bostonman

I can't quite get on board with "yinz" but I won't complain about it either. I have a Texan friend who told me that "y'all" can also be used as a singular pronoun - and that "all y'all" is for a group.

Also, in the academic situation I presented above, when our department meets to talk about how classes are going and how the students are doing, it can at times get very confusing to know if we're talking about the student I mentioned above ("they") or the full class of students ("they"). Which only tends to lead us to refer to the student as "he" (or the first name instead of a pronoun) so that we understand who we're talking about.

And, I cannot think of an incident where I have referred to a woman as "Ms" and she has objected, even if she is married. But perhaps this is also because Miss, Ms, and Mrs all sound very close to each other in casual conversation. I have a student (college senior, actor) who has, just this year, decided to start identifying as "they." That's fine. But since we've known him as "he" for the last 3 years, it's a tough adjustment to make. He - um, they - has also slightly changed their first name in a way that they most probably perceives as less male, though I would disagree that it does - it just feels like more of a nickname to me. It's also been tricky to always remember this new form of name. (Actually, there were TWO name changes - one last year, to an alternate spelling of the original name, and now, this new shortened version.) Outwardly, this student seems to be ok with our lapses as we try to adjust. But in course evaluations from last semester, I got a comment that I seemed not to be sensitive to pronoun issues - and I have to suspect that it was a comment from this student. (This student also has kind of set themselves apart from the rest of the class, personality-wise, so I tend to doubt it was anyone else sticking up for them.) Many of us still use "un-PC" gender terms in a colloquial/conversational sense - I have certainly addressed a mixed-gender class or theatre cast as "guys" (i.e. "you guys really sang great today" or "hey, guys - we need to go over this section again" etc). I don't tend to feel that that bothers the female students - if it does, they don't say so. Also in theatre, we still have a tendency to use "boys" and "girls" in cast terms (i.e. "the chorus boys" or "the dancing girls") though I do try to use "ladies" and "men" when I think about it. But again, most actors don't tend to equivocate much about all of that. But oh, in a recent department-wide forum on diversity issues (which is becoming, rightfully, a hot button topic everywhere, but it's very much an issue on our campus right now), every student who had something to say introduced themselves with their name AND their pronoun chain. And in 99% of the cases, it was the expected "he/him/his" or "she/her/hers" - which honestly, made it all seem very pretentious and superfluous. I do understand why this is important to the students, and I don't want to trivialize it, but on the other hand, I find it a rather tedious and masturbatory exercise. My apologies for that. I will always continue to give my students the utmost respect, which includes recognizing any changes in the expected gender terms. But I also wonder if this is really being misused as some new fad, some new method of attention-getting, for most of them, instead of reserving it as a true sign of respect for those people who do have valid gender identity issues. I would much rather be politely corrected by a student if I have their nomenclature wrong, than to constantly have pronoun chains recited at me.

Did you ever see the filmed (by MTV) showing of Legally Blonde? I swear it was more about the endlessly whoop-whooping screaming girls in the audience than it was about the show itself, lol. Now, granted - I certainly prefer audiences to express themselves in joyful/involved ways when it's appropriate - but yeah, there's wasy to show appropriate enthusiasm without going way over the top for the sake of going way over the top...

That's pure insanity. You must love that play, lol - though for me, it's nothing more than a very dated, overly bitchy/malicious stereotypical rant fest that I really don't care to see (even if it's in many ways still somehow historically important as a gay play) - and certainly not for that amount of money, lol. But - enjoy...

Can you elaborate on that?

They sure came a long way from their ads in the 1950's lol... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvhVz5hPfAA

Agreed on that particular ad. And on most of the pharmaceutical ads. Here's one that I thought was inventive but also unduly weird - I still can't decide if the sleep/wake "pets" are more cute or creepy, lol. And of course the oddest thing about all such ads is the amount of time spent telling us about all the side effects, etc - when NOT to use the drug in question. I know they have to do that by law, but it does also seem to work against the point of having the ads at all...

So - question. Nick's RM profile claims 8 inches, but his Sean Cody "Morgan" profile claims 6.5 inches. Which do we think is more accurate? I'm tending to think he might be closer to 8, but then I wonder why "Morgan" is so shortchanged?

