Well first off, today is my sister’s birthday. My sister Stephanie turns 21. She is an excellent sister I highly recommend her. She is also a very good photographer. I highly recommend her for that too. She took the picture thats at the top of the site.

Unfortunately, thats not the fun story I have to tell right now. Its not even that fun, but I went driving today! Not sissy driving in suburban residential areas but full out driving on the streets with real danger. I drove from the Square One area down to lakeshore then back again to my house and I even parked 4 times on our stops along the way.

Perhpaps there were two small potential incidents, but they stayed potential and I didnt crash into anything. So I’m feeling good about driving and I’m excited to do some more.

It’s mildly ironic that I will again be writing about a musical. Today I saw Mamma Mia! at Square One with Sarah and my sister Andrea. I have to say I was disappointed. It wasn’t bad, but I remember seeing the trailer and having high hopes. I think it’s always risky when you turn a stage show into a movie. It’s a different kind of story telling and a different style of acting. Although I have not seen the stage show, it seemed that not a sufficient number of changes were made to make this a good movie.

First, many of the actors were still doing stage acting on film, which is absolutely horrid to watch. Second, the songs didn’t flow into the story and seemed really musical like. Not that they shouldn’t feel like a musical, but the transition in and out of song should have blended better making it feel natural and not forced. Speaking of not blending well, every time the ensemble cast was involved it seemed out of place and awkward. Another awkward thing about the movie was that the action always seemed to be moving. Again, this doesn’t seem like a bad thing, to avoid talking heads, but the characters always seemed to be going somewhere and were never in one place at a time. This gave the audience a real hard time to get settled with the suroundings. Every other shot was someone running around on this tiny island.

Just like We Will Rock You where the choice of songs is limited to those from one artist, this time ABBA, the story was again weak. The only character with depth was Donna played by Meryl Streep, the single mother of the bride to be. but even her carefree character didn’t give much for you to chew on. The individual performances were exceptional. Although Streep seemed to take too many cues from Celine Dion when it came to putting emotion into her singing and arm movements. Peirce Brosnan, although not a spectatular singer had a soild performer as one of Sophia’s three possible fathers.

Many of these issues, I’m not sure if it is a problem with the musical or the movie, but I can definately see the potential as a stage show. I just don’t think the transition into a film version was accomplished sucessfuly.

Hmmm. So I went to see We Will Rock You again. This time at the Panasonic Theatre. Well first off, my ears are a bit less sensitive now. A bit muted I would say. Fingers crossed it’s temporary.

Well the show was definitely different. At a different venue it has to be. Supposedly the space is less than half of the original. The first number was plagued with technical difficulties including feedback and an audio sync problem with the recorded sound effects. This seemed to shatter the energy of the ensemble cast and they didn’t pick it up until they changed costumes halfway though the first act. The leads, Yvan Pedneault and Erica Peck grace the spotlight with their youthful rebellious energy and great chemistry. Unfortunately the cheesy lines they spew out make their characters more awkward than cute. None the less, they are both excellent performers. The real stand out star in my opinion is found in Valerie Stanois. Her performance of Oz is excellent, the musical numbers with her performing stand out in my eyes. She found ways to put emotion into songs that would not necessarily facilitate them and this brought a depth to her character not found in many others. Her performance is complimented by her guy, Duff, played by Sterling Jarvis. His over the top character was an asset to the piece and his chemistry with Stanois was excellent. It birthed many hilarious and entertaining musical numbers and moments when the duo was involved.

The story has always been half baked. A dystopian future with no musical instruments, with a prophecy of a dreamer that would bring back rock. Well I guess when you’re limited by the songs of one group that didn’t necessarily write them for story telling, you’re going to have a weak story but, the smaller space seemed to take away from the spectacle of the show that it used to be. This spectacle distracted me from the story problems the first time around. They try to resolve this by distracting the audience from the storyline issues by making it rock concert like. Many times the rock band, which was suspended above the stage was revealed to the audience in the more ‘rocky’ songs. Personally I found this slightly awkward and did nothing to induce the suspension of disbelief that would have formed if they hadn’t frequently brought us back to reality. At one point during a love song a oddly dressed, awkwardly statured guitar player escapes from the band cage comes on stage and plays his guitar solo on stage merely feet from where the actors are standing. Yes, I understand the idea to make it rock concert like, but when you’re trying to tell a story about a world without instruments you can’t have people standing around with instruments.

