You say that love is just a lie, but I can tell that you are lying.
So, it's Valentine's Day. Love is in the air. And by "love," I mean a messy, sloshy, unpredictable, and uncomfortable pain in the ass that has kept me from being productive today. Which, if you think about it, is a lot like love anyway.
I write about this cooped up in my apartment, where I have been all day. Not even my pinky nail has ventured outside. This is mostly because my company was generous enough to give us a two-hour delay this morning, but allowing that time to pass actually let the roads get worse, not better, so I called it in. I'm not looking forward to saving poor Lando from the cold, cruel inches he's received. Needless to say, I don’t love snow.
Valentine's Day Eve, then, turned out to be more productive, and also an appropriate time to go see a romance-themed musical that I can't even bear to mention the title of for fear that someone from the production will unearth this post about it. For starters, the play itself utterly average at best (I knew I was in trouble when the press release called it "wet-your-pants funny." I think, by definition, if something is described as "wet-your-pants funny," it's guaranteed not to be). Not only that, it was uncomfortably unfunny, since there were only two other people in the audience, so with every joke the absence of laughter was actually audible. I only bring it up to mention the ticket price. Fifty dollars! A fifty-dollar ticket price highlights a lot of what I find wrong with theater right now. A two-second version of my state-of-theater rant: High prices (even for schlock) means people can't see a lot of theater, so many plays compete for a small available audience. That means theaters aren't encouraged to take risks, which breeds a culture of producing safe plays (Mary Poppins), done-to-death revivals (Les Miserables), and theater-ified extensions of already popular brands (Hairspray). Not that any one of those shows is particularly bad, but as a whole I think innovation in theater is discouraged rather than encouraged.
Which is also not to say that good theater is impossible to find right now. Jesse and I went last week to see In the Heights because the Wesleyan Alumni Association sponsored an event with a half-price admission and a post-show Q&A. Why? Because someone who graduated only one year before me at Wesleyan (and who I didn't really know at all) wrote and stars in the damn thing. Way to make me feel unaccomplished, Lin-Manuel Miranda! Anyway, regarding the play, I can honestly say that I loved it. The music was really fresh, it was fun and uplifting without being campy, and Lin-Manuel actually has a tremendous stage presence and charisma. I don't see a ton of plays each year-again, the prices are too steep-but this is definitely up there with the best I've seen since graduating college, so I'd definitely recommend trying to see it if musical theater is your bag. (For a second opinion, the New York Times review is actually pretty fair.)
I didn't mean to make this all about theater. I meant to make it about Valentine's Day. Jesse and I don't really celebrate it. After our anniversary (August), his birthday (September), Christmas (December), and my birthday (January), we're pretty much sick of each other by February 1. So each Valentine's Day, we just take each other to dinner and a movie. (Our pet name for Valentine's Day is "the weekend.")
This year, I broke protocol a little and made him a mix.
The tracklist:
The Magnetic Fields - When My Boy Walks Down the Street
The Shins - Turn on Me
The Raveonettes - Love Can Destroy Everything
Modest Mouse - Dashboard*
The Essex Green - This Isn't Farmlife
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth
The Dresden Dolls - Shores of California
Mike Viola and the Candy Butchers - Falling into Place
Okkervil River - Black**
Tom Waits - Day After Tomorrow***
The Weakerthans - Aside
Moxy Fruvous - Earthquakes!
The Decemberists - Sons & Daughters
Band of Horses -The Great Salt Lake
Yo La Tengo - Mr. Tough
Camper Van Beethoven - That Gum You Like Is Back in Style
Matt Turk - Bette Says****
The Arcade Fire - Black Mirror
Alphaville - Forever Young*****
*I've said it before, but this song is amazing and everyone should go to the Hype Machine and get it.
**This is from the CD game, and it's my absolute favorite from that batch of CDs, so way to go to whoever put that on their mix.
***Saddest. Song. Ever.
****This is a song from a local-to-Westchester record label, which I think is awesome because, dude, a local-to-Westchester record label!
*****Jesse knows this song, but he doesn't recognize from the first note as soon as it comes on the radio. He needs to be cured of that.
Even then, it's not very Valentine's-related. I cut the lovey-dovey stuff after the first three tracks, and one of those three songs has the word "destroy" in the title. I'll never win the award for schmoopiest.
I'm going to end this already-too-long post with one last love story. It's not about me, though. It's about Rob. You might not have met Rob yet. He's Jesse's friend from high school. I met him the first time before a Radiohead concert. He stayed over at my house, and my mom and sister got into a huge screaming fight about nothing while he was visiting. It was totally embarrassing for me, but he still talks to me and occasionally lets me pet his cat. So you can tell he's a good kid.
Anyway, Rob loves comics. A lot. As such, he's entered a contest to be the official podcaster of the 2007 New York Comicon. To enter, he had to create a YouTube video explaining why he should be the chosen one. He tells me that the decision isn't open to American Idol-style voting, but I think that's bunk. Let's vote for Rob with our eyes, people. Give his YouTube video a little love. Watch it. (Benefits of watching includes getting to see a goofy picture of me, hear a melodious testimonial from Jesse, and catch a glimpse of the cat that I sometimes get to pet.) Watch it twice. Leave a comment or a rating. Show those Comicon nerds that he's much more personable than the kid who does funny voices.