rl stuff! theater!
I have not posted lately because invader has been here! Fun times. We have wandered around town and marathoned Toward the Terra (Neon Genesis Evangelion is next, oh god). Yesterday, we went into the city to see an off-Broadway musical called Bloodsong of Love: The Rock'n'Roll Spaghetti Western.
More on wandering around town: I discovered that the local comic book shop has really cleaned up its act. It was a mess of boxes last time I was in there, but now it's fairly organized...except for the row of fifty-cent back issues boxes, which I will need to go through in detail at some point and try not to spend my life's savings on. They have a ton of good stuff in there--lots of old Legion of Super Heroes back issues, Impulse back issues, some manga issues, all sorts of X-stuff which of course I don't know how to categorize because I am a DC girl...goddammit, I have too much to read to start picking up more comics. But I'm doing it anyway.
More on the musical: For something with such a whacked-out premise, it was pretty impressive! Maybe most importantly, as the Talking Broadway review says, it's almost entirely free of the oh-so-edgy hipster irony that characterizes so much of the genuinely new material in musical theater today. Sure, there's fourth-wall-breaking and anachronisms aplenty, but by and large the show embraces its own over-the-top ridiculousness and stupid melodrama. It feels like a proper fusion of the silly sentimentality of the old Broadway and the out-there wackiness of the new. Which isn't to say it's perfect--it has some rough edges and it definitely would work better in a bigger theater--but it's a sight better than a lot of what makes it to Broadway these days.
More on wandering around town: I discovered that the local comic book shop has really cleaned up its act. It was a mess of boxes last time I was in there, but now it's fairly organized...except for the row of fifty-cent back issues boxes, which I will need to go through in detail at some point and try not to spend my life's savings on. They have a ton of good stuff in there--lots of old Legion of Super Heroes back issues, Impulse back issues, some manga issues, all sorts of X-stuff which of course I don't know how to categorize because I am a DC girl...goddammit, I have too much to read to start picking up more comics. But I'm doing it anyway.
More on the musical: For something with such a whacked-out premise, it was pretty impressive! Maybe most importantly, as the Talking Broadway review says, it's almost entirely free of the oh-so-edgy hipster irony that characterizes so much of the genuinely new material in musical theater today. Sure, there's fourth-wall-breaking and anachronisms aplenty, but by and large the show embraces its own over-the-top ridiculousness and stupid melodrama. It feels like a proper fusion of the silly sentimentality of the old Broadway and the out-there wackiness of the new. Which isn't to say it's perfect--it has some rough edges and it definitely would work better in a bigger theater--but it's a sight better than a lot of what makes it to Broadway these days.