A good neighborhood makes a world of difference. I'm so glad yours seems like it's going to be awesome. My parents' neighborhood rocks; they all look after each other. Which is cool because it's all new construction; it totally doesn't have to be that way, but they make it what they want.

In a year my neighborhood went from relatively quiet (barring the folks who like to do fifty through the parking lot and crazy lady downstairs) to daycare central (and by daycare I mean ten year old girls with lots of giggly friends in the development across the fence).

You know, if I were to live in a loud neighborhood, I feel that it should be mandatory that there be block parties. I was in a college town in Germany (not Pirmasens, the name is slipping me) and they had an awesome block party. Parade, band stand with a reggae band, drinking in the streets. Even though I wasn't participating, it was really nice just to have that fun noise livening up the place.

Have a party and blast your music, I can get behind that. Yappy dog? Blam blam. Katow katow.

Wow, sarameg, your friend Lisa really rocks!! All the stuff that both of you did--very impressive! Sounds like you have a great new neighborhood. Excellent!

Happy birthday, beth!! I'm glad I got this in before midnight.

Reading all the posts since yesterday now has me listening to Les Miz clips. I turned off the tv to listen, and now that I'm in between music clips, I'm being entertained by my cat's snoring. She can't be quiet even when she's asleep!

I saw a great understudy play Harold Hill in Chicago when Dick Van Dyke had to save his laryngitis-y voice for the evening performance. I'm guessing he might have been better than DVD in the part.

Patti Lupone has always irritated me in her musical parts when I've heard them on the original-cast albums (I've never seen her in person). Her Evita is way over the top.

I've always wanted to see/direct/stage a version of Evita that had a female Che as an interesting counterpoint for how women could come from the same type of background and then diverge into two different paths. "A Waltz for Che and Eva" would be really cool to see it done as two women dancing as a mirror waltz instead of a standard couple version, circling around each other instead of around the floor as a couple.

It makes me sad that people don't like Bernadette Peters. If nothing else, she was a singing cat on Animaniacs!

I like Bernadette Peters, but I can see how not everyone would.

I'm also in the liking Bernadette Peters camp. I actually have a solo album she put out at one point and I use her singing Black Bird to test vocal speaker systems quite often. It's recorded almost completely dry and for a good portion of the song it is just solo vocal and then adds an acoustic guitar. It's a great track for sound and for testing female vocals on systems. For male vocals I've been using Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt.

I'm sara when it comes to make decisions about food and take outs. If I'm not coming to an ice cream store with a strong mind about what I want, I can spend 20 minutes there, just choosing flavors.

groups of anarchist

This reminds me. I once ran into a cool guy in CS. We both were hosts for the same girl, and she had to bring him back the keys of his flat, and another CS dude joined us. That ended up with the other CS dude and the girl watching us arguing and debating almost everything on earth, politics, religion, whatever. Anyway, he told me in one of the parts of our "conversation" (more like a spectacle, considering the others' reaction to it) that he lied about some things just to check my reaction to them. That would have annoyed me in 99% of the cases, but having so much fun arguing with the guy and knowing we're not in any sort of relationship and that'll probably the last time I'm about to see him, I didn't care much about it.

But now I'm wondering. He told me about an experiment that's about to (or did) happen. About a bunch of anarchists that's, in order to live in a society they have faith in, gonna live for a few months on an isle close to SF. I pretty much said "good luck with that" and thought about what will happen when someone will murder someone else there. Was this a lie, too? Anyone heard about such a thing?

Drew! Help me out here. How do I answer this guy? [link]

Granted it's not a clear representation of the designs, but USA designers, not my designs, yadda yadda. Plus, it just makes me laugh that he wants to use an image from focus at the Goodman for his community theatre fliers.

I've always wanted to see/direct/stage a version of Evita that had a female Che as an interesting counterpoint for how women could come from the same type of background and then diverge into two different paths.

OMG, Kathy, I've often had the same thought! (Never mind that part of it is due to the fact that I love Che's songs.) But yeah, I think it would be fascinating to see a female Che.

For male vocals I've been using Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt.

I love that cover. Love a lot of tracks on that album actually.