Palin ♥'s Rod

I just wanted to post a link to a funny interview on www.afterelton.com with closeted gay Republican puppet, Rod, from the Broadway show Avenue Q on his long friendship with Sarah Palin. Here is an excerpt:

AfterElton.com: I must say, I’m surprised to think of you and Governor Palin as friends. I mean, what do you even have in common?
Rod: Well, we’re both from Alaska. And we’re both Republicans. And, of course, we both love c*ck.
AE: Excuse me?
Rod: C*ck. We both can’t get enough of it. Like we’ll be out hunting elk together, and I’ll say, “Sarah, honey, you’ve got to c*ck that pistol properly or you’ll bag nary a squirrel.” And she’ll say, “Golly, Rod, you know I’m savin’ that fer later. Cockin’ that pistol’s my favorite part. That and the disembowelin’.”
AE: Are you still in touch with her today?
Rod: Of course! I see her and Todd for dinner all the time, although, for some reason, the kids are never around when she has me over. But anyway, she’ll have me over and get out that special drinking glass she keeps just for me. And we’ll sit at the table, and her pastor will say grace, and it will usually be something really moving that shows how much they worry about me, like, “We thank you God for this food we are about to receive. And please help Sarah’s friend understand how icky his lifestyle choices are. Amen. Oh, and protect us from witches, trolls, and vegans.” Then Sarah will bring out that delicious roasted badger she specializes in and say to me, “Pass the salt, you godless sodomite.” And we’ll all laugh and laugh. Good times, those.

Hilarious

Some Enchanted Evening

Well, our benefit concert for Our Lady of Lourdes last Friday actually came together quite miraculously. Perhaps performing on the altar of a church does carry certain unaccountable benefits. Too bad no one saw it. Well, I exaggerate, there were a good 30 people scattered throughout the mainly empty pews. Oh well, so much for the "benefit" part of the concert. After paying for the accompanist, the wine and cheese platters for the reception, I think we'll have to hold a benefit concert to help pay for the benefit concert. Perhaps we'll have more luck if we hold the next one in a Synagogue.

As for the concert itself, it went way better than expected considering we "blocked" it an hour before the concert started and had one rehearsal with the pianist the night before. And by rehearsal, I mean singing through some of the music with lyrics in hand. Talk about pulling it out of our asses. The first time singing some numbers memorized - and I use the word "memorized" very loosely - and with the pianist was during the actual concert. Yeah, nothing like preparation, right? And blocking? Why rehearse when you can wing it at the performance. The only real blocking we were able to set before the show was along the lines of "this is where you get up and sing."

The highlight of the evening for me was the reception. Why? Because that meant we actually got through the damn thing. And add in free booze and food, well, what's not to like? You better believe I knocked back a couple of glasses of vino before hitting the tables to schmooze with the mainly elderly crowd. Don't get me wrong, they were all genuinely gracious, enthusiastic and complimentary, but it was like walking through a casino floor in Atlantic City on a weekday afternoon. Anyway, onward toward tech week of The Merry Widow!

Neverending rehearsals

My apartment is a pigsty, I'm carrying heavy duty American Tourist-ers under my eyes and I've got a severe case of brainal leakage. Between my 9-5, rehearsals for two shows and our benefit concert on Friday, I'm just about ready to step over the ledge.

I'm still only about 80% memorized for Friday, which doesn't bode well considering tomorrow is our first and only rehearsal with the pianist (not to mention our first and final run-through). We're basically winging all the blocking. Good times. As a stress reliever, Trish and I saw "Quarantine" last night. It was mindless good fun. And though I wanted to bitch slap the leading lady for her annoying screaming and hysterics, it was still worth ten bucks. I do think the shaky, hand-held, "you are there" gimmick has run its course. But no matter how stupid, I just can't pass up a good zombie flick.

Brainal leakage

You all know the warnings on those fat free products and foods cooked with synthetic oils: MAY CAUSE ANAL LEAKAGE. Well, I've decided to coin a new term describing what happens when you have too much information to learn in too short an amount of time - Brainal leakage. I can't believe how many songs I have to memorize for next week's benefit concert. I think my brain might literally explode, leaking rhymes and poetic metaphors about birds and the moon and all that other bullsh*t all over the floor. I'm even starting to get dorm room flashbacks from those all-nighters I used to pull for my chem and bio classes in college - Intermediary Metabolism, Hystology, Genetics, Physics - I used to be a f*cking genius. Now I can't even memorize two verses of a song. Oh, for the simple days when you could just roll out of bed, grab a piece of 2-day old pizza from the box under your mattress and just head to class in the clothes you had slept in.

