On Musicals

Yesterday I went to see a matinee showing of Mamma Mia! For those of you not familiar with the "Broadway smash hit," the show features ABBA songs, but the plot has nothing whatsoever to do with ABBA, which is not necessarily a bad thing. You will probably not be surprised to hear that this was not a very good movie. The audience for a matinee showing of Mamma Mia! was mostly elderly women, plus one younger woman who turned to give me a dirty look every time I laughed (which happened mostly when Pierce Brosnan was attempting to sing). Finally, the woman got up in a huff and moved to another seat, which was good because I was just about ready to start kicking the back of her seat.

Anyway, after accepting the fact that I was watching a musical, which I find to be a genre that requires a special kind of suspension of disbelief, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I know this is wholly unoriginal of me to say, but I'm going to say it anyway: I love Colin Firth.

In general, I'm not a big fan of musicals--all of that earnest singing grates on my nerves. My dad despises them because he thinks they're ridiculous. After all, no one in real life just bursts out in song about whatever is going on around them, right? Well . . . obviously, my dad doesn't know what happens when I'm driving by myself because I do burst into song about whatever is going on around me. The quality isn't Tony-worthy. In fact, it's often worse than Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, which I played in the pit for once and hoo boy, I can tell you, that is one terrible musical.

On Tuesday I was driving down my street on the way back from running errands, and a guy was running on the sidewalk. It was a hot and humid day, and the guy's gray t-shirt was drenched. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to burst out in song. He passed me as I slowed down to turn into my driveway, and he gave me a strange look, which I first attributed to heat exhaustion. Then I remembered that earlier in the day, I had parked in a shadeless parking lot, and when I had returned to my car, I had opened the windows to air things out a bit. I realized that I had neglected to completely close one of the windows in the back. So, the runner got to hear me sing "Sweaty Dude Running Down My Street." Did he know that I was singing a song about him? I'll never know, but I'm certain it sounded better than Pierce Brosnan's rendition of "S.O.S."

Speaking of music, this is what I probably should have been working on yesterday:

This is what I spent three hours on instead:

Singing di-da-le-ba is a lot harder than you might think.