Could Be...

There is a song early on in West Side Story, sung by Tony before he even meets Maria.  The song "Something's Coming" describes the feeling he has that something major is about to happen.

It's only just out of reach, down the block, on a beach, under a tree.
I got a feeling there's a miracle due, gonna come true, coming to me!

The song is stuck in my head today.  See, I've got butterflies in my stomach.  I have no idea why - it could be one of a half-dozen different things racing through my head, or maybe it's just heartburn from breakfast!  But if it's heartburn, it's the most optimistic heartburn I can remember.  I'm genuinely happy for the first time in a while, and I really do feel like I'm on the verge of... I don't know.

However, I can't give myself over completely to this unsubstantiated wonder.  See, there was another movie that featured this song...


(TERRIBLE quality video and audio, and no clue what the graphic in the middle of the screen is doing there.  Skip to 1:10 and you'll get the idea.)

(also, slightly off-topic: this is another example of the type of driving I tend to see from men driving BMWs)

So, I don't know what is coming.  It could be something wonderful and amazing and unexpected... or it could be a bus.  For now, I'll accept the moderate insomnia and randomly sweaty palms and feet and hope for the best.  And until the bus hits me, I'm going to keep smiling and enjoy the ride!

0% Normal, 100% Jamie

This morning I took a jog around the neighborhood, rather than run on the treadmill at the gym. This allows me to sleep for an extra 45 minutes and be a little less self-conscious about whatever random workout clothes I put on (dark bra + light shirt is much less of a problem outdoors before sunrise). Scott was nice enough to come out with me today, riding his bike (on the sidewalk… tsk tsk) behind me. That meant I could go down dark and shady paths because his bike has a headlight and I’m less likely to be abducted/raped/murdered when he’s with me.

I’ve noticed pretty much since I started running that I have an affliction of sorts caused by years of show choir and marching band: It is incredibly difficult for me to run or walk to music without matching my footsteps to the beat. It’s even harder to ignore the beat if it’s a song I’ve ever performed… and boy howdy that covers a lot of music! If the song is too fast, I find myself taking shorter steps. Too slow? I lengthen my stride and keep to the beat. Also, I have some smallish quirks relating to certain songs. For example, when “Barbie Girl” comes on, I tend to swing my ponytail more and bob my head left and right.

About 20 minutes into this morning’s run, “Greased Lightning” came bopping in through my headphones, and the music... moved me. That’s right, I did the arm motions to the song’s chorus every time through the song. Now, we were on a stretch of road where there were no dog walkers or drivers. It’s unlikely that I would have done the same thing if I was aware of anyone else. During the 10-miler when the song came on, I did the hand motions to “greased lightnin’…go greased lightnin’” but not the full-blown hand-arm combo. (those particular hand motions, by the way, are good for relieving dehydration-related sausage fingers)

(the chorus starts at 0:31)

It’s also unlikely I would have done the same thing if Scott hadn’t been with me. Occasionally during my longer training runs in the summer, I would take an extended walk break and start belting out a few lines of “Rainbow Connection,” as interpreted by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Those little performance breaks have become my way of saying “I know you’re there…thanks for not ditching me!”

So there you have it. If you’re ever in my neighborhood before dawn and see me jogging, just hang back a few yards and wait for the show. You never know what you might get!

Hooray! The '10-'11 Straz Season Has Started!!

If you're lucky, perhaps tomorrow there will be a review...

To the Theater!

The show got two negative-ish local reviews, but I'm still so excited to see it. Love the music, loved the movie, have no idea what to expect live. Of course, I think Scott just wants to see this one song...

Spot the WICKED Fan!

We're not even going to discuss how long it took me to do this. And really, I'm sure Janette is sitting there right now thinking I ruined a perfectly nice bird picture just to make the point that I'M GOING TO SEE WICKED TONIGHT AND I'M SO EXCITED I CAN HARDLY SIT STILL! (ok, the not sitting still part might also have to do with the Coke I have consumed this morning)

Anyway, about the birds. I thought these guys were cattle egret (egrets?), but now I'm not so sure. There were a whopping 11 of them out back today, in two separate groups. Whenever I see them, they are in the grass and not on the water, which fits the cattle egret foraging, but there's no red wash over the bill and no fancy plumage on the top of their heads. Any guesses? Here's one more picture, with a great egret for comparison:

Off to the Theater!

