Ciao

Why does the theme of loss and the process of grieving seem to resonate so much with me lately? I have no idea ...

But if you've read some of my past blogs, you know that Next to Normal — the Broadway-musical-masquerading-as-a-somewhat-controversial-electroshock-therapy-show that's really a poignant look at one family's grief and how they deal with it -- is one of my all-time favorite musicals!

And then recently I watched the film, Ciao.

You probably haven't heard of it. It's an independent movie revolving around the death of a gay man and the two strangers closest to him.

I was expecting a love story, but instead found a rather moving portrait of death and the awkwardly strange roller coaster ride of emotions those left-behind experience.

I recommend it:

Simple. Slow. Touching.

And ultimately... meaningful.

It's only $4

Denny's has a new sandwich:

The Fried Cheese Melt

It looks delicious and horrendous. I love fried cheese, but this is going a little over-the-top, don'tcha think? Except that if I do find myself at a Denny's restaurant ... I might just have to try it because it looks sooooooo good. And bad.

What am I to do?

Luckily, it's only 895 calories with 34 grams of fat.

iTunes Duplicates

Love me my iTunes.

And I love the duplicate function where I can go through and delete all the songs I have multiples of, for whatever reason.

(BTW ... how does that happen???)

But my wish for Apple is to create a function where I can sort through the duplicates by genre. Do you know how many Overtures, Bows, and Finales I have in my Broadway genre? They're all specific and unique to each individual show, but the songs show up in my duplicates because of the titles. And it takes FOREVER to weed through everything to find the actual duplicates.

Are you listening Apple? I expect this request to be honored in the next iTunes update.

** UPDATE ... At some point, Apple actually listened to me! Thank you, Apple. I can now sort duplicates by genre. Whew!

More Spider-Man, The Musical

This is just more of the same. Confirmation that Spider-Man, The Musical: Turn Off the Dark looks to open this fall/winter.

Julie Taymor, the director, acknowledges the show needs to be on par with the success of The Lion King.

But will it?

Life.

It's a journey, isn't it?

Opportunities come and go.
New people weave in and out.
Jobs begin and end.

Cyclical and linear.

Strange how we move forward. Some people constantly look back. I, myself, do not tend to fall into that category. Regret can often be debilitating, so I try and limit negative hindsight, chalking up my experience to lessons learned.

Right now I'm in a period of transition in my life. A time to ponder and think about the past, the present, and the future.

But what I keep taking comfort in is the fact that when something doesn't quite pan out, the lost experience usually leads to something infinitely better than I originally imagined.

In a sense, a loss can often be a gain. It all comes down to perspective.

So, today begins a new day. Let's raise a glass to a bright future!

Spider-Man Still on Track

Rehearsals are set to begin August 16th for Spider-Man The Musical: Turn Off the Dark. Everything appears to be proceeding towards a Broadway premiere.

Now if we could just get some movement on Phantom 2: Love Never Dies. Or is the Phantom's second incarnation doomed to remain across the pond forever?

Double Rainbow - What Does It Mean?

This is all the rage. Love it!

If you haven't seen them yet, watch the first video and then the second. It'll brighten your day!

No Broadway Magic for the Phantom?

There's trouble in Coney Island.

Looks like Phantom 2: Love Never Dies is losing their creative team, and Hal Prince, Broadway's golden boy, turned down the offer to helm the mega-musical.

Without some direction, will the show ever arrive on Broadway? I've heard the productions' transatlantic crossing has been postponed indefinitely.

Darn. I wanted to see it.

Even if it is crap.

RE: Mel Gibson

I loved you and your movies, Mel, but I don't know if you can ever recover from this latest public debacle.

R.I.P.

I'm A Glow-Worm

It's true.

I'm White.
Caucasion.
Casper-looking.

I do not tan. I burn.

I've tried to tan, but it doesn't happen. I fry, the skin peels (even with nonstop moisturizing), and then I'm back to white again. I've even blistered on a cloudy day when I forgot my sunscreen.

So, please stop telling me I'd look better with a tan. Stop telling me I need color. Stop telling me to get out more. It doesn't work, and I'm fine with it. I don't need any more wrinkles than I already have, and I don't need to answer the siren call of skin cancer.

What I should do is move to the Eastern Hemisphere where pale skin is desired. Think how popular I'd be.

But until then ... please don't call me pasty.

I prefer being referred to as transluscent.

Embrace Life

New commercial out of England. Well-done and poignant, I thought, without being overdone.

So buckle up y'all, and EMBRACE LIFE!

Pass the Can, Please

Have you heard about the Candwich, the new "sandwich in a can"? Sounds gross to me. Requires no refrigeration. Long shelf-life. Ugh.

I don't really get how it works. Is it like Pillsbury Crescents? You flip the top and the can pops open?

Comes in three flavors, too: PB & Strawberry, PB & Grape, and Barbecued Chicken. Ewwwwwww ...

Maybe I'll eat it in the post-apocolyptic world that's coming. But for now, I think I'll take my fruits and vegetables for lunch, thank you very much.

With a real peanut-butter and jelly sandwich from time-to-time.

It's still on!!!

The latest report (from Ireland's Herald, no less) says that Spider-Man the Musical is still on schedule to open on Broadway this November.

What? It's still coming to Broadway? In 2010?

I'm holding my breath.

But now the question to ask is:

Which will be worse ... Spider-Man or Phantom 2?

Missed? Opportunities

You know the cliche "Everything happens for a reason"?

Well, I believe that, even if it's hard to swallow sometimes.

I was just offered an opportunity that would have been so perfect for me, but I couldn't make it happen within the confines of my schedule. So I had to let it pass me by.

I'm bummed but, at the same time, realize something better will come along.

