Alaska photos have been captioned.
The Lion King was amazing. The costumes were simply spectacular and breath-taking. I'm so impressed by people who are really creative and can come up with stuff like that. It really is awe-inspiring. I was really unsure of how they would translate the movie to the stage, but they did a really great job of it. My only criticism was the boy who played young Simba the night we saw it (they have two children each playing Simba and Nala; child labor laws, I suppose). He wasn't quite loud enough and his singing wasn't as strong as his dancing. But, he was only 9 or 10; I still have to give him credit. The girl who played young Nala was much better, and the woman who played the adult Nala was definitely the best of all the performers. It's showing at the Kentucky Center through July 8; go check it out! I'm really glad we got season tickets to the Broadway series this year. After seeing all the shows, I still think 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was the most fun, followed by The Lion King, Spamalot, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and All Shook Up (again, 12 Angry Men is left out, since it is a play, and a very excellent play at that).
Kings Island was a lot of fun. It had none of the same rides that I remember from Kings Dominion, and that was nice. We rode The Beast, the world's longest wooden roller coaster (about 7,400 feet, if I remember correctly), and the new Firehawk, in which you are lying belly-down, arms out, Superman-style. We were really lucky, with very few lines, and we rode everything we wanted to that we could (one ride was closed and one broke down just as we got to the front of the line). The water park was a lot of fun, too. The nice thing about theme parks is that you get enough sun and excitement to wear you out, so that you get that all-over-body exhaustion that makes you sleep really, really well. Not that I ever have any problems sleeping.
We saw Knocked Up today. It was hilarious. It was also the first movie I've seen in a theater since February -- wow! I think I'm going to see Pirates next week sometime, because it turns out that orientation only runs for a half day most days.
We also went to a jazz club opening in New Albany that Eric was covering tonight. The Glenn Miller Orchestra was the main act, and they were really good. All the tickets had been sold out, but some people didn't show up for the 9 pm set, so we were able to sit down and enjoy the show. The kitchen had also been closed during the earlier set, due to being inundated with orders (opening night glitches), but after things settle down I think I'd like to go back and have a nice dinner while listening to some jazz.
Almost no cleaning has been accomplished since I last posted, other than laundry and dishes. Books still litter my desk and office. It may stay that way for a while...
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5 comments:
One of my favorite things about the Lion King was that they didn't try too hard to define exactly what the reality of the play was-- was it humans doing a puppet show? was it talking animals? I don't know, and I didn't expect to not care; I thought I'd be a real snob about demanding that they make the imaginary realm a really precise one with "rules," ya know? But it turned out to not matter. Like, Timon and the bird (forget the name) were clearly puppet-y,with the puppetmasters visible and definitely part of those characters, but then Rafiki, in some ways the most human character, also had a tail. I loved that.
I liked that when Simba was talking to his father or Scar, he would be speaking to the lion's head, not the person's head. And Zazu (the bird) was a very interesting character, I thought, because of the puppeteer. In one of the scenes, the puppeteer loses the bird, but is still the character. He acts "naked" without the bird, but uses the Zazu voice as he has been doing, but then calls out for "Zazu" the puppet, "I'm coming, Zazu, don't worry!" So is the puppeteer Zazu or is the puppet? Or are they one and the same. I agree, very cool stuff.
Gosh, I loved The Lion King! The best part is that it IS theatrical - I think we get spoiled by such realistic special effects in movies. Live theatre allows us to experience THEATRICAL effects. Thanks for the memories!
Hi, I'm Jenn. I know Paige and Eric from high school and I just wanted to let you know that I have been enjoying your blog for a while now. I just signed up to Blogger today and I've felt kind of like I've been cyberstalking you by reading without commenting, so I thought I'd reveal myself: Here I am, I like your blog :)
Welcome! I am very familiar with your name, so it's good to put an Internet presence with it....? :)
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