This is a gurnal entry
Dec. 10th, 2023 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
finefoxyladies Hello. How are you? That's nice. I'm glad to hear it. Or, obversely, sorry to hear it.
The plans today are to visit a holiday market, maybe drop in on one or two shops as long as we're in NE... pardon me, NORDEAST... and then have lunch. I'm going to try my best to start packing up/wrapping some Christmas stuff. Not out of any sense of getting organized, mind you. It's so that whichever cat or cats like going in the office and playing Michael Scott Parkour! Parkour! will have less enticing piles to knock over.
Amy G and one of her work friends and I went to the Waitress Fathom event on Friday afternoon. I'll say my one minor nitpicky thing before I write the thing I basically came here to write: if you are filming a stage musical and you don't normally have a live actual infant, you don't have to film close-up footage of Sara Barellis holding a live actual infant, because it makes it MEGA distracting when you move back to the footage of the live performance, shot from further back, where it is clearly a stiff-ass doll.
What I came to say is: I first saw Waitress in NYC (what if that was the end of the sentence? I came here to tell you all I'm insufferable and can't stop myself from saying this shit whenever the chance arises) a few days before the 2016 election. It was Jessie Mueller in the lead. The cast was starting to reach that point where they were maybe a little tired of the material and were going broader, doing bits for easy laughs, but the music was perfect. At the end of the performance, young performers got a chance to come up and "karaoke" with the cast so Mike and Kate and I got to experience aspiring child actors sing "She Used to Be Mine," a song about mourning the promise of your youth with the clear eyes of someone in their early 30s, which was profoundly hilarious but also cute.
And then Election Night happened. It felt surreal and dire all at once. I'd walked through Central Park the day before, the sun shining down on the varied folks of NYC, and I thought, "This is America. At the end of the day, that's the truth, and it will protect us from That Man." Mike and Kate and I sat in a bar in Brooklyn for 3+ hours, drinking slowly, basically staging a sort of slow burn wake. I cried twice. And then, as we were wrapping up, I said, "You know what? I'm going to go to Waitress again tonight. I can't do anything today about this nightmare, but I had a good time at Waitress, and it made me happy."
And I went. On the way there, I got caught up in an impromptu protest walk, the first of several that would take place in the days immediately following his election. I watched Waitress again, then went home. Then, you know, 3+ years of daily anxiety attacks followed. And a pandemic. And then next time I saw Waitress, I had relocated to MN, changed jobs (obvs), and Joe Biden was president.
I guess the two things I'm saying here are: I'm always going to have a very unique relationship to Waitress, one that is probably outsized and a little ridiculous based on all that context. Then again, it is a musical adaptation of a small movie written by a woman who was senselessly murdered by a near stranger, so in the marrow of its bones, it is a thing that represents the often puzzling thematic swings of life. And secondly and lastly, any time I see cultural aesthetes who love theater bag on Sara Barellis and/or Waitress (the two that come to mind are ultra-cool type gay men), I'd like to viciously point out to them that straight women don't exist solely to be Mildred Fucking Pierce or Judy Garland for their entertainment and that it's too too bad that our sometimes menial or pedestrian and genuine existence is so lame to them.
In other media news, I watched ep 2 of The Great (Ann) (finally, right?), and I think Julie and I are in on it being our new show, though it is decidedly more bleak and cynical than Our Flag Means Death. I'm watching Fargo S5 with Mel, and I love it the way I love a lot of Noah Hawley stuff--enjoying the operatic highs and the weird, nihilistic lows while also frequently wondering, "Am I dumb? Am I a dumb person who doesn't get this?" I watched an ep of Digman, and it had jokes about Andy Capp, the 2011 INEXPLICABLE Oscar winner The Artist, and Andy Samberg clearly doing his Nic Cage, so I'll keep watching that. Mostly I continue to pine in my heart for Max, even though I also hate Max, because I really just want to rewatch OFMD S2.
