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I thought I'd updated since the last time I did, but evidently I was dreaming or hallucinating it. It seems really sad to me to be dreaming of blogging. Oh well, what can you do...
So, Thanksgiving was loads of fun. While I was home, I took full advantage of northern New Jersey's most positive aspect: its proximity to NYC. Went to see Rent for the fourth time the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It wasn't as good as the first two times (starring the original cast), and it took a few songs for the actors to get warmed up, but it was great to see it again, after a few years now. Oh, and *Nsync's Joey Fatone plays Mark now. He was pretty funny, and he's got a good stage presence. And in "La Vie Boheme," when he sang the line "to every passing fad," he did a little *Nsync arm-pumping dance move. I was rolling. The ability for self-mockery is lost on so many of these fricking actors and singers... but he impressed me.
I went shopping on Fifth Ave with my mom (my theatre buddy), to kill time before the show. I tried very hard to find a $500 polo shirt in Brooks Brothers, but the most expensive one was only about $280, I think. I imagine one must exist somewhere out there. I tried on every scarf from that Gap commercial, too, but I still kinda don't want to be the "guy walking down the street wearing that Gap scarf." I may buy one at the mall tomorrow. They're really really comfortable and warm.
Black Friday 2K2 was excellent. Went to the mall as usual, but I brought my leather-bound journal and fountain pen with me, and wrote a poem as I walked around. Very cool.
Saturday, I was back in the City, this time to see Baz Luhrmann's update of Puccini's La Boheme, now set in 1957, still in France, still sung in Italian, with a much freer and common-tongued supertitle translation. I'd really recommend you see the untouched original first, because seeing this one first is like being newly exposed to Shakespeare with Luhrmann's Romeo+Juliet movie. Sure, the lines are the same, but... you know. Just wouldn't be right.
They cast young singers for this production, which was an incredibe idea, for two reasons. First, the audience gets to hear nice, young, strong voices, unweathered by years of performance. Second, young opera singers are know to get miniscule amounts of play, so good credits for them to have relatively early on in their careers.
You may not understand the insanity of seeing these two productions merely two days apart if you didn't know that Rent is an adaptation of La Boheme. So, the same basic story in both, right down to character names, two days apart. La Boheme seemed to be shorter than when I'd seen the original version, but that may have had something to do with having gone through the motions only a couple days before. I'll be seeing Man of La Mancha over the winter break, but it didn't get a good review yesterday in the Times... too bad.
Now, fast forward a week, as absolutely nothing has happened in between, except for Mark's (my roommate) birthday. Tomorrow, I'm going to the mall in the morning, then going to this early dinner dual belated-birthday party for Mark and Pinzler, then going down to DC to see Carmel and watch anime all night long, continuing on into Sunday, then driving back in the afternoon/evening, and seeing an Aimee Mann concert in Towson that night. It's all very exciting.
And next weekend, I'll be attending a 41.5 hour film fest/party. These three weekends are my spending habits in a nutshell, I think. Broadway, malls, anime, concerts, and lots and lots of movies. And then it's NJ, then Florida, then NJ for New Year's, then Hawaii, then back to school. Rockin'.
Oo! Almost forgot... I bought one of those 3D holofoil Matrix Reloaded posters today. Very very cool! I wonder how long it'll take to ship from Germany...
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