The reality is that this opportunity could still come back around again and work within my schedule. But if it doesn't, then I shall move forward knowing that it wasn't the right thing for me.

It's just frustrating to be offered a tantalizing treat only to have it ripped away from you.

Oh, well.

Maybe I'll just go eat some dark chocolate.

And The Rockets Red Glare

To all those in the armed services serving their countries throughout the world, thank you for your sacrifice in helping to make this world a safer place to live!

And to all my fellow American patriots:

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!!

Calorie Counting

When I finish my current Royal Caribbean contract, I'm going to start counting my calories.

Why, you ask? Good question, gentle blog reader.

I've always been against calorie counting. I thought it was too much hassle. Too much stress. Too much everything.

But about two years ago, I was privileged to have a personal trainer for a short time, and I loved it. If I could afford it, I'd use a personal trainer all the time.

During that time, my trainer had me doing a food log and, essentially, counting calories. And you know what? I liked it.

Yes it was a hassle. Yes it took time. But I learned a whole heck of a lot.

Besides discovering that some foods were more calorically-dense than I'd previously thought, I learned a very important lesson:

I can eat A WHOLE HECK OF A LOT of food if the food is healthy. Healthy foods tend to be low in calories while unhealthy foods are usually higher in calories (DUH!)

But I'm a hungry guy, and I like to eat a lot. So having three pieces of Pizza Hut pizza, while delicious, means I can't eat anything else the rest of the day.

Uhm, no.

I need to eat. Often.

So when I have more control of what I can eat (i.e. when I leave the ship), I'm going to count my calories. That way I know just what I'm putting into my body.

It's not something I'll do forever. It'll be more of an educational exercise to remind myself of what I should and shouldn't be eating.

Because after all, food is good! And I want more, please.

Sookie Stackhouse

I am OBSESSED with Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels, aka the TrueBlood books.

So far she's written ten books, but I'm almost done with the last one, Dead in the Family. What am I going to do when I finish? I've flown through them so fast.

Vampires! Shape-shifters! Witches! Fairies!

It's all so exciting!

Season 3 of TrueBlood started this month, and since I'm currently sailing with Royal Caribbean, I'm missing it. But, I've heard it good.

I'll have to catch up when I return to the Continental US.

But until then I had my books. Now what?

Charlaine ... please, please, PLEASE ... release a new one soon! I'm dying to find out what happens to Sookie next!

(Although, I guess I can't complain. Dead in the Family was just released in May. It'll probably be another year before a new one comes out. Boo-hoo!)

Narnia

I super-duper love CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. I always have. Read them over and over and over throughout my life-time.

I thought both movie adaptions (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian) were extremely well executed, faithful to the books and entertaining.

However, I was under the impression that the second movie had underperformed and that neither movies became the behemoth phenomenon the studio was expecting hoping. Thus, no more Narnia movies.

So it was with great excitement that I have just discovered the third movie adaptation: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It looks just as good as the previous movies!

Release date is December 10, 2010. Can't wait!

NOTE TO THE STUDIO HEADS: Please film the final movie now so the Pevensie kids don't grow up before you get there.

(For those of you who haven't read the series ... the intervening books don't include the same children.)

I Heart Seth Rudetsky

I'm absolutely obSESSed with Seth Rudetsky. He wrote Broadway Nights and The Q Guide to Broadway which (I'm ashamed to admit) I haven't yet gotten around to reading ... but I WILL! I promise, Seth!!!

He does these funny deconstructions of singers where he breaks down certain things about how a singer forms vowels or riffs or changes their vibrato. Check them out on YouTube if you're interested in music. And more specifically ... musical theater.

His Playbill.com blogs are HI-larious. He discusses his New York experiences with auditions, benefits, interviews, and such and is very self-deprecating. I love him ... cubed.

His website is here.

But ... what ... is ... this ... ?

My bestie Patrick met Seth at an Only Make Believe benefit and asked him to say hi to me. So I had to post it for you. Enjoy:

Book Review: Jeffrey Overstreet

It's been a while since I last discussed my reading thoughts ... so today, I thought I would recommend the excellent Jeffrey Overstreet's Auralia Thread series.

The series begins with Auralia's Colors where the Four Houses of the Expanse are gifted with the presence of a unique and mysterious girl who brings color and light wherever she goes and threatens the kingdom with an unimaginable revolution.

Auralia's Colors, in my opinion, struggles somewhat with focus. The land is inhabited by many, many people and Overstreet has too many chapters jumping from one character to the next, never to return. As a reader, it's difficult to keep track and sympathize with anyone. However, the story definitely kept me turning the pages.

But, it is Overstreet's second novel Cyndere's Midnight that truly captivated this reader. Taking the themes and characters from the first novel and greatly expanding them, I was drawn into a delightfully imaginative and wondrous world on par with Tolkien's Fellowship series or C.S. Lewis's Narnia series.

Thankfully, someone decided to include a character breakdown at the back of the second and third books, so it was much easier for me to figure out who-was-who.

Then there's Raven's Ladder, the third book. This one felt like a bridge to me; both a continuation and an explanation of things to come, it nevertheless captivated me and made me hungry for the conclusion.

By now the Four Houses are in various states of disarray, the Seers are more maniacal than I would have originally dreamed, and the people are ready to fight.

What will happen to the Expanse? What of House Jenta? What will the Seers do? And I'm dying to learn more of The Keeper.

I've been told that Overstreet is hard at work writing the fourth (and final?) book in the series. I don't know, but I'm anxiously awaiting to see how he brings all the different plot threads together and concludes the story.

If you enjoy fantasy with a side of ethical and moral themes, try Overstreet's Auralia Series. The prose is quite beautiful; the characters intriguing; and the plot unusual.

Perfect for some not-so-light summer reading.