I know that not everyone liked Passion, but I saw it live twice and was riveted by Donna Murphy’s performance in that show. Midler is a great performer, but Murphy is a true craftsperson.

When I tuned in near the end, right before the ball drop, Cohen was trying to get Cooper to talk about wishes for the New Year. Cooper wasn't cooperating. Seems that the chill in the air had nothing to do with the weather in Times Square.

I had hoped, just a bit, that Cooper pairing up with another gay man for the New Years' Eve special would make for a wonderful statement. It sounds like they really made no impression at all.

Dick Van Dyke is now the only remaining member of the original leading team. Carl Reiner, god love him, is still alive, as is Larry Mathews (Richie), though Mathews left the biz after the show.

Today is Jan 1 - which means that within the next 24 hours, all the kitchy "holiday" commercials will be gone, for another 11 months or so. But - I have to give Subaru a little bit of credit. Their constant odd reliance on "love" to sell their products notwithstanding (I find their ad campaigns confusing and needlessly maudlin with all their various girly "love" songs, etc), their worst offense is how they promote their "Share The Love" concept, which I do understand is a charity cause - but it's the stupid plunk-a-plunk of a ukelele in the background (why??) while people tell their touching stories (that never have anything to do with cars, mind you) followed by these always non-singing participants forced to sing, off-key, "put a little love in your heart." (With all the great pro renditions/covers of this classic song, why the fuck have non-singers do it??) But of late I've noticed that they've cut all the bad singing. The idiotic uke is still there, but no more "we can't sing, but we'll make you listen to us sing anyway" anymore. Perhaps Subaru actually got too many complaints, lol? "Love - It's what makes a Subaru a Subaru." Fuck WHAT???

I don't know Andy Cohen at all. I only like Cooper when he's being a traditional anchor - his attempts at humor and lightness in general (both his puerile "ridiculist" crap and his horrid attempt to have his own network talk show a few years ago) are pretty awful. I really don't get why they give this New Year's Eve spot to Cooper - unless the real story is that no one else wants it, lol. (And one of their promos for this - showing Cooper giggling like a toddler - was a serious turnoff.) That said, I tuned in to CNN just for the midnight ball drop, and caught a little bit of the Cohen/Cooper act - and I have to say, from less than 5 minutes of their banter, I got the exact same impression as nycman - no chemistry at all, and really awkward.

Not to veer from the thread too much, but I'm just not a fan of Doyle's style, period. Not the isolationist takes on every show, no matter what they are actually about, not the actors trying to be their own orchestra, and not the heavy-handed symbolism in his concepts (with his scenic collaborators - the oh-so-pretentious little white coffin in Sweeney, the "Laugh-In meets the Borough" wall that stood in for a set for the Met's Peter Grimes, and on and on). It's funny that when I saw his Sweeney (which I thought was a great concert but not at all theatre), I figured that his treatments would better serve Company, which is already a more abstract show. Boy, was I wrong. The other problem with the Company was that, at least in Sweeney, Doyle and his orchestrator (Sarah Travis, who deserves a helluva lot of credit for her work) were indeed blessed with actors who could play musical instruments quite well - I may have hated the visual/"directorial" concepts and the musical cuts, but the music making, I have to admit, was very good. (Aside perhaps from Patti Lupone, whose tuba playing was mainly for comic effect, lol.) Not so in Company, with a cast that was not nearly as skilled, and not able to make the orchestrations (this time by the also very talented Mary Mitchell-Campbell) work well at all. Ok, back to actors...

Perhaps - but many comedians have writers, and that's certainly no secret. There are those who are skilled at improv, and those who are simply skilled in telling a joke whatever the source. And of course some who can do both. Carson didn't write all his own material either, as far as I know, but he did also have the ability to improv.

I hated him in the John Doyle Company that was televised (and released on DVD) - but then again, I hated everything about that amateurish deconstructionist mockery of the great Sondheim/Furth musical.

Not to mention his screaming. Ick.

