Up 2 Late

Took a long time to write my review on FB of the show I saw tonight. I'll post it here when I finish this.

Busy day today. Walked over to the CU with all the necessary paperwork and tried to open a Living Trust account in which to park the $$ my folks left behind, which are now sitting idle at B of A. They refused. Apparently, a credit union cannot open a Living Trust account if none of the original owners of the trust are still living.

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Went from there to Santa Clara Players' 50th birthday party, which was supposed to be from 11 till 3, but when I got there at 11:30 nobody was there except one person minding the food in the historical house a few doors from the theater. A walk to the theater showed a closed door, and I heard people reading lines and some audience reaction. They had started a show by the board members at 11, everyone was in there. I waited till it was over, chatted with a few old friends, was somewhat surprised by how many people I knew did not seem to notice me.

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Then there was shopping to be done. Office Max for envelopes to mail the calendars, OSH for rollers, wheels and sliders for some of the heavy stuff in the closets. Also found a nice plastic shelf thing which will do well for my T-shirts. Then to Target for a clock radio. Found exactly what I was looking for in the form of a Memorex 7101 and also got a welcome mat and a set of coat hooks. Then home, cuddle time with the cats and flipping between the Cal-UCLA game and the Stanford-USC game. Got disgusted with both, and turned the TV off. Set up the rack, and the radio. The radio is a piece of crap - it did not get any FM stations at all, no matter what I did with the antenna, and hardly received any of the stronger AM stations. I'll probably return it.

Then off to see Snoopy at Sunnyvale Players. Two people I know are in it, plus the choreographer, stage hand and in a roundabout way, the director. The roundabout way went like this: a few months ago I went to try out for Oliver and it turned out to be a combined audition with 1940's Radio Hour. The director of the latter show wanted to cast me, but since I had the wedding to go to on tech weekend, that ruled me out. When I went online to see who was cast, the show had been changed to Snoopy. After tonight's show the director told me the producers had not managed to come up with a big band to put on stage, so he suggested a change of show to something with a smaller cast, one which he was familiar with.

Back home, fed the cats ( I took lironess' advice have had success with a more manual approach to liquefying the canned food) and started being online for way too long.

Plans for tomorrow:
See a movie and coffee klatch with Janice.
Continue unpacking (the bedroom will be the main target)
Maybe watch some football.

Snoopy Review

From FB:
Snoopy at Sunnyvale Community Players

I'm always nit picky when I write about shows I've seen, so let me start off by saying see this show!

It runs Thursdays thru Sundays thru November 20 at the Sunnyvale Theater. 550 E. Remington.

 Snoopy is, of course, meant to be a sequel to You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown. IMHO it fails resoundingly at this, and not all of that is bad news. Some of it is, though: They left out Schroeder. Linus is made into an intellectual (which is Schroeder's job). Snoopy's personality has been toned down considerably. Here and there the lyrics aren't quite right.

 The good news: Peppermint Patty and Sally have much more significant parts, Charlie Brown is even more of a loser than he was before, Lucy is still Lucy.

 And the "I'm not sure if it is good or bad" news: The music is much more complex. The good part of that is the music is more fun and challenging for the cast, and more fun for a musically aware adult audience,  the bad part , I think, is it detracts from the simplicity of the Peanuts look & feel and makes it harder for the children in the audience to follow.

 The cast is brilliant. Matt Tipton as Charlie Brown looks like he was lifted from the comic strip whole. Kaeli Quick made me fall in love with Peppermint Patty.  Jessica Wright's Sally was just the right blend of childlike innocence and pure ignorance. Lucy was played by Carli Honfi with a wonderful touch for adding insult to injury - with a laugh and a song and a smile. Andrew Stuart played the new Linus well enough, but I never did get over the fact that most of his words should have been Schroeder's. Stacia Stuart was perhaps a bit too tall for Woodstock, but she added a lot to the nearly silent role with her balletic genius.

 And we come to the title role, played by Aaron Weisberg. I am torn. I'm not sure if the part was in the wrong key for him, if he had a cold, or something else because I did not think his singing was quite up there with the rest of the cast. He had lots and lots of moves from the Joe Cool repertoire, but all his choreography was low key. Soft shoe-like tempos, nothing even approaching "Suppertime" or "The Red Baron" from You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown. It did not help that his big numbers, "The Great Writer" and "The Big Bow-Wow" fell flat for me - I just didn't like the material. Probably still wouldn't have liked it if it was performed by the original Broadway Snoopy.