A few months ago when the touring schedule for Mary Poppins was announced, Scott and I batted around the idea of making a weekend trip (similar to the Atlanta trip) to Chicago or St. Louis to see the show and do some touristy stuff. When I did some pricing online, I found that either of those trips probably would have cost around $1,000. For a weekend! I quickly put those plans away and we revisited the idea of flying up to NYC, camping out on Jenn's couch for a few nights, and going to see a show or two on Broadway. Ultimately though, Scott wants to DO New York when we go, not just run in and out. (never mind I've never spent more than 10 consecutive hours in the city! all we ever did in my youth was run in and out!)

Fast forward to two or three weeks ago. An e-mail appeared in my mailbox from the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center (TBPAC) advertising their 2009-2010 Broadway Series. Two things caught my eye right away: Wicked and Mary Poppins. In fact, they are calling it a "high-flying season." Scott and I were both really excited, but season tickets are expensive! We talked about it, put it off, talked about it some more, and finally decided to just go for it. We got tickets in the balcony, which will probably be better than the seats we've had for any previous show at that theater. And, though expensive, it's still less money than that trip to see MaPo would have cost.

Strangely enough, I now have plans more than a year from now, though I'm not sure of specific dates. Beginning in October, we'll be seeing In the Heights, Wonderland, South Pacific, Wicked, Godspell, Little House on the Prairie (the only one Scott has NO desire to see), Cirque Dreams Illumination, and Mary Poppins.

I can't wait! We've both seen Wicked before, and I saw a high school production of Godspell, but the rest are totally new to us. Hopefully a year from now we'll be renewing and not lamenting the waste of money!

(and a bonus came yesterday when I saw the line-up for Bob Carr's '09-'10 series. Phantom of the Opera is the only one I might go see...and in a venue that small it'll probably suck! They also have Xanadu, The Color Purple, and some other shows I can't remember off the top of my head)

Road Trip

Scott and I are home from our little over-nighter in Tampa. What's in Tampa? Why, Spamalot, of course! Wondering what you missed? No time for a review now, but I twittered while I was gone. Random thoughts, mostly pointless, mostly in traffic, but it'll tide you over for now.

(by the way, the show was awesome. I was quite pleasantly surprised... thought it would be stupid-silly, but it was amazing-silly)

One!

Open Letter to the Woman Sitting Orchestra Left, Row V, seat 19 in the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center Last Night:

Madam,

I did not pay $50 per ticket to see A Chorus Line to listen to you singing along. Yes, I'm sure you think you sound great in your car, but you're in your 60s. It's time to give up the dream.

To be fair, she only did it twice. And both times, the first time I heard a note come out of her mouth my head spun her direction so quickly I think I got whiplash!

Other than that (Mrs. Lincoln), the show was pretty good. The dancing was fabulous. Unfortunately, apparently there aren't that many triple threats out there doing tours. These were dancers who could sing, but they weren't fabulous singers. The only two stand-outs in the cast were the girls playing Cassie and Diana (Morales) and maybe Richie. He got the biggest applause in the curtain call, but I think that was because the whole audience was thinking "the black one! We recognize him!" Because once you put them all in gold sparkly outfits, they all look the same.

And once again, just like the other two times I saw the show, I was sad about who gets the job at the end. It's funny how I block that scene in my memory.

Our seats, aside from the human mockingbird to my left and the man with the carcass breath behind us, were really good. We were far back, but right next to the tech booth, so pretty well centered. Bob Carr is still a crappy theater, but it beats hauling tail to Tampa. I'm happy I went, and Scott didn't hate the show, so I guess that's two thumbs up!

Idina!

Last night was the Idina Menzel concert at House of Blues.

I can't make my mind break down the night into anything coherent, because it was just one big blur of fabulous. She did (I think) every song off of her new album, plus 2 songs from RENT and 2 songs from Wicked. Oh, and Roxanne. Hey - every concert needs a random cover, right?

Idina is fabulous beyond words, and her set was about 2 hours long. Sweet! I love the stuff off the new album (note to self: check BMG before buying anywhere else), but the most thrilling to me were the Broadway songs that she made famous in the first place. "No Day But Today" was totally surreal for me because I was on another stage singing a much less fabulous version just the day before. And I can't even describe what it was like to hear her do "Defying Gravity."

Hearing her do "For Good" is probably something I'll never forget. That song is really special to me for reasons that I'm not going to talk about here. But I had tears rolling down my cheeks hearing her sing it live. Wow. So of course, I went on YouTube to find a video from another concert date, and the one I found has crappy video and crappy audio. She was better last night. But here you go. The song starts around 3:11.



If she came back next week, I'd go again. For now, I guess I'll just have to buy the album and occasionally watch blurry, shaky, illegal YouTube videos to relive the memory.

