Levi's wife, she was quite my favorite wife.

So, this past weekend, the family drove over to The State Theater in Uniontown to see Miss Alexa in her musical debut. The show was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Alexa played Levi's wife, clearly the most awesome of all the wives. She was also a featured dancer and she totally rocked.

My favorite song was "Those Canaan Days," where Alexa was the lead dancer. She came out in her French striped shirt with her fake cigarette and completely owned the staged. It was fabulous.

I also enjoyed watching the Magster, who was sitting in the audience with us, but was moving along to all of the dance moves they were doing onstage. In solidarity with her, I was singing along to all of the songs. "No one comes to dinner now! We'd only eat them anyhow..."

I’ve been waiting for that perfect art direction to come back into my life.

Yeah, my hair is fabulous. I know.

Mad Men is back for a second season and everyone’s hair and clothes are just as fabulous as I remember. Oh, and the writing and acting is amazing, but even if it wasn’t, it’s all just so pretty to look at. I actually want to buy crinoline. You need to watch this show.

100th Post!

Wow. 100 posts in less than a year. That’s more than 2 per week. What do I find to yammer about? Well, a quick perusal of past posts tells me it’s mostly trashy TV and my own klutziness. (Really, Microsoft spellcheck? Klutziness is spelled with a K?) Also, apparently I buy a lot of stuff. Thanks for reading!

Okay Liz, you were so right to deny me your books. Fine. FINE.

If you’re wondering why I’m bleary-eyed and exhausted, that would be Stephenie Meyer’s fault. I have just discovered The Twilight Saga, and if you know what I’m talking about, you’re probably a teenaged girl. It’s a series of books about a girl who falls in love with a vampire and if you’re saying, “Wait a minute, Ali, that was a show and it was called Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” just hang on and hear me out. It’s not Buffy, but it’s sorta like Buffy which is maybe why I’m caught in its irresistible web. So caught, in fact, that I’ve been staying up till 2AM to read, which is where the exhaustion comes in.

These are the books that Liz thought about lending to me and then realized she just could not be parted from, so “sorry about that but get your own, baby.” And yes, she was absolutely correct to hoard them, yeah, yeah, whatever.

Now, I find that I do have some problems with this “love” story. Namely, that the hero of the piece is in a constant struggle not to chow down on the heroine of the piece. He’s a vampire, so basically when he looks at her he sees a big, old juicy Delmonico. And he’s ravenous. Now, maybe I have no romantic spark in me, but I just don’t go for love stories in which the guy has to constantly fight his own overwhelming urge to murder the girl. That’s not cool. That’s something that gets broadcast on the Lifetime channel. Were I in this situation, I’d point over his shoulder and say, “Is that the Red Cross Bloodmobile over there?” and then whoosh! my butt would be halfway to the nearest garlic field.

So I suppose it’s a testament to the author’s ability to weave a suspense story when I still can’t put the books down despite the fact that much of what the heroine says makes me shriek, “Oh, for pity’s sake!” right out loud, and most of what the hero says and does is creepy. Creepy like that scene in Silence of the Lambs that I refuse to watch where Hannibal Lecter escapes from the cage. Creepy like a Kiefer Sutherland movie marathon. Creepy like that look that Vincent D’Onofrio gives in Full Metal Jacket just before he shoots R. Lee Ermey. Also, the books are giving me nightmares, and yet still I cannot stop reading. Blast you, Stephenie Meyer!

Ahem. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go start the second book. There are some secondary characters that have the potential to be completely awesome, and I really do hope they turn out to be. And if these books sound intriguing to you, and you think you’d like to borrow them, well, sorry about that but get your own, baby.

Frau Blucher?

So, it was an average Thursday evening and I thought to myself, “Hmmm, I haven’t seen Chris in a long time. Maybe I’ll visit him in Harrisburg this weekend.” Thirty six hours later I found myself in New York City. I do love when that kind of thing happens. Chris, J., and I decided we needed some Broadway, stat, and Broadway accommodated us.

Saturday Matinee: Xanadu

I saw this show a while back with Melis and I have wanted to sit in one of the on-stage seats ever since. They have 29 seats right on the stage and it is such a cool perspective. I convinced the boys to sit on stage with me, with the whole theater looking at us. (Melis, we were in the seats right in the middle where the actors turn around and offer you popcorn during that one song!) It was fairly fabulous. Cheyenne Jackson isn’t in the lead role right now, but Curtis Holbrook (Dean Hyde from All Shook Up, people!) is filling in and he is just the most cheek-pinching-est adorable man. I want to squeeze him like the Pillsbury Doughboy and then wrap him up and put him in my pocket.

When we arrived at the theater we were given instructions for sitting on the stage: Don’t chew gum, don’t rifle through your purse, don’t reach out and touch Curtis’ hair, etc… (It’s possible that last one is just a rule I made up in my head for myself.) Then they handed us glowsticks and told us that the actors would cue us when to light them up and they’d cue us when we were supposed to stand up and dance around while waving them. Dance around. On stage. J. looked mortified and Chris turned to me and hissed, “If there’s anything else you haven’t been telling us, you’d better spill it. Now.” Truly, I had not remembered that part. But then! During the song “Strange Magic,” the actresses singing it were standing right over us and one of them leaned over Chris and started rubbing his head like a crystal ball and touching him and playing with his shirt collar. He promptly turned the color of a raspberry. It was his Broadway debut!

