Morning's at Seven

Last night we went to Morning's At Seven at Theatre in the Round.  It was very well acted and well done and I think it helped that I had never watched a single one of the three television performances.  That meant everything remained a surprise, including the funny bits.  The basic plot is about four sisters who find after many years that it's still not too late for things to change, and for the better.  Life doesn't have to remain the same and what seems like disruption and heartbreak at first can lead to growth and opportunity.

Aaronetta (front) was particularly good, although that's probably the Minnesotan in me bonding with a character that seems like she comes right out of the rural parts of the state.  Homer, the son who can't commit to marrying Myrtle, reminded me somewhat of what my nephew would be like if he'd had a bad chromosome or been dropped on his head more often.

Eryn agreed that it was enjoyable and she had a great time for an 8:00 p.m. show.

Night of the Living Dead

This afternoon we, as a family, went to a matinee of Night of the Living Dead, the play, at the Mounds Theatre in St. Paul.

Acting at the Mounds is never top shelf.  I think they pull a lot of actors from the local community, so it can be hit or miss.  But they definitely try hard and they put some amusing ideas on stage and their productions are always fun. We saw Mort there, based on the Terry Pratchett novel.  And they've done Guards, Guards! in the past as well.

Night of the Living Dead started out with a black and white remake of the car scene in the movie, which ended by Barbara fleeing to the Mounds Theatre where a number of other people were also holing up.  At that point it switched to the actors and never switched back to film again except to show an exploding pickup and some zombie cleanup at the end to the tune of Cash's The Man Comes Around, an homage to Dawn of the Dead.

During intermission, the zombies all come out to wander around and act like zombies, eating hands, pondering an electric saw, and attempting to use a shotgun.  One in a poncho sat down next to Eryn seriously freaking her out.  She wasn't having it.  And the idea of playing The Man Comes Around on her guitar while dressed as a zombie is apparently right out the door.

This picture turned out really well for accidentally leaving on the flash and getting it blurry.  She looks like a zombie.  We sat on the corner, so most of them walked past us at one point.  The little girl zombie came over to sniff Eryn's Milk Duds.

You can see a zombie lurking like a stage hand near the intermission sign.  As with many zombie-related shows, the humans are overrun in the end, both from the outside and from the inside, where a child bitten by a zombie turns into the undead and dispatches her parents and forces the main character into the conflict of shooting a child.  By the end, only the main character is left, holed up in an upstairs loft.  When the militia comes to eliminate the zombies, he throws open the doors blocking the loft, exultant because he's saved, and is promptly shot dead by the militia.  So the Asian guy lived the longest out of anyone, but still didn't make it through the show.

Life and Beth - II - Close to Home

As an addendum, I should add, it's not lost on me that almost exactly one year after my car accident, I went to a play where the wife is widowed and her annoying husband comes back from beyond the grave to try and run her life for her.  I've warned my wife that it was fortunate I did not die, because I fully attend to come back and haunt her.  But I won't be so blatant about the haunting.  It will be more along the lines of leaving extra Luna bar wrappers around so she blames Eryn.  Leaving cupboard doors ajar.  Hiding spoons in the garbage disposal.  Unplugging oft used appliances.  Moving things slightly here and there.  Hiding keys and sunglasses.  Come to think of it, you'd think she was already haunted how often she complains about those things happening.  It'll be nice to just sit back and watch and let her think I'm doing the haunting.

As a reminder to myself, I need to create a good haunting list and hide it somewhere safe.  I don't want to forget anything when the time comes.

(P.S. Mean Mr. Mustard.  I'm going to haunt you just a bit as well because your wife will probably assume it's me, but she'll blame you, and I'd hate to mess up her expectations just because I'm dead).

Life and Beth

Last night we went to Life and Beth at Theatre in the Round.  Very enjoyable and much more digestible for Eryn than All's Well That Ends Well, which was a struggle with the language, but which she still enjoyed.  She laughed out a loud a few times during Life and Beth, despite some grown up themes here and there.  It was a good play to find humor in, and it's fun to take her to some plays that are both funny and sad and make her think about what the playright is trying to convey and the complexity of people, opposed to the Children's Theater plays which are more one dimensional, even when they have a more complex theme.

I've been to an Alan Ayckbourn production before.  I saw Absurd Person Singular in London back in the very early 90's when I was there by myself.  I didn't know anything about the play before I went, and at the time the suicide theme for Eva was just too depressing to allow me to enjoy it, despite the humor in the other parts of the play.  But it was exciting to go to a play in London, which was my point at the time.  I notice in the Wikipedia article about Absurd Person Singular, it says it was playing at Whitehall Theatre in May 1990.  That would have been when I was there seeing a play at the West End.

