The Last 5 Weeks

I just went to Sarah Dessen’s blog and felt incredibly guilty that I hadn’t posted in about a million years.  I mean, she’s a big important writer with a husband and a life and who am I?  She manages to find time to blog every day.  It’s one o’clock and I haven’t even changed out of my jammies.  Please.

To defend myself, I have been incredibly busy lately.  Last weekend we opened Annie, so I was literally incommunicado for a whole week while we went through tech and dress rehearsals.  Because my boss is kind and generous, she scheduled me for mornings all week so I could make it to rehearsal in plenty of time to get ready.  So I basically went straight to the theater from the bookstore every day.  I think I made it home to take a nap one day that week, but every other day I had errands to run or hair to curl.  But it all paid off because we had an incredible opening weekend- it went better than we could have ever have guessed it would, and we’re having a ton of fun with it.  We did another show last night, and there were a lot of people there from my church.

Yesterday I got a huge surprise.  My sister, Jenny called me around eleven or eleven thirty a.m. to chat.  This wasn’t weird because she calls me at all sorts of weird times, and she said that she was on her lunch break.  I was running some errands in town so I chatted with her while I did those, and then I headed home.  Not five minutes after I got home, she hung up on me, and I suspected that the call had been dropped.  This was not uncommon.  And then I heard a knock on the door- you guessed it.  It was my sister surprising me!  She came to see the show this weekend.  I was so happy- my parents weren’t able to make it, and Jenny just decided to come out and surprise me.  She totally had me going, I had no idea that she was in town.  

I was excited to see my sister, and she also brought me the Rent book, which I carried around with me all day yesterday, and spent the morning reading.  I mean, this is the definitive source of all information about the Broadway production.  It’s got all these great pictures, the full libretto, quotes from everyone involved.  Rentheads on the internet call it the “Rent Bible.”  I know that it is the pinnacle of dorkiness to get this excited about a book, but I’m telling you, it’s awesome.

So yesterday was a Rent day.  I did the show at seven p.m.(I listened to Rent in the dressing room while I got ready,) and then Jenny and I went straight from the theater to Springfield, where we watched Rent at the Palace (they run second-run movies there for cheap.)  It was my third time seeing it in the theater, and it still hasn’t lost its magic.  It’s not a perfect movie by any means, and there are some real cheese moments in it (eg. Mark sticking the eviction notice up in Roger’s face in “Rent,” Roger rambling down the highway in the convertible, his hair blowing in wind) but I really do love it.  It’s coming out this month on DVD.  My sister made the comment that she was going to sleep at the store the night before and buy it as soon as it comes out.  (I think she was exaggerating.)

I have completely turned my sister into a Renthead.  Her first exposure to the show was going to see the movie with me the day before Thanksgiving, and by the time I had come back home for Christmas, she had completely memorized all the lyrics and had a picture of Jesse L. Martin on her desktop.  She loves it.  And with good reason.  
Pop culture update:

1. I couldn’t care less about American Idol, but House is coming back on Tuesday.  I am literally all atwitter with anticipation.  It will be the first time I get to sit down and watch it since Annie started rehearsals, so I am looking forward to my evening with Hugh.  


2. The Super Bowl is tomorrow and the only reason I even know who is playing is that Jess and Bud both live in Pittsburgh and Bud says that if the Steelers win, he and his roommates are going to pull an old awful couch that they have in their house out onto the street and burn it.  I couldn’t care less who wins, but I feel a moral obligation to cheer for Pittsburgh as a sign of solidarity with my Pittsburghian friends.  Especially considering that they are the only two people who read this blog.  


3. Oscar noms came out last week.  I’m excited for Reese Witherspoon and Keira Knightley and Joaquin Phoenix and Jake Gyllennhal, and Rachel Weisz, but I was disillusioned with the nominations as a whole.  No Laura Linney, no best director nomination for Peter Jackson, no Ralph Feinnes, and Chronicles of Narnia was shut out of the best score category.  Disappointing.


4. The Grammys are this week.  I’m cheering for Jack Johnson (nominated for his performance on “Sitting, Waiting, Wishing”) the Killers (“Mr. Brightside,” one of my favorites on Hot Fuss) Coldplay, (in general) and Nickel Creek (best contemporary folk album, which they probably won’t even show on TV.)


5. Keifer Sutherland beat Hugh Laurie for best actor in a drama at the SAG awards.  I was disappointed.  No one beats you, Hugh!  To console myself, I watched a Jeeves and Wooster and a House, and I felt a little better.


6. For my shell-shocked and extremely incoherent upsetness over the last new episode of Lost, visit the Lost link in my sidebar.  

Anyway.  That’s all I’ve got.  I am now going to get dressed, vacuum the living room, and possible watch Sense and Sensibility, which I borrowed from the library.  It has virtually everyone I love in it (everyone who is British, that is.)  I’ll post sometime next week to update you on how the closing weekend of Annie goes.  A bientot,

Brianne <><