song at the last minute because they couldn't make it work - and that scene was already awesome. (It actually made me cry this time around. Seriously.)
Meredith Willson also gets points for the word "Shipoopi" which has now stumped generations of etymologists. Plus, it's a good song - the CLASSIC 11 o'clock song. And he manages to tie the musical scale into doe-si-doe. Also, I like the sentiment of the song a lot - and the line "head on the clouds, feet on the ground!" And, though it expresses perhaps the opposite sentiment, this line from "Sadder but Wiser Girl" :
I hope
And I pray
For Hester to win just one more A!
Although I'm always a bit distressed that they're singning that song in front of Amaryllis - but then, I didn't get it until highschool, so why should she? Plus, Amaryllis really is a horrible little child. That's one of the things that makes the musical so endearing - the kids really act like wretched little kids. Not like deadpan snarkers, as is so often the case these days. Winthrop is possibly the most important character in the show, even though it is in no way, shape, or form, about him. And Ron Howard really did use to be cute.
Jon put forth that The Buffalo Bills steal the show. I disagree - Hermione Gingold (as Eulalie McKecknie Shin) steals the show. Yeah.
On the other hand, what other musical has its very own wandering Barbershop Quartet? And I really need to just throw this line out there:
"Aw kid, I always think there's a band."
But anyway, yeah. This is the greatest musical ever written, or that will ever be written. Do not argue with me, because your opinion is Wrong. You are all Wrong on the Internet.
Today: My appeal was rejected by the Graduate Studies Committee. Time to bump it up to the Graduate School. *sigh.*
Saturday: We went to More Different Steve's birthday party. We got him Red Dead Redemption for PS3 - which meant hanging out in Gamestop a lot in the morning. Joel-Henry picked up something called Two Worlds for pretty cheap, which looks like an Oblivion clone with really terrible voice acting. It might have potential though - we haven't gotten far enough into it to be able to tell yet. But it has been fun listening to Joel-Henry scream every few minutes "Holy crap I'm being attacked by bears! Everything's worse with bears!!"
Steve's party was good fun too. We played Bocce (I lost), didn't get too bitten up by mosquitos, and I mistook the drink name Venetian Sunset for Venusian Sunspot. Susan made amazing risotto with a balsamic glaze on the side, and we grilled shrimp and scallops and various mediterranean vegetables. Susan and I have way too much fun being mediterranean together...
Yesterday: We made pesto from the basil we had stolen from Steve and Ali. Our friends are under the mistaken impression that once basil blooms, it can't be eaten. So we picked a bunch of it saturday morning and turned it into pesto. It was the best pesto ever. We followed the Moosewood recipe (except that we had to add a lot of extra oil to get it to blend properly) and we held out half of the pine nuts to be put in whole afterward. I was afraid that the basil might be bitter, having gone to flower, but this was actually the smoothest pesto I've eaten. It was actually much less bitter than, say, the fancy pesto you can buy at the store. We will definitely make this again.
After dinner we went and saw "The Music Man" at the Ohio Theater as part of their summer movie series. Robert Preston, Shirly Jones - Ronny Howard and Hermione Gingold! And, of course, the Buffalo Bills. The one thing I don't really like about the movie is that they replace "My White Knight" - which is the counterpoint to "The Sadder But Wiser Girl" (which is one of the things that makes this musical SHEER GENIUS). It is common practice to replace one of the songs when you translate a broadway musical to screen though - some technicality about academy awards. The song it is replaced with is "Being in Love" which is just not as good - but I realized last night that it is the counterpoint to "Gary Indiana"! This makes me inestimably happy. And they maintain the bridge, which is the best part of either song anyway:
All I want is a clean man
All I want is an modest man
A quiet man, a gentle man
A straightforward and honest man
To sit with me
In a cottage somewhere in the state of Iowa
And I would like him to be
More interested in me
Than he is in himself
And more interested in us than in me
And...if occasionally he'd ponder
What makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great
Him I could love till I die
"The Music Man" is, without a doubt, the greatest musical ever written. One of the reasons is the musical sophistication. Nearly every song (that has music) in the show is a counterpoint to some other song in the show. Some of this is made explicit, in other cases it is not. The ones I know of are:
76 Trombones - Goodnight, my Someone
Pick a Little, Talk a Little - Goodnight, Ladies
Will I ever tell you - Lida Rose
Sadder but Wiser Girl - My White Night
[Gary Indiana - Being in Love]
It also contains some of the best love songs ever written. "Till there was you", "Sin in Sincere", and "It's You" all qualify in my book. It also manages to work the word carrion into a (nevertheless successful!) poem of seduction. When I needed to write a Love Story (and had no idea how to do it, not being terribly interested in such things at the time) the places I went for inspiration were this musical and HMS Pinafore ("God of Love and God of Reason" is a vastly underappreciated song).