There were no further snags until the final number when we were standing and dancing around and waving our glowsticks. My glowstick flew out of my hand and rolled into the middle of the stage, and these actors are on roller skates, people, (Seriously.) and for one brief moment I had a vision of Kerry Butler skating over it and breaking her ankle, followed by me being escorted from the theater as I gave my hasty regards to her understudy. But one of the other actresses saw it and tossed it back to me before it took anyone down. Crisis averted. But you should definitely see Xanadu and sit on the stage. You get a free glowstick! Just don’t touch Curtis.

Saturday Evening: Spring Awakening

This won the Tony in 2007 for Best Musical and it was much deserved. It’s easily some of the most beautiful music I ever heard trip off a Broadway stage, and I haven’t stopped listening to the CD since. However, a warning: this show has some very mature themes. It’s not for kids. In fact, there was a school group sitting near us and the kids were 12 – 14 years old and I could literally see the chaperones mentally composing their resumes for the jobs they would most certainly be searching for Monday morning.

Sunday Matinee: Young Frankenstein

We followed up the 2007 Best Musical winner with the 2008 Best Musical winner. J. won the ticket lottery and then we bought a third seat in the balcony and Chris and I split the acts between the balcony and the front row. Gary and Lisa, you are correct that this show is fabulous, but I cannot agree with your assertion that it’s as good as Wicked. I think we need to get some perspective here.

We also did our usual NYC stuff: lunch at John’s, Central Park, Jamba Juice, walking along the Hudson. And we discovered an Amish Market, right in the heart of the Financial District. Being Pennsylvanians, of course we had to inspect it for veracity. Turns out, it was just a regular specialty food market. Nothing Amish about it. I was incensed. I thought about walking up to the counter and announcing to the ladies behind the register that I was from Pennsylvania and that there was not an ounce of authenticity in this parading charlatan of a market. But instead I walked up to the counter and plunked down $2.92 for a German candy bar. I’m so weak.

But the real question is, will Heather be back?

VH-1 has announced that there will be a Rock of Love 3. Apparently things didn't work out with Ambre. What a shame. And by "what a shame" I mean, "oh this is so awesome I will finally get to see another season of this wretchedly fabulous show that I love so much oh I'm so wickedly delighted by this sad turn of events in Bret's love life somebody get me some pom poms." And all of this just forces me to admit that I now pray for Bret Michaels' relationships to go horribly wrong so that he will have no choice but to come crawling back to VH-1 and provide me with the appallingly low-brow humor I crave.

I know. It is so shameful. Please, look away.

I've been waiting for that "grrr, arggh" to come back into my life.

"The world is a mess and I just… need to rule it."

For those of you who can always use a little more Joss Whedon in your lives, and don’t want to wait for the première of Dollhouse, check out Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. Dr. Horrible (he’s got a PhD in Horribleness) would be able to implement his plan of world domination if he could just get into the Evil League of Evil, thwart his nemesis Captain Hammer, and find a way to talk to the pretty girl he pines for at the Laundromat. As a Buffy fan, I already know what Joss can do with a musical format, so I was pretty excited for this. My favorite parts are the musical letters from Bad Horse. You just… need to watch it.

**Note: I just found out that you can no longer view the episodes on the Dr. Horrible site. Now you can only get them from iTunes. I guess procrastination doesn't always pay off in the end. Anyway, I think they're worth the 4 bucks, but if you don't want to pay that you can just borrow my iPod the next time you see me. If you know me, that is. If you don't, why are you even reading this?

Busy is the watchword

So, I am trying to keep myself busy, as opposed to what I have been recently doing, which is sitting around crying and thinking about how life was so much better in 2007. Here’s what has been going on with me:

I have been obsessively watching Veronica Mars DVDs. I am halfway through the second season. Buffy is next.

I went to Amanda’s birthday dinner and Jess and her husband, Kevin, invited us to Trivia Night at Fry’s Bar in Wilmore. Victory was ours, we drank from the keg of glory, and I am now the proud owner of a Budweiser T-shirt. As you can imagine, Amanda bogarted the Yuengling T.

Amanda, J., and I went to Dave and Buster’s. Amanda and I rocked the trivia game and earned enough tickets for some Hello Kitty lip gloss, some plastic glitter bracelets, and a Gummi Bear the size of a Volkswagen. I asked for a plastic tiara with some fake jewels, but they were all out. Drat.

I went to Manhattan with some friends. More on that in a later post.

This site is an excellent time waster, just in case you feel like you’re being too productive.

The jig is up, Zack. And Liz. And Kristen. KRISTEN!

So, now you're Jack Bauer? What happened to Kiefer? Is this multiple personality disorder? Schizophrenia? A little from column A, a little from column B? Either way, you sound about as stable as a Pinto in a rear-end collision. I have a rule of never letting crazy people in my apartment (except for Amanda, of course). I'm going to have to insist that you vacate the premises immediately. Good day to you, sir!