One benefit from all this cramming is my newly realized appreciation for the art of lyric writing, especially the old schoolers. Take Oscar Hammerstein (we're performing a butt load of his songs from South Pacific, Sound of Music and State Fair). His lyrics always make emotional sense and seem to fit Rodgers' melodies perfectly. He is succinct and specific. And when he goes off on a poetic tangent, it is always for a reason (to clarify a point, accentuate a previous idea, or as a riff on an existing "trite" phrase thereby reinventing it for a fresh perspective). Take the opening lyric for "It's A Grand Night for Singing": "...the moon is flying high. And somewhere a bird who is bound he'll be heard, is throwing his heart at the sky." Hammerstein takes a metaphor that in lesser hands would read cliche, and through an unexpected adjective and verb, creates something original.

I even have to give props to Andrew Lloyd Weber for being smart enough to borrow T.S. Eliot's poetry for his snoozefest, Cats. And I'm not being sarcastic, I literally fell asleep during the second act pirate ship scene. Anyway, I've always tuned out during any rendition of "Memory." But now that I have to memorize it (yes, I have to perform "that song" at next week's concert), I can actually see why ALW was drawn to the text in the first place.

Speaking of genius lyricists, I just purchased tickets for the New York premiere of Sondheim's newest musical, Roadshow. Yippee! It's playing a limited run off-Broadway at the Public. This will be my second time seeing an original production of a Sondheim show (the first being Passion). I'm so excited, yet a little depressed thinking that at the ripe old age of 78, this may be his last. Hope to report good things about it soon.

Salome

The Met has certainly decided to takes its place in the R-rated, youtube generation. First, a shirtless, studly Giovanni humping Anna all over the stage last week and now a nasty Salome grinding her behind into a Hasidic Jew. It sure isn’t your grandparent’s Met, that’s for sure. I’d never actually seen a live performance of Salome, although we studied it at Conservatory, until last night. But nothing can prepare you for the antics of a middle-aged soprano (here, beautifully sung and dynamically acted by Finnish soprano, Karita Mattila) obsess “Fatal Attraction”-style over a Holy Man she can’t have. I don’t think I’ve ever, nor will ever, witness an opera singer extend down into a full split or finger herself while singing. Yes, you read that correctly, finger herself. She also dry humps her uncle, goes “full monty” in the dance of the seven veils and literally dives into a vampiric French kiss with the disembodied head of Jochanaan (the audience audibly gasped at that moment).

Shock value aside, Mattila certainly can sing. A huge voice with a seemingly endless range, she seemed to jump from full-throated top to full-chested bottom within the span of a measure. That b*tch was loud. And unlike other dramatic lyrics, her voice never seemed strident or ugly and she maintained a warm roundness of tone throughout the extreme range of her voice. However, the men (with the exception of tenor, Joseph Kaiser) couldn’t match Mattila’s instrument and were often lost in fuller orchestral moments.

The modern day Middle Eastern setting worked for the most part, hinting at the current world political climate. But the staircase to nowhere on stage right seemed wasted and could have been better utilized for staging. The black-robed angels watching the proceedings from the dunes also seemed like an interesting concept that didn’t seem fully fleshed out. But in spite of these few complaints, it was a truly thrilling, surprising and uncomfortable (in a good way) evening at the opera.

Though this is a revival (from 2004), hopefully the Met will continue producing challenging, innovative productions to balance the popular old warhorses in future seasons. It’s definitely made a difference in audience demographics at the productions I’ve attended. Trish and I both noticed groups of young men (who appeared to be - wait for it…straight!) in the audience at the last several productions we attended. Imagine that, straight young men at the opera. What next, a gay football league?

Do we never learn?

We’ve screwed ourselves again. We (the Pineda foursome, of course) have scheduled a fundraising concert for Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church smack dab in the midst of rehearsals for two other productions, High School Musical and The Merry Widow. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal. We’d just trot out our standard dog and pony show and add some spiced up banter. But no, we’ve promised them a theme concert. Namely, a best of Broadway concert spanning the last fifty years to commemorate the Church’s fiftieth anniversary. Clever, huh? I mean, a Church is celebrating its existence with an art form that was basically created by a group it denounces as sinners and sodomites (I’m talking about the gays, for those who didn’t get my subtle clue). Well, it’s not like the Catholic Church is exactly a stranger to hypocrisy. Anyway, back to topic. I know what you’re thinking, “A concert of Broadway hits doesn’t sound that difficult to pull off.” Well you'd be wrong. First off, we are expecting an audience of mainly senior citizens, so nothing too pop or unfamiliar. Then we have to make sure we evenly represent the decades following 1958. FYI, the bulk of Rodgers & Hammerstein was composed before 1960. And don’t even get me started on the barren wasteland that was Broadway in the 1990’s. Then throw in the fact that we won’t get to rehearse until probably the day before since our calendars are full of rehearsals for other shows. It’s going to be a hot mess.

