Yesterday

 Well, the weekend has arrived.  There's a slight drizzle, but that's supposed to pass.  Temps today are predicted to climb up into the low 90s (F).  Humidity is thick, though not clingy, like a wetsuit, and as the day gets warmer that may change.

Since it is Saturday, I will be working an almost full 7 hours and it'll be just me.  The 2 full time associates don't get back from vacation until Monday, and after tomorrow I'll be off until Thursday.  I'm quite interested in talking to one of them since this past Wednesday he was up in New York.  He went to see Josh Groban in Sweeney Todd.  I saw the original production oh, so many years ago with Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury.  

My big accomplishment yesterday was cleaning, dusting and vacuuming.  Meh.  If I lived in a much larger house, I probably hire someone to come in and do that for me, but for what the number of rooms I have, it wouldn't be a good waste of money.  

Since I've added the snails and algae eater to the big tank and moved the fish that east snails to the tank in the living room, my algae problems have disappeared, for the most part.  Slowly, tank decorations are being added.  Yesterday it was a clam shell, that works with a bubbler.  Of course, one of the snails had to investigate.  I snapped a picture just before he fell off the edge.

And yesterday was not a good day for Republicans.  Donny's attorneys met with Tanya Chutkan and then went away disappointed.  I liked the bit where she told them that if their client insisted on making inflammatory remarks it created a very good reason to move the trial up, rather than delay it.  The Orange Anus hates that sort of shit.  Other bits that I liked: that Trump is a criminal defendant and will be treated as such, and that is First Amendment rights are not absolute.  Donny is not a happy camper.  His S'mores are burning.

Republicans were also granted their wish by Merrick Garland, a Special Counsel has been assigned to the Hunter Biden case.  This doesn't make the GOP happy.  Now they're shrieking Cover UP.  In fact, Republicans are furious because it was politically expedient for them to keep Hunter's name in the headlines.  That has now been taken away from them.

Finally, Conservatives up in Iowa did not welcome Ronnie DeSantis with open arms.  Instead, they yelled at him.  They insulted him by calling him Pudding Fingers.  I delight in seeing this little asshole get his comeuppance in such a public manner.

Sondheim

 My Black Friday at the store was... boring, no customers came to the flooring department and I was never needed in appliances.

And then, just after dinner, as I was sitting at my desk working on the next book, the headline flashed that Stephen Sondheim had died.  Ah, yes, this was Black Friday.

I was lucky enough to see three of his shows on Broadway and each, in its own way, was riveting.  The first I saw when I was in college.  I, and two of my friends, jaunted up to New York to see a little show titled Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett, no less.  Amazing.  The show turned Broadway on its ears.  How audacious!  To write a show with great music, great lyrics, and then mix in a little blood and revenge.  I was hooked on Sondheim.

Then, when I was working for Marriott, I went to see Sunday in the Park with George.  The friend I went with was expecting some bold and splashy.  That was not the case.  Instead, we got to see Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters doing what they do best, sing great lyrics to great music.  Sitting in the 14th row of the orchestra, this show was simply amazing.

A few years later I saw my third and last Sondheim show on Broadway, a little thing called Into the Woods.  This is, I believe, the most accessible of Sondheim's musicals.  Into the Woods is that bold and splashy musical (at least as far as Sondheim could go) people had been waiting for.

The movie versions are... well, some of them are passable.  However, if you get a chance to see a Sondheim show on the stage, do so.  They can be almost life changing.

Into The Woods

The trailer for Into The Woods has dropped and already there are people shrieking like a bunch of little girls who've had their panties pulled down.  "There's no singing!" So what?  It's not the first movie musical to have a song-less trailer.  "There are going to be changes!"  Of course there are going to be changes.  I would like one person to name me one Broadway musical that didn't undergo changes while transitioning into a movie musical.  Look at Burton's horrendous "Sweeney Todd."  I saw that show, on Broadway, with the great Angela Lansbury, and I can tell you there is no comparison to Burton's adaptation.  Ms. Lansbury was funny, what's her name... Burton's wife?... was not.

There are going to be changes.  Take the wolf's costume.  You see, I also saw Into the Woods on Broadway (I've actually seen the show several times in various productions) and the first time the Wolf came on stage I said to myself "that'll never make it into the movies."  You can't have a wolf running around on screen for 6 minutes or so with an erect penis if you want to keep your PG-13 rating.  Take that 8 or so inches away and his song is much less about pedophilia and much more about eating little Red Riding Hood. " But that's going to change the meaning of the show,' some whine.  To some extent... yes, but most likely not enough to change the focus of the show.

Okay, so it wasn't erect all the time.  Sometimes it just hung there.

Or take that other little Sondheim musical which happened to become a major Oscar winner, "West Side Story."  I was lucky enough to direct the show while in college and was surprised to discover, on reading the script, that the song "Somewhere" is actually song by an anonymous character in the middle of the "Somewhere Ballet" sequence.  You say what?  That's right, they cut a ballet which, gruesomely enough, has Riff and Tony (already dead) re-entering and killing each other a second time.  Try to find that in the movie.

Changes happen.  This is normal.  Here's the I wish  Give it a chance.