Here are Christmas artists I've listened to the past few days:
The plans today are to visit a holiday market, maybe drop in on one or two shops as long as we're in NE... pardon me, NORDEAST... and then have lunch. I'm going to try my best to start packing up/wrapping some Christmas stuff. Not out of any sense of getting organized, mind you. It's so that whichever cat or cats like going in the office and playing Michael Scott Parkour! Parkour! will have less enticing piles to knock over.
Amy G and one of her work friends and I went to the Waitress Fathom event on Friday afternoon. I'll say my one minor nitpicky thing before I write the thing I basically came here to write: if you are filming a stage musical and you don't normally have a live actual infant, you don't have to film close-up footage of Sara Barellis holding a live actual infant, because it makes it MEGA distracting when you move back to the footage of the live performance, shot from further back, where it is clearly a stiff-ass doll.
What I came to say is: I first saw Waitress in NYC (what if that was the end of the sentence? I came here to tell you all I'm insufferable and can't stop myself from saying this shit whenever the chance arises) a few days before the 2016 election. It was Jessie Mueller in the lead. The cast was starting to reach that point where they were maybe a little tired of the material and were going broader, doing bits for easy laughs, but the music was perfect. At the end of the performance, young performers got a chance to come up and "karaoke" with the cast so Mike and Kate and I got to experience aspiring child actors sing "She Used to Be Mine," a song about mourning the promise of your youth with the clear eyes of someone in their early 30s, which was profoundly hilarious but also cute.
And then Election Night happened. It felt surreal and dire all at once. I'd walked through Central Park the day before, the sun shining down on the varied folks of NYC, and I thought, "This is America. At the end of the day, that's the truth, and it will protect us from That Man." Mike and Kate and I sat in a bar in Brooklyn for 3+ hours, drinking slowly, basically staging a sort of slow burn wake. I cried twice. And then, as we were wrapping up, I said, "You know what? I'm going to go to Waitress again tonight. I can't do anything today about this nightmare, but I had a good time at Waitress, and it made me happy."
And I went. On the way there, I got caught up in an impromptu protest walk, the first of several that would take place in the days immediately following his election. I watched Waitress again, then went home. Then, you know, 3+ years of daily anxiety attacks followed. And a pandemic. And then next time I saw Waitress, I had relocated to MN, changed jobs (obvs), and Joe Biden was president.
I guess the two things I'm saying here are: I'm always going to have a very unique relationship to Waitress, one that is probably outsized and a little ridiculous based on all that context. Then again, it is a musical adaptation of a small movie written by a woman who was senselessly murdered by a near stranger, so in the marrow of its bones, it is a thing that represents the often puzzling thematic swings of life. And secondly and lastly, any time I see cultural aesthetes who love theater bag on Sara Barellis and/or Waitress (the two that come to mind are ultra-cool type gay men), I'd like to viciously point out to them that straight women don't exist solely to be Mildred Fucking Pierce or Judy Garland for their entertainment and that it's too too bad that our sometimes menial or pedestrian and genuine existence is so lame to them.
In other media news, I watched ep 2 of The Great (Ann) (finally, right?), and I think Julie and I are in on it being our new show, though it is decidedly more bleak and cynical than Our Flag Means Death. I'm watching Fargo S5 with Mel, and I love it the way I love a lot of Noah Hawley stuff--enjoying the operatic highs and the weird, nihilistic lows while also frequently wondering, "Am I dumb? Am I a dumb person who doesn't get this?" I watched an ep of Digman, and it had jokes about Andy Capp, the 2011 INEXPLICABLE Oscar winner The Artist, and Andy Samberg clearly doing his Nic Cage, so I'll keep watching that. Mostly I continue to pine in my heart for Max, even though I also hate Max, because I really just want to rewatch OFMD S2.
Here are Christmas artists I've listened to the past few days:
- Charlie Brown Christmas (natch)
- Ella Fitzgerald
- Nat King Cole (is his "O Holy Night" one of my faves? It feels like yes)
- Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood
- A classic country playlist that included "Pretty Paper" by Willie Nelson but ALSO included "To Heck with Ole Santa Claus" by Loretta Lynn
- Robbie Williams
- An Amazon playlist called "Tears in my Eggnog"