 The choreography (by Jennifer Vaillancourt) is so good I even liked the dancing in the numbers I didn't like. Costumes (by Sally Rogers) were simple, charming, and as close to perfect as you can get for a bunch of adults playing children.  Director Ted Kopulos turned out a well-rehearsed show with a cast who obviously love working together. There were too many bits of staging which took me by surprise, made me smile and/or made me wonder "how did he do that?" to list.

 The set, by Master Carpenter Richard Cartwright and artist Jennifer Smith is simple, and true to the comic strip. The very small orchestra (I only heard keyboards and some percussion) was buried deep down in the pit, did their job and did not drown out the un-miked actors.

 Speaking of which, this is the first show I have ever been to in community theater where I was able to understand every word of every song sung by every cast member. Well, until they got to the lightning-fast "Don't Be Anything Less Than Everything You Can Be", but that was because the song itself is too busy, and I can't listen as fast as they could sing.

 So, the songs. Mostly forgettable. "Where Did That Little Dog Go?", a solo by Charlie Brown, was both poignant and out of place. "Edgar Allan Poe" is a cheap substitute for "Book Report". Peppermint Patty's "Hurry Up Face", about wishing her face would grow to make he nose look smaller,  is cute, but in the comic strip she has a cute little nose, so the song didn't work for me on that account.  In the comic, Patty refers to Snoopy as the kid with the big nose. Her "Poor Sweet Baby" number near the end of the show is completely out of character as well, but it is sweet and sung superbly, and the stinger at the end almost redeems it. This show's answer to "Happiness" is a tune called "Just One Person", which probably normally rates half a hankie, two when done by this cast with accompanying choreography and staging.

 Bottom line for me is the material does not hold a candle to You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, but this production is well worth seeing for the sheer talent.

 http://sunnyvaleplayers.org/snoopy

Pussyfooting

Made a lot of progress in breaking down some of the moving boxes which had been only partially emptied. There are lots of T-shirts and beach towels on the bed right now, but several boxes are no longer taking up floor space. Pulled a box out of the bedroom closet which was marked "long playing records" which belonged in the kitchen-side closet. Opened it up and there were also 78s, 45s and some stuff from on top of the fridge. I wondered where my lunch box had gotten to.

Calendars are in envelopes, I just need to stick mailing labels on them and find time to make a PO run. Some are going overseas, they need customs forms. Bother. I will have two at BASFA, one to demo and one sealed to auction off. If there is enough demand I'll auction them both. Debating whether to go in costume. Will also have some other items to auction.

Watched some football, Pumpkin and Domino took turns sitting on my arm. At a couple of points they had an arm each for a while. I tried an experiment, putting the dry food into the blender with a lot of water. They didn't touch it all day. They did nibble at the watered down canned food. Tonight's experiment is watered down higher carb cat food vs. turkey gravy. Will see in the morning which one wins. Pumpkin thought my pasta shells & cheese looked mighty tasty, but I doubt if he could handle that yet.

Met Janice at the movies to see Puss N Boots. It was somewhat entertaining, but I fell asleep twice, and many of the kids lost interest halfway through. Lip sync was horribly out of whack during much of the Jack and Jill closeups. There's no excuse for that in an animation. We saw it in 2D because Janice is allergic to 3D, and it was clear that some scenes needed the 3D. I thought the plot was rambling, pretty stupid, and made no sense in the context of the Shrek movies. I always enjoy Bandaras' delivery, Hyak was pretty good too, though her side of the script was often inane. There is no Easter Egg. The closing credits are better than average, but they list EVERYONE at Dreamworks, not worth hanging around for. Could be worth matinée in 3D if they didn't charge extra.

We caught up on the past 3 weeks, she's going to be off skydiving next Sunday so we probably won't get together till 2 weeks from now.

Made a stop at Lucky's on the way home. Somehow managed to spend >$100. A big chunk of that was for the carpet cleaner solution. And cheese.

Tivo-ed the 49ers game, and was less than thrilled with the play, though I won't argue with the final result. IMHO they still need a quarterback.

Ran the carpet cleaner (I have this mini el cheapo one for small jobs) and managed to lighten the smudges the movers left on the carpet by the front door. Also cleaned up a hairball Pumpkin left in front of the recliner.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Home
BASFA