Too bad you feel that way about Sutherland - I admire his work. First time I saw him was as the father in Ordinary People, which I still think is a fabulous movie. I think he made a wonderful foil for Mary Tyler Moore in her heartbreaking role as the mother. (And his last scene with her, where he so calmly, yet so sadly, questions whether he still loves her, always brings me to tears.) As far as Minnelli goes, she's another actress/singer who is undeniably insanely talented, but yes, her manner can get in the way sometimes. She's a bit like Streisand to me in the sense that she tends to push a lot of the time - she "shows her work" instead of making what she does seem effortless. But that doesn't mean I don't also admire her a great deal. She's earned her rightful place among the greats, IMO. Peters - I know some people hate her (there's an amusing thread on one of the theatre chat boards right now, wagering if she will find a place to predictably break out crying when she takes on Dolly on Broadway next month) - but I've always been a fan. However, again, I can understand how some people can't get by her mannerisms.

I'd put Kristin Chenoweth in the same category. Now, to clarify things, I think that both Patinkin and Chenoweth are incredibly talented. But both have mannerisms that just put me off. In her case, it's her girly squeak of a speaking voice, and her unrelenting cute-cute-cuteness. It's just too much. How about Fran Drescher and that whiny sound she makes? Adam Sandler, and similar comedians whose singular, overtired schtick is that they're nothing but little boys. (I used to feel similarly about Kimmel, but I feel he actually finally grew up. Especially this year.) I also regrettably list one actual child actor - I say regrettably, because I don't think it's great form to criticize young performers in general - but I've always thought that Danielle Brisebois, the girl who became the new regular character on All In The Family once Struthers and Reiner had left, was just out of her league. Not much spark on camera, and she always sounded like she was reading her lines for the first time. She was in the original cast of Annie on Broadway, so I tend to wonder if she was better suited for the stage than for the camera. But the result is that those set of episodes really went downhill. (I also think the departure of Struthers and Reiner had a lot to do with that, but casting Brisebois wasn't the answer.)

But, I will also say that I feel Jersey Boys is really sui generis. The way that book, music, set, and staging work together is expertly done, in a way that I can't say any other jukebox show has been so far. I would say something similar for Twyla Tharp's unique story-through-dance vignette concept for her revue Movin' Out. Both shows are true theatrical visions of their own - not like anything else I've seen, and so far not able to be replicated. (I didn't see either of Tharp's shows that followed - the ones based on Dylan and Sinatra - but based on their reception they didn't seem to communicate the same kind of theatrical magic that Movin' Out did.)

One of the big problems, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, is simply that the lives of these big stars never really lend themselves well to the kind of specificity and theatricality that the book of a musical really needs. It's one thing to present the songs and bank on the nostalgia and energy that that music provides - it's quite another to have to make up something around them that sustains that mood AND (hopefully) gets us from song to song in a credible way, without winding up with rather mundane life details or a deadly formulaic "and then she wrote / and then she sang" kind of thing. In the era that we now consider to be more or less the mature "golden age" of musicals (Rodgers and Hammerstein, and forward), the story tended to come first, and the writers would work together to most effectively figure out where the songs-to-be would land best - what big moments in the story needed to be musicalized, etc. For some of that time, the emphasis would still be on the hopeful "hit songs" that would have a life outside the show, but the songs were still written with an eye on how they progressed the story or highlighted a certain emotional moment. But these jukebox shows work the other way around - the songs operate on their own level, and the book is retrofitted to attempt to give them a context they were never meant to fit. (The general idea that the story of any singer's life can be told specifically and meaningfully around the songs that made them famous is really very flimsy and artificial when you think about it.) So really, these shows have a tough row to hoe from the very beginning. Which is why most of them don't work - the premise of the songs being famous is no guarantee at all that they will help add up to a truly satisfying book musical.

I like Stewart's work, and I do like Barnum - but to call it one of Broadway's best-loved shows is a huge stretch, lol. I tend to think most people don't even know it. (The other three shows mentioned are indisputable classics, IMO.)

That sums it up. If you expect a certain activity, always best to ask about it first. That said, I do resent being upsold. Some escorts will state upfront in their ads that they will charge extra for certain things (or, for instance, delineate the difference in cost between, say, a massage and more than that, etc). If there are "hidden charges" that come up later in conversation, I would tend to move on to someone else who is more specific from the outset.