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Lots to report from yesterday, but OCD requires I get dressed and to my work place. Long story short:

I am returning the Sprint phone today because I get no 4G signal anywhere, and no phone signal at work and mostly no signal at home. I like the EVO phone mostly, but it is 3D which is useless and they reason I got it is Sprint doesn't have a dual core 2D EVO. I had bought 3rd party extended batteries (50% more juice which fits in the same space as the OEM battery).  Can't return the phone with that in  it. I have a vivid memory of putting the OEM battery in the top drawer of my desk at work.

Last night after the play, I stopped by work, and found the extra battery for the Moto phone, but not the one for the EVO. I came home thinking maybe I had put the EVO battery on the night stand with the charger. But no. It's not in the apartment anywhere I can see.

So, in a few minutes I will be dressed and headed for work p0lace to look again.

Finian's Rainbow @ Saratoga SBMT

Saratoga drama Group two years ago had the gall to change their name to the grandiose South Bay Musical Theater. There were two excellent reasons for changing the name, but no good reason for the choice of SBMT. The good reasons were:( Read more... )

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Last night I went to see the final performance of Finian's Rainbow, which has some of the best music and most clever/odd lyrics of all time. Lyricist was Yip Harburg, whom you may know from The Wizard of Oz and the depression era classic  Brother, Can You Spare A Dime. The story is his too, it is horrible, and that's what killed this show on Broadway.

Almost everything about this production was superb. The backdrops were the most beautiful I have ever seen in a community theater production. They had life size trees built on stage, one of which was sturdy enough to climb and swing from. The lighting plot was overly complex, and there were a couple of burps, and a few WTF light changes, but even with a computerized board they did well. Audio was flawless, with most of the cast miked. No feedback ever, everyone was heard when they needed to be, and not when they were off stage.

And the orchestra. Wow. More than 20 people who blended in so well that I almost forgot they were there. In key, on tempo, fine intonation, and a conductor who was clear about what he wanted and communicated it to both the orchestra and cast.

The leading lady is why I went to see the show, she is more than amazing. A natural redhead, she fit the Irish woman image to a T. The fellow playing the male lead had an even stronger voice (I didn't think that was possible) and looked every bit the part modeled after a young Woody Guthrie. The fellow playing Finian I have known for a long time, and while he is a decent actor with a fine Irish accent, I thought he was a mismatch for the part. At times he acted like the character was an Irish Tevye, which Finian is decidedly not. Og, the leprechaun who is changing into a mortal from not being in Ireland and Finain's stealing his crock of gold, started out too strident, but eased into the part so well that by the time he sang I Love The One I'm Near toward the end, he stole the show.

There were more than a dozen fine strong voices in the ensemble, all of whom had their moment in the spotlight. There were many African-Americans in the cast, which was wonderful to see in lily white Saratoga. The main sub-plot involves sharecroppers and Southern racist politics.

The biggest WTF for me was the choreography. It is clear the choreographer was born with Gotta Dance! tattooed on her forehead. It is clear she and the director don't know when enough is enough. Every possible bit of music, including scene changes and "incidental" music, featured the entire ensemble on stage hoofing it. And every production number was drawn out well past its logical conclusion, a couple of them seemed to go on forever. There were dancers in the final two or three numbers who did not know what the next step or formation was - which is typical because rehearsals usually get to the end of the show last, and don't repeat the latter choreography nearly as much as the early stuff. I can say one good thing about the dances is they never repeated a step from one bit to the next. Come to think of it, that's not a good thing. It's better to have a theme.

Corollary to that is the only casting WTF. While Finian was mis-cast, he at least carried the role acceptably (and sometimes well), Susan The Silent, who communicates with dance for 99% of the show and has several dance solos (another case of the choreagrivation mentioned above), the woman cast in the role was not a good dancer. She was not graceful. Her leaps barely left the ground. The foot work which was her language did not flow. Every woman in the dance ensemble (and some of the men) was a better dancer. She was not chosen for her looks, either. Susan is supposed to be almost as pretty as the leading lady - in fact she should look enough like the leading lady to be mistaken for her from a distance. Nope. Not even close. Not that this actress was unattractive, she just wasn't that "notch above", which the part called for. It annoyed me that with all the dance talent SBMT has available, they cast her in this role.

Closing night at this theater usually gets a standing ovation. The only person who stood was one of the rehearsal accompanists in the 2nd row. I blame the over-choreography. It made a simple, light-hearted show into a chore.

Next up at SBMT is Guys And Dolls. I only know two of the cast. The Salvation Army leading lady is on a par with the Finian leading lady, so that will make it worth seeing, but Nathan Detroit, the part I've always wanted to play, was cast with someone who often beats me out on those roles, but IMHO doesn't do as well as I would have. Not a reason to run screaming, though.

Updater

My morning so far:
Woke up at 7. Counted on my fingers and decided 5 hours was not enough sleep. Back to sleep. Woke up at 10, lying on  my back, Domino was doing her sphinx imitation on my chest, purring loudly. I petted her, which she usually does not tolerate for more than a minute, but she just stayed there happily. It was time to get up, she didn't take the hint when I rolled to my side, so I lifted her up and off.

Did my morning stuff, checked email, gathered the Sprint phone receipt and wrote the login code on one of those pieces of paper, and went to the work place. Opened the top drawer and started taking things out of it. Stabbed myself on a push pin taking out the insert. Then removed a bag of cough drops. Then the little black kit bag which contains my Hgl measuring stuff. And there was the cell phone OEM battery underneath. Score!

Off to Sprint, who told me I would lose the phone number if I returned the phone without buying a new one. They said if I meant to change carriers, I needed to have them port the number first. For that, they said I needed my account number and secret code.

So back to within a few blocks of work, to AT&T, looked at my paperwork and saw I had left the secret code at home. Bother. Decided to try without it. I picked up an HTC Vivid, which is basically the EVO 3D without the 3D but with a better 2D camera, front and back. They did not need the secret code, just my Sprint account number & SS#. Unlike Sprint, they had someone at the door taking names and putting them in the queue, which was on a display on the back wall. I was paired with a rep in 5 minutes. She did a good job, no wasted time, but enough info. I had asked about Motorola phones -- they didn't have any! But she said they had a generous discount for Motorola employees. I told her about the impending Google deal and she said Google probably has an even better discount.

Back to Sprint, got the phone returned and refunded. They will still charge me for service for the 10 days I had it, the bastards.

Hung out in the Starbucks at the other end of the plaza, and got a notice on the phone that all my apps from the EVO had been restored to the new phone. They were, but I still had to log into the ones which needed it, and set up my email app. The gmail account is linked to the phone's gmail app, but I had to manually add the howeird.com accounts to Kmail. And sign in to FB, twitter, foresquare, etc.

And they have to all be brought onto the home pages, at least the ones I use a lot. That's about half done. One of the perks of AT&T is automatic free linking to their wi-fi hot spots, which includes Starbucks - no browser hoop to jump through.

That done as much as i wanted to do, I fired up the netbook, and had it update anti-virus and windows  while I wrote a review of last night's theater.

I guess I owe a note about yesterday's morning adventure, which was the first LUNAR rocket launch of the year at NASA Ames. Click on the photo to see the set. About 500 pix, I'll pare it down later into a set with just rockets.
( under the cut )