But back to Life and Beth.  Funny, although in a dry way given most of the characters are dysfunctional in some way.  Alcoholic sister in law.  Overbearing, passive-aggressive (but dead) husband who says things like "hand on heart" and argues about how they've never argued.  Son who's driving his girlfriend nuts.  Girlfriend who's nuts (and talks once, which Eryn caught and we didn't).  And widow who is, in many respects, happy she's on her own.  I liked the idea that the dead husband's (Gordon Timms) parents used to tell his sister (Aunt Connie) that he had lapped her three times, until she could feel him breathing down her neck.  My sister should tell her eldest that same thing just so she knows to try harder.  And the vicar tells the widow at one point that she should accentuate the positive (the old Johnny Mercer song) and that she's still young, "for a woman."

As the Star Tribune review states, Jean Wolff was excellent as Beth.  She was the most believable of the characters and her reaction to her life with Gordon gone was illuminating.  An excellent production.

Book of Mormon

Last night my wife and I went to see The Book of Mormon at the Opheum in downtown Minneapolis.  I purchased the tickets almost a year ago with a couple of guys from work.  I joked to one of my leads yesterday that given how long I'd had the tickets, pre-accident, my wife could have been going with her new husband by now had I not come out of my coma.  Ming and his wife were originally part of the group that was going (along with Joe, Jon, Dan and some others - Denise, a former coworker, was there as well, having been a late fill for someone else who couldn't go), but he had a conflict and had to sell his tickets on Craigslist.  I thank him for selling the tickets to a nice couple so I didn't have to sit next to someone annoying.  I told them the story about how Ming was going to put his tickets up for sale and still hadn't realized I'd given him two seats with a seat between them as a joke way back when we first picked up the tickets.  He did sell his tickets to someone who worked for a staffing company, which was a bit unnerving given the group that was attending.  Her first question to me, "You're all in IT?"  Ominous.

The musical was excellent, swear words and all.  And they went pretty far down the expletive continuum.  At first, the songs felt derivative of other Broadway songs, but after a few numbers, it was obvious a bit of that was on purpose and it added to the amusement.  I really enjoyed Two by Two where the elders are getting their assignments, Turn it Off which was a Simponsonesaque Ode to turning off your feelings and not just burying them like Homer does, Hasa Diga Eebowai where the villagers are cursing God, Spooky Mormon Hell Dream which is just as it says and was a big production number that included devils, mass murderers, serial killers, and cups of caffeine, and I Believe about all the things your need to believe to stay a Mormon.  The other songs were enjoyable as well, and Man Up in particular made you think that when they get around to casting a movie, you're going to see Jack Black as the sidekick.

Well worth the expensive cost of a musical, even in the Twin Cities, and I'm glad I lived long enough to see it.  We added a pre-show dinner visit to Buster's to our itinerary, avoiding some of the rush hour traffic, and a secondary stop for an espresso at The Angry Catfish bicycle and coffee bar.  It's always been closed when I've been to Buster's before, so it was exciting to have to waste time by stopping there.  Beautiful bicycles, a good cup of espresso, and some bike clothing that convinced me I don't have enough to feel well dressed.

Cultural Dissonance

The last two nights have something of a weird dichotomy of cultural experience.  On Wednesday, I went to Plankton at the Trylon with Kyle.  It was part of their viewer-selected Trash Film Debauchery series, and the guy who requested the movie was in the audience.  If you're not familiar with it by the name Plankton, it also goes by the title, Creatures from the Abyss.

The plot?  Idiots get lost at sea in a raft.  They find a yacht.  It's a pleasure yacht belonging to scientists who are a.) researching deep sea life in an area polluted with radioactive waste and b.) having weird fish sex.  The rest of the movie involves said idiots managing to get bitten/contaminated.  This ends in turning into a Ray Harryhausen-esque tentacly stop-motion fish guy.  Giving birth to copious amounts of caviar.  Growing a fish out of your back during sex.  Being subjected to a phone-sex-esque shower that's breaking down, and a weird wall sculpture that offers up nonsensical advice.  Growing a fish out your back that's forced to pinch your brain until you behave because you're still listening to your friends.  And your pregnant fiance (of a year!) shooting herself in the head with a spear gun.  I'm sure I missed something, like the flying fish that looked like they were from the Cthulu universe in From Beyond.  My favorite quotes was, "YOU HAVE NO MORE SISTER!"  That's brilliant.

A few reviews:

• http://www.bloodygoodhorror.com/bgh/reviews/05/05/2011/plankton-creatures-from-the-abyss
• http://www.badmovieplanet.com/inferno/archives/cfta.html
• http://www.badmovies.org/movies/cabyss/

This should prove to Altsie that I've go no problem with bot-capable movies that lack bots. Thanks for the comment!  I'd love a few tickets - I'll talk a few developers from work into going.

Then, on Thursday, I went to Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy at the Children's Theatre Company with Eryn and her friend Eli (pronounce it "ellie" - Eli is a her - whose dad works with me, if you consider working in the same building of 7000 people to be "works with me").  Content wise, this was probably the best play we've seen at CTC so far.  Despite being a play for kids, they didn't pull any punches.  Kids got hit by their fathers.  Children and mothers were committed to the mental hospital to die.  Grandpa died of a broken heart.  Families were uprooted.  Greed ruled.  Mom was dead and Dad couldn't talk about it. And the racial/racist part of the story line was front and center.

