Just random stuff up to which I have been over the last few weeks.

My buddy Renee had volunteered me to host a Jaws viewing party. I was all for that. I had seen it when it was first out, when I was twelve. I’d already read the book.

(on the beach at Rehoboth)

Anyway, Josh and Mariah and Susan and Renee came over on a late Saturday afternoon, bringing treats. (Renee brought the makings for blue margaritas, matching the beach theme, and Susan had gummy sea critters to put in them.) We ordered pizza and worked our way through the movie, commenting away and pausing as desired. It was a hoot. I will say, this is possibly the first time I’d watched it with a cinematic eye and enjoyed that, it’s a great film. But that shark still looks fake as hell.

I did tell the anecdote about the Alex Kintner sandwich,which I hope is true. And a few days later, this popped up on my FB feed.

Fun, well not-so-fun, postscript. I’d ordered the blu-ray from Amazon, and it looked like you could get the blu-ray of Jaws 1, 2 and 3 for cheap, so I bought that. But it turned out it was mislabeled, it was actually the DVD of Jaws 2, 3 and “the revenge”. So I had to order the actual Jaws Blu-Ray again, which showed up on time. But I have the next three movies if I want to have another party.

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A couple of weeks later, my beloved Savoynetters did their annual show at the Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in England. Although my habit in the past was to just show up every three years or so, I’d actually been the last three years in a row, so had let this one go by. For the last few years, you could actually live-stream the show, and I’d planned to (and paid) to do that, but it turned out that although you could stream it, you had to wait a day or so after the performance to do that.

Anyway, a bunch of us NYC Savoynetters who had not got to England this year met at my buddy Carol D’s apartment building to take over their party common room in the basement and watch the show. It was a great deal of fun! Generally, it was well-cast and well-performed. If you don’t know Sorcerer, you may want to skip this, but there were two twists. One was that the villagers actually worshiped the evil spirit Ahrimanes. So Dr. Daly was more of a high priest than a vicar, and the Notary in this production was a priestess, and Alexis and Aline actually slit their palms with a knife as part of their ceremony. It was interesting and vaguely creepy in a Midsommar/Blair Witch kind of way. Then in Act 2, they actually reinstated the cut Ahrimanes scene (music was lost, so Diego the music dirctor wrote new music) and that was fascinating and a great touch.

Bravo for the experiment. I don’t know how successful it was. The Festival educator didn’t seem to like it much. The show only got one award (best female voice for Alyssa Mener’s Constance, yay!) and one nomination for best chorus. And Wells didn’t actually die at the end, he was still there, and I didn’t get it. But I approve of the experimentation and it was a really good show throughout.

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More soon, I’m traveling. And an audition this week, whee!