Avenue Q

Very nice weather for a drive into the valley. Not much traffic, but way too many people on the freeway with the "I'll change lanes right in front of you then slow down" gene. There's no Starbucks downtown so I'm at the one in the megaplex series of shopping plazas off 580 on First St.

On the way up I listened to a new (to me) CD of a Broadway show called Avenue Q. Imagine Sesame Street has moved into the slums. The reason I got the CD is I heard a song on the Comcast show tunes channel named The More You Ruv Someone. It's sung by their "Japanese" female character, Christmas Eve,  who does that thing of reversing "r" and "l". The second line is pretty funny, and very true. The reason I put Japanese in quotes is, like most east coasters, the writers just bunch all Oriental nationalities together and call them either Chinese or Japanese.
( lyrics lyrics lyrics )

The other tune I wanted to hear is The Internet is for Porn which is hilarious, and also very true.

If You Were Gay is not as good as it could have been - imagine Bert singing it to Ernie. Gag me. Both the delivery and the lyrics fall short of their potential, but it's a start.

The show goes way overboard in it's "sex is okay" message. Gary Coleman singing You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love) starts out fine, but launches into a full-fledged spiritual, with Coleman doing the Tina Turner on Acid part. And they threw "Hell" in for no apparent reason. I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today is another gratuitous offering. Let's just say they did not capture the spirit of South Park the way they seemed to be hoping for.

However, there is one hidden gem which I have been playing over and over again. There's a Fine, Fine Line hits something inside me. It must just be the way the lyrics fit the tune, because it doesn't apply to anything in my past:
( lyrics behind the cut )

It's one of those songs I could use as an audition piece, if I can figure out how to sing it all the way through without crying.

On the whole the CD is worth the amazon.com bargain price, but the muppet voices are often annoying (the songs are more suited to real singers) and the show would work better for me done straight. This is a big compliment to the Sesame Street folks - society is now at the point where we can talk about things in the open which used to need to be hidden behind puppet masks.

Eye Candy

Passing the time while waiting for my laptop to finish its updates...

The clientèle here in Livermore Starbucks is different than my usual places in Mountain View. More families, and more young parents with not-very-young children. For instance, there is a mother-daughter duo right now ordering who are both solidly in the "I'd do her" category. Half an hour ago there was a couple with their daughter, mom and daughter both with "fitness trainer" written all over their tall, toned figures. Dad  was in better shape than me, but definitely not a personal trainer. More single older women, too.

Maybe it's because it's Sunday, but more folks are going for the grossly over-priced baked goods than at my usual haunts.

I also would have expected more than just myself on a laptop here.

Sunday Wrap-up

Stopped off at Long's for some munchies for the drive home, and found a nice wallet for cheap. Been looking for one for a couple of weeks. Went straight home and stayed there. Today was the day to get out the level and ruler and pencil and put my pictures up on the walls. Got that done, sat down to watch football and was annoyed by the reflection of the TV set in the glass on two of the lower-hanging pictures, so moved those to less annoying locations.

Tried calling my folks at half-time, got a strange single ring followed by a busy signal. Three times. Cell phone gave a straight busy signal. Same thing after the game. I doubt if they were on the phone for that long, more likely their phone connection was hit by the Seattle wind storms. Their internet access is dial-up, so if their phone is out, so is their email.

Finished the Naughty Marietta DVD editing, and that's now building an ISO file in the background from which I can make the DVD. Looks like that may be an all night process, it's been running for an hour and is only halfway through massaging the video file. Four more steps to go after that. Did a web search to identify the name of the first song in the movie, and discovered it was not in the Broadway play. There have been four iterations of the play on B'way, and they are very different from the movie. The first half hour of the movie, set in Paris, is new. So are the pirate scenes (on the high seas and in the Louisiana swamps).

Going to sleep early tonight.