Amy picked up a pamphlet (is that a small pamph?) in Baker’s Delight today which suggested several specialty sandwiches for kids. She wants me to make her the “Little Ballerina” as part of a giant feast I’m supposedly cooking her.

I have created some additional recipes should they wish to bring out a sequel pamphlet.

The Aborted Banana Mash
Mash up a slightly old banana, add healthy beetroot juice, and alphalpha sprouts. Cut into little faces. For a real treat, have your kids name them!

The Kate Moss
Using one of our new Poppy Seed loaves, cut into bite size pieces and spread with sherbert and hundreds and thousands. No margarine. Served with mashed potato mixed with finely chopped carrot. Serves 3000.

The Gay Cowboy
Between two pieces of white bread (sliced or unsliced), slide smoked ham and a generous amount of mayonnaise. Also works with fruit loaf.

Baker’s Delight, you have my number.

Today was the very last day of my mammoth summer uni break, and I spent 7 hours of it at rehearsals/working bee. I head back to uni for the first class of my final year of music (fingers crossed, in a good way) and I’m already more concerned with my next break than class.

To some people I can appear to be a walking mammoth guide to musical theatre, but it’s just because I love to read and absorb all of the information I possibly can. While I get this sometimes from watching shows, listening to CDs, reading the liner notes and reading books, I get a substantial part of it from trauling through endless articles on the internet. That was how I knew (within 24 hours of its announcement) that the recent London production of “Sunday In The Park With George” was getting recorded by the excellent PS Classics team, whom I’ve written about before. When I was doing my usual web research I came across an advertisment for a production Michael John LaChiusa’s musical, “Hello Again”. Written in 1994 (without reference needed), this is the first Australian production of the musical, and seeing as though it took 12 years to see it down here, it may well take another 12 until the next production.

I was forced to miss “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”, in spite of its impressive cast, due to Charlie Brown committments, and I really didn’t want to miss this opportunity to see “Hello Again”. It isn’t looking good though. While the show is running over my uni break, I’ve had a tough time finding cheap enough flights to Melbourne and back as I’ll probably be forced to fly during a weekend either way to catch the show. Also, it’s a little hard to justify $200 in flights just to see a show that will cost $30, and there doesn’t seem to be much else going on down there at the being advertised at the moment. And I wonder if the Loft boys will let me camp in a corner of their lounge room again?

Now I get a phone call from Becky to tell me she’ll be coming down to visit for a couple of days during that week. Why is this so hard?

“Plug It Up, Plug It Up!”

And so goes one of the lines from the cult classic broadway musical from 1988, Carrie: The Musical, based on the Stephen King novel.

Having a run of 5 whole performances (though usually audience members had no idea what was actually happen), the opening night closed to an audience who actually BOOed en masse. Word of mouth got around so quickly that by the time the final performance occurred a few days later, the audience was packed full of people who were there to be part of history and the audience gave outrageous screams of support at the end of every number.

With no official recording ever made, it has become one of those rites of passage that all musical theatre music collectors should track down one of the few private recordings made of the show. The one I’ve just been able to obtain is the best, it is from the sound board of what is believed to be the very final performance.

Producers to this day receive several offers a month to re-stage the show, including rumors of a concert version by the Encores series (which would be wonderful to get a real recording of the score), but they are still keeping it under lock and key. No one has ever been able to get the rights to do the show on any level, so many theatre groups have taken matters into their own hands. At least two parody Carrie musicals have sprung up, “Carrie White: The Musical” and “Scarrie: The Musical“.

I’ve had my first listen, and it’s not ALL bad. Sure the lyrics are awful, the score filled with over-blown dramatic Wagnerian-like torrents mixed with ’80s rock numbers and heavily synthesized ballads is far too overbearing and songs are often twice the length they need to be, but there is some charm. It’s certainly not the worst thing we’ve seen on Broadway, and I’ve seen other new musicals which are less coherent than this and feature much less impressive music. I guess what is so startling is that Carrie happened on broadway with a huge budget.

It seems this is the closet thing we’re going to get to the full show as the video that is floating around is only of the first act (it’s possible even the camera man left during interval).

While the reviews that came out aren’t exactly of the “steaming dog turn on a hot day” caliber that graced a particular new musical that opened in Sydney recently (no names … CLICK ME), they do not have some nice things to say:

“You already know the title song. Just sing “Call Me” with the word Carrie, and make the A flat as flat as possible, and you’ve got it…..for me the high point of the lyrics was rhyming “attitude” with “I’ve been screwed.”

The chorus of the title song does actually sound just like Call Me, but the verse sounds just like some bit out of either a disney movie or Miss Saigon.

For the next two weeks, Carrie will be on the turntable in the listening room. Sessions every 3 hours. Book ahead to ensure disappointment.

Be sure to stay after the credits for the 22 minute recording of Barbara Cook learning the act one finale “I Remember How Those Boys Could Dance” in the rehearsal process in London. Someone actually leans in close to the cassette recorde and whispers “They’ve changed the fucking key. I’ll never sing this shit”, and later “They like it. I hate it.”

This story is one of the things that make theatre great.

We all heard what that walking piece of poo said about the future of this country.

The only good that can come out of it is the comedy gold spilling forth. One particularly pithy Daily Telegraph journalist wrote this line.

“Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said she might have a cup of tea with Mrs Vale to explain things to her.”

You’d better make up a pot, Mandy.

Thanks to Malcolm Farr for the good, slyly biased journalism work, and one of my fellow bloggers for the above link. (As soon as I remember who it was, I’ll link you)

At 1.30pm I had a valentine’s day date with a young lady whom Angela put me onto.

I probably should have warned her right off the bat: I’m on the rebound. After a spate of short, one-off flings, I finally developed a steady relationship which had to be broken off. Was I afraid of committment? Were we getting too close? I’m a scorpio, I need privacy, was I not getting that from Christie? I wasn’t looking for anything long term. I really need time to shop around, see whats out there on the market. If I happen to find something perfect, I may hang around, but no promises.

The date started quite well. I was spot on time, if a little tired from the walk. My date offered me a glass of water or coffee, of which I accepted the former. Mere minutes into the date, I was undergoing a head massage. Nice, I thought, if a little presumptious on a first date. Soon things were well under way and we had a nice, relaxed banter back and forth. Things were going well, but I soon sensed something was wrong on my date’s face. I wasn’t sure what it was. Suddenly, she grabbed a cutthroat razor, held it to my neck and shouted “I’m gunna cut yo up, biatches!” (two thirds true).

After that little hiccup things sailed smoothly, and I soon noticed her deliberate but careful manner, something which I appreciated. As time wore on, it became clear that things had to wrap up and move on. As I stood, she asked me a question. I hesitated and had to say those nervous few words. “Actually, it’s my first time.” (This bit is actually true. I actually said that.) She smiled sweetly and helped me through the process.

The date had gone extremely well until I committed that awful sin just before leaving her. “So, what’s your name?”. I realised she hadn’t actually said it, and if I was going to want to make another date in the future it was pretty much a prerequisite that I know what to call her. “Oh, it’s Rachael.” And with that, we parted ways, having shared a nice few moments on this lovely Valentines Day.

Oh, and the haircut wasn’t bad either.

PS: It was my first time at this salon. Rachael helped me through the process of filling in my customer card. She didn’t want to know my birthdate. I think that really set the level of our relationship.