Ring Tones

I was on the Sprint website this morning trying to upgrade Scott's text message plan (who knew 300 per month wouldn't be enough??) and instead came across an ad for a "free ringtone… just use this code." So I went browsing for ring tones.

This process is quite overwhelming to me. In general, I think that phones should RING. They shouldn't talk. They shouldn't sing. And they shouldn't play the Mexican Hat Dance. AND I can't believe there are about 4 zillion different ring tones out there to choose from.

In the end, I chose this one. Why the lame obscure song from The Wizard of Oz? I don't know! I guess because it made me laugh! And because they didn't have the guards singing "OREO COOKIES."

I still need to find a good call tone, but that will wait until another day. For now, I will just have to settle for being embarrassed every time my phone starts singing, "the wind began to switch… the house, to pitch… and suddenly the hinges started to unhitch… just then a witch, to satisfy an itch… went flying on her broomstick thumbing for a hitch." And I'm guessing my friends from Encore! would appreciate the humor as well.

ILLogic

First, AIDA was even better than I had imagined. I had a little qualm with the costuming and props (much like taking a Shakespeare play and dropping into L.A., I don't think that blue jeans and AK-47s really meshed well with Egypt), but was completely blown away by the performance. I cried through the second half of Act II. And the curtain calls. And in the car. Oh, and the music... it was superb. And our seats were third row dead center, which means we had a great view of Radames' spitting problem. (tee hee) There's a montage on the website that really emphasizes everything I loved (and hated) about the show.

So since we were going all the way down to Sarasota for a 2 pm show, I looked at the map and decided it wouldn't be more than a half hour out of our way to take a different route home and hit our favorite Brooksville eatery for dinner. Riiiight. I need to learn to look at mileage next time such a whim strikes me! Take a look at a map of today's voyage:


special thanks to Google maps

The magenta shows our route down - 27 to 4 to 75 to a bunch of dinky roads in Sarasota. It took about 2 hours to get there. The aqua shows our route home - dinky roads to 75 to 50 to Johnny Carino's to 50 to 27. My "logic" and partial justification for going to Brooksville for a meal was that we'd hit Lakeland at rush hour if we took I-4 home. What I failed to account for was that we would instead hit Tampa rush hour on I-75. oops! It took 2 hours for us to get from the theater to the restaurant! And poor Scott was worn out from all that driving and sitting (and crying).

I still think that dinner was worth it - we split an order of Prince Edward Island mussels, and added to the bread and salad, I barely ate 5 bites of my baked tortelloni (dinner for tomorrow! yay!).

And now I'm in a carb coma. Please excuse my while I try to stay awake through The Daily Show.

Feeling a Little Wicked

So... you may remember that two days ago, I vowed to get out of spend, spend, spend mode and shift gears into save, save, save mode.

Even before I made that ill-fated resolution (is it wrong to give up before the new year even starts?), Scott and I had already made plans to go see Wicked in Tampa for my birthday. In fact, one of my favorite Christmas presents was the Wicked soundtrack, which went into my CD player the next day and hasn't come out yet. (now ChristianMom, don't get all bent out of shape - it's just The Wizard of Oz from a different angle)

Yesterday, I was doing a little online news reading and I came across and article that Aida was playing for 2 nights only over in Melbourne. Aida is just about my favorite show of all time. Let me rephrase since I've never seen it: It's my favorite soundtrack of all time. In fact, in my last job one of the managers asked me to write a little bio about myself as a "who are the people in your neighborhood?" for the intranet site, and it started out with, "Jamie's dream job is to play Aida on Broadway, but since that's obviously not going to happen..." I was heartbroken that I wasn't going to be able to see it in Melbourne.

...until I went on the website for the tour and saw that they're playing a handful of smaller venues all around Florida the first two weeks of January. And I was able to get tickets for a Tuesday matinee (how strange - a matinee? on a Tuesday?) down in Sarasota IN TWO WEEKS! Not only that, but it must not be selling well. We got tickets in the 6th row dead center. I am over-the-moon excited.

Of course, Disney Theatricals sold the rights out, and it's been a little re-mastered by the current producers. For some reason, they've added modern costumes and some other weird touches. But for me, it's all about the music. There are a few clips on their website, and they sound good to me. Of course, no one could live up to Heather Headley. After all, she won a Tony for her performance.

So yes, I am feeling a little wicked about seeing two Broadway shows in one year. But it's been so long, and of all the shows on Earth, I can hardly think of two others I am just dying to see. And as for the money aspect? Well, we bought both sets of tickets in 2006, so I don't think we've technically broken the resolution.