Overall the show was enjoyable, it definitely got smiles from me, which is how I truly judge shows. The show is potentially amazing if you’re going for a rock concert, but I went to be told a story using the music of Queen and I came out mildly disappointed. On the side though, if you know me, then you know that during a life performance with humour I will frequently laugh… loud. But unfortunately, I infrequently laugh when everyone else is laughing. This happened a couple times in the first act. AS SOON as the house lights came on for intermission the woman sitting in front of me turns around and says: “You’re laugh is hillarious”.

” I’m sorry, I always do that,” I reply.

She responds saying I shouldn’t be sorry and that she actually enjoyed it. Well I’m glad she got a kick out of the evening, perhaps even if it wasn’t from the show.

You know what’s eerie. Driving in traffic on one side of the highway in heavy traffic while the other side has absolutely no cars. It’s just because of an accident, but before you can see the accident it’s just weird. You know like a city evacuating after an alien attack. Now that we’ve past the accident it’s the other side that’s packed while we move relatively quickly.

I hare driving downtown. I prefer public transit. From Mississauga that’s really inefficent. Oh well.

I’m sitting in my living room sipping milk. It is quite milky and delicious. I had a very interesting morning. Well my sister Andrea works at the Second Cup by Square One, when she’s working I like to go visit her and have a drink. Well, unfortunately it’s at a very awkward distance from my house. It’s walkable but just a tad too far to walk on a hot day. Walking is not the best option but there is a perfectly easy way to get there by bus. Heck, there are two different bus routes close to my house that will get you there conveniently. But, it’s just a tad too close for that. Also, spending $2.75 to to buy overpriced drinks at that lifestyle food establishment is not worth it. So, what is the best way to travel to this place? A bike of course. The problem was that although I had a bike I never used it. It was grossly dirty and on my balcony. I have been putting off cleaning it and tuning it up for a long time but I decided this morning I was going to do it. Now the tires were flat but I was home alone and didn’t know where our pump was, so I decided that I’d be able to make it to the closeish gas station that had an air pump. This descision was mistake to say the least. Bicycles are supposed to you know be efficent in the sense that you can get further with the same amount of energy used walking. This was not the case with flat tires. I decided after getting three quarters of the way that I would walk the bike. I filled the tires and I was off ( with a lot more efficency) to Second Cup.

I sipped a refreshing drink while reading the newspaper. I read an article about We Will Rock You which I am seeing tonight. I saw it on it’s very first showin previews at the Cannon theatre in 2007. It was excellent. It has since moved to the Panasonic theatre where Blue Man Group used to be. The review in the paper said it was better this time around with cuts and changes that were beneficial to the show’s enjoyment. I’ll be the judge of that.

I returned home after a short stop at Square One with a new sense of freedom. After I had finally got the bike out, now I can go alot more places.

I failed to mention that a partial reason why I started again is because they released a wordpress iPod touch application that I wanted to try. I’m writing this on my iPod at the moment.

That is all.

You may or may not know this, but in grade 7ish I think, I had a blog. I posted EVERY DAY. For about eightish months I posted every single day. I would have kept going too, but the posts I wrote got me into trouble. You see, you can’t tell someone you were doing something one day, then write in your blog you did something else. This shock of realizing that some people actually read it, scared me. So I stopped. Why start again? Hmmm. I’m a bit more adventurous, a bit less stupid and am alot more bored. Im also not going to try to write every day. Only when something interesting happens, although what I realized back then is that something somewhat story worthy happens everyday, but you frequently forget it soon after. Reading posts meeely a week after the events which happened, gave me perspective on how much of our lives we simply forget. So here’s to round two. Someone reading may say: Why? No one cares. My response, you’re correct no one cares. In my experience though from way back when is that people do read it and are frequently amused. So 1. I do get to remember these seemingly meaningless days of my life and 2. a small group of people will read my rants and be mildly amused.

What story worthy event happened today? Well I started a blog again. Its a mistake, I will probably stop soon. We will see though. Oh see another thing happened today I may look back on and see as significant. I wrote half of a song for a musical that I’m writing. I don’t want to say too much, as knowing me, it may never happen. Once you write one song though it can’t stop can it? I also attended my fourth poker night, it was good fun. I didn’t win much, I also didn’t take any pictures so thats that.

That is all for now. Peace.