Mrs. Cobb was well played.  Absolutely wonderful.  So was Lizzy.  The Buckminster boy was a little too reminiscent of the whining from A Wrinkle in Time, but more palatable given the strong performances surrounding him and the engaging story line.

Eli had seen part of the show already on line, and knew that there was going to be a very loud and scary scene at one point, when Lizzie and Turner (Buckminster) are lost at sea in a rowboat in a storm (see...just like Plankton!) and encounter a whale.  She wanted to leave the theater until the scary part was over, but I convinced her that wrapping my jacket around her head would be sufficient so I could watch, and I'd let her know when it was over.  A good call, as it was impressive to see a whale head and tail appear on the CTC stage.

Double Play

We had an interesting weekend. On Friday night, we went to see Iqbal at the Children's Theatre Company. It was about Pakistani children sold into what amounts to slavery, working as weavers for a man who lets them believe that someday, if they work off all their tallies on their chalk board, they might escape. Iqbal, the title character, is a better than average weaver who rebels, eventually escaping (despite being in dungeon) and hooking up with an aid agency committed to getting rid of the sweatshops. In the end, Iqbal is gunned down by rug merchants (they don't show that part) who want revenge. I'm not so sure it was appropriate for a five year old with the hitting, off screen death, super hot dungeon, child slavery, and whatnot, but Eryn seemed to enjoy it. At least more so than Kyle, whose only appreciation of the play was an off-colored remark on Facebook that he spent quite some time backpedalling on after my father and coworker Qaiser weighed in on the significance of Iqbal.

Friday night after the play, I was Skyping with Klund, and he suggested we come down to watch his son in the St. Peter children's theater production of The Boxcar Children. We had a family discussion about the necessity of finishing taxes and homework, before deciding f*** it and heading down on Saturday. Klund's family was overly hospitable once again and fed us, put us up for the night in a guest room, geocached with us, and introduced us to the joys of Mario Kart with the grandparents. I try to supply beer, although bringing Schell's beer to St. Peter is the literal interpretation of "carrying coals to Newcastle".

The play was great and the kids did an excellent job. I wasn't familiar with the Boxcar series, but it vaguely reminded me of the Lemony Snickett series in some ways, and not just because there was a girl named Violet.

We did try something new during our visit to St. Peter. We've often driven past the Treaty Signing Center on the edge of town, so this time we stopped. While I appreciate that they're documenting history, the museum is not that exciting. The whole time we were there, we were the only visitors. It needs a little more pizazz. Here are the highlights as I saw them.

Eryn eating a fake loaf of bread at the virtual picnic display. It would have been more exciting if you could have purchased a real pie to eat on the picnic blanket. I like the look on Eryn's face. Look at how stupid I feel eating fake bread for Dad!


Pooteewheet and Eryn enjoying a fake pie with some St. Peter settlers.


Some important information about muskrats. Winter and early spring. Good eatin. Warm months, not so much. You can use this poem next time you're muskrat hunting. "Muskrat winter, muskrat spring, tasty little thing. Muskrat fall, muskrat summer, muskrat pie's a real bummer."

Movies, Games and Plays...oh my

After going to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe at the Children's Theatre today (which was ok, but not great. I liked the movie better, and I wasn't a big fan of the movie. But the stage isn't particularly conducive to battle scenes. And Aslan looses a bit in translation when he's really just some guy in a loin cloth and head dress, ala the stage production of The Lion King. I found myself spending more time worrying about whether there's some message about racism embedded in the story, rather than the traditional Christian motiff C.S. Lewis intended, then thinking about the story) we watched Journey to the Center of the Earth (which needed the 3D, or at least a big, widescreen t.v.) before shipping Eryn off to bed.

Then I broke out all the presents Kyle bought me for my 40th birthday. That included Dominion, a card-based game that's currently riding the top of the board game charts, and a snifter of Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon whiskey. The Buffalo Trace was better than the Bulliet Erik (the Hairy Swede) put me onto. It had a slightly sweeter taste to it. And although I don't usually prefer sweeter, that aspect of it was part of a more complicated taste, which made it much more interesting.

As for Dominion, I played with myself for an hour before I got it right. And then I showed Pooteewheet what I'd learned. Yeah...you heard me right. I served up three hands and pretended I was playing a few rounds to see if I could figure out the finer points. Given how easy it was to learn it, and the variety involved in only playing with a limited set of cards, and the replayability aspect of being able to change up the cards the table is playing with from game to game, I give it a thumbs up. The fact that you share the same cards instead of each player trying to formulate a deck from scratch, as in most collectible card games, makes it just a bit more about the strategy and less about who can collect the most, or read the most about card combos. It only took me about ten minutes to demonstrate the basic gameplay to Pooteewheet, so it's also an easy game for someone to learn, especially with a teacher. Tomorrow I'm going to see if Eryn can get the hang of it. That's usually my test for whether a game is in my favorites list.