I wasn’t even worried until just yesterday. I decided to get a head start and begin memorizing the “easy” stuff, the stuff I thought I already knew. Turns out I don’t really know the classics all that well. I mean, everyone knows “Some Enchanted Evening,” right? Go ahead, try singing it. I’ll wait. . . OK, did it go something like “Some enchanted evening, you me see a stranger, la, la, la, la, la, la…” pathetically trailing off into nonsense syllables? Exactly! Everyone thinks they know the classics, but turns out everyone knows the first lines of the classics. And damn, those classics all have, like, four verses.

To please the senior masses, against our wills we’ve included some totally cheese ball songs. Val refused to sing “People” (“I don’t want to be compared to Babs!”) so to compromise, had to bite the bullet and take on “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” It gets better. Since she took it for the team on that one, I volunteered to sing two of musical theater’s all time cheese-tastic classics, “Memory” and “Send in the Clowns.” Hell has just frozen over. Oh well, it all benefits the opera company so I guess we’ll just have to suck it up. Hopefully, no one we know will come hear us. So keep it on the DL.

Don Giovanni w/ Netrebko's baby-daddy

I admit it. The #1 reason I went to see the Met’s current production of Don Giovanni was to catch “Hott Schrott” (aka Anna Natrebko’s baby-daddy) shirtless. I mean for Pete’s sake, it’s the Metropolitan Opera. How often does half-naked eye candy cross that stage? Sure, they have their ballet dancers, but this is an opera singer. You heard me right, an opera singer. And a straight one at that - surely a sign of the Apocalypse. I wanted proof that this unicorn actually exists. Anyhoo, the Met knows when to exploit a good thing, because we only had to wait for his first entrance to catch the shirtless baritone virtually humping poor (or lucky?) Donna Anna (a beautifully-voiced Krassimira Stoyanova) on the long staircase that dominates the first act set. And damn, he's also got a huge . . . voice - though it seemed a bit unfocused last night. He plays pompous great, but if the gossip columns are to be believed, he's just playing himself. Regardless, he was an impressive and well-cast Giovanni.

But the real surprise of the evening - oxymoron alert - was the handsome Leporello, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo. Can you imagine two hottie baritones singing at the Met in the same production? Times sure have changed. When I was studying voice at conservatory, my teachers told me it was OK to carry some spare padding around the middle for added resonance. I guess I can't use that as an excuse anymore. Regardless, D'Arcangelo was funny and charming and possesses a large, warm, round voice. Hope to see more of him in the future.

Donna Anna's bell-like soprano - pure, clear and perfectly placed - was matched by lyric tenor, Matthew Polenzani, who impressed with endless legato phrasing. He never seemed to breathe. Unfortunately, mezzo Susan Graham, in the demanding role of Donna Elvira, didn't fare as well. Although a large voice, she always seemed to be pushing and often sang under pitch. The role is definitely not a good match for her. And given her fach, I'm surprised that she even considered performing it.

The physical production was bare, but adequate. And the staging, at least the first act, was better than usual for the Met (i.e. no "park and bark"). I would even say it was clever and original. But that second act? What were they thinking. It was as if they spent all their time rehearsing the first act and all of a sudden found themselves at opening night without having rehearsed the second act. The graveyard scene was totally lame. No better than your neighbor's front lawn Halloween display. It basically consisted of a stone grave that spit out pathetic wafts of smoke every time the (offstage?) voice of the Commendatore sang. I want my big stone statue coming to life, dammit!

Giovanni's descent into hell was even more disappointing. I mean, come on, this is the Met. Where were the flames? the pyrotechnics? the excitement? They actually made the Commendatore sing behind a plexiglass wall so his entire last scene sounded like he was singing into a paper bag - all muffled and dead. And I say they made him do it, because no singer in his right mind would agree to sing behind a wall knowing he'd have to fill a cavern the size of the Met. And then it snowed. WTF? It snowed for his descent into hell? Made no sense at all. And it wasn't like he was dragged down into hell. He literally stepped in front of the Commendatore and seemed to willingly be sucked into the floor. Slowly. Really slowly. I mean, he could have totally stepped off that platform, condsidering the glacial pace it was descending into the floor, and saved himself from eternal damnation. Oh well, I guess I can't complain. Half a good production is better than nothing.