Admittedly, lots of musicals have very good love songs. But none of those has ever been covered by the Beatles. Just sayin.
Meredith Willson is also a true rhythmic genius. "Rock Island" (the opening song in the show) should be taught in theory classes. I can only imagine how difficult that song must be to perform. It is a song entirely based on rhythm which accelerates and decelerates with the motion of the train. And there is just really wonderful conosnant sense, I suppose I should say. The "yessss sssssir"s at the end are one of the finest examples of immitating train sounds in all of music. But beyond that, most of the title character's songs are rhythmic sprachlied (Harold Hill is not a singing part - just like Henry Higgins and Nathan Detroit). And "Gary Indiana" is an exercise in prosodics. Can you imagine Frank Sinatra trying to cover "Trouble"? I'm glad I can't - it's taken long enough to get his rendition of "It's not easy, bein' green" out of my head.
"The Music Man" is one of only three (maybe four) major musicals where the book, the lyrics, and the music were all written by the same person. The others are "The Rocky Horror Show" and a lesser-known work by Frank Loesser (who is better known for "Guys and Dolls.") This is not meant as an insult to great teams like Gilbert & Sullivan, Rogers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Lowe, or the immortal Howard Ashman & Alan Menken - but its rarity makes it noteworthy. (For whatever reason, Meredith Willson is also one of only a handful of great musical writers who wasn't Jewish - the weird tidbits you pick up when you take a class from Tom Lehrer).
Moreover, "The Music Man" is a wholly original story. I haven't seen many musicals that were. Everything else I personally have seen I either don't know ("Sweet Charity" and "42nd St") or I know that it wasn't. *thinking* Okay, I'm pretty sure "Showboat" is original, but that's the only one. Not a condemnation by any means, but certainly yet another reason why "The Music Man" is so impressive. Meredith Willson's second best known musical, "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," is of course not an original story. But Kudos to him for making that woman into a musical. I should really see it. And kudos to him for writing a musical about the little spastic kid, even if nobody has ever heard of it and it was probably terrible (his third best known musical - which is to say, not at all). Interesting bit of trivia - the character of Winthrop was originally little spastic kid, but he got replaced by little lisping kid from the Wells Fargo Wagon song at the last minute because they couldn't make it work - and that scene was already awesome. (It actually made me cry this time around. Seriously.)
Meredith Willson also gets points for the word "Shipoopi" which has now stumped generations of etymologists. Plus, it's a good song - the CLASSIC 11 o'clock song. And he manages to tie the musical scale into doe-si-doe. Also, I like the sentiment of the song a lot - and the line "head on the clouds, feet on the ground!" And, though it expresses perhaps the opposite sentiment, this line from "Sadder but Wiser Girl" :
I hope
And I pray
For Hester to win just one more A!
Although I'm always a bit distressed that they're singning that song in front of Amaryllis - but then, I didn't get it until highschool, so why should she? Plus, Amaryllis really is a horrible little child. That's one of the things that makes the musical so endearing - the kids really act like wretched little kids. Not like deadpan snarkers, as is so often the case these days. Winthrop is possibly the most important character in the show, even though it is in no way, shape, or form, about him. And Ron Howard really did use to be cute.
Jon put forth that The Buffalo Bills steal the show. I disagree - Hermione Gingold (as Eulalie McKecknie Shin) steals the show. Yeah.
On the other hand, what other musical has its very own wandering Barbershop Quartet? And I really need to just throw this line out there:
"Aw kid, I always think there's a band."
But anyway, yeah. This is the greatest musical ever written, or that will ever be written. Do not argue with me, because your opinion is Wrong. You are all Wrong on the Internet.
Today: My appeal was rejected by the Graduate Studies Committee. Time to bump it up to the Graduate School. *sigh.*