Spam, Spam, Spam

On Tuesday, my parents took Megan and I out to see Spamalot, the musical based off of the fantastic Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's something that I've seen before, when I was in London, in 2007, and when the production reached Boston a year later. Even three times in, it's still an absolutely hilarious musical, and one of the joys was watching my parents and Megan watch it for the first time.

One of the things that I've long appreciated from the musical and soundtrack is at how well the musical relates to the rest of the Monty Python canon. References were numerous in the songs, and it's delightful to hear references from not only the other films (Always Look on the Bright Side of Life is possibly the most obvious) but smaller references to the Flying Circus pop up frequently in the dialog and lyrics. A couple that I heard this time around were from the Parrot Sketch and the Lumberjack song, as well as a bunch of regular popular culture references, such as a Lady Gaga riff, as well as shots at Britney Spears, Michael Moore, and Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss.

What has long impressed me with the series is how it's retained the defining characteristic of the Pythons to look at popular culture and find the humor in it - there are very few groups out there that can do that - and the productions that Monty Python put together thrived on going right up to the edge when it came to humor. It was funny, but it was also incredibly thoughtful, and has an edge to it that makes a lot of their sketches timeless. Spamalot is very much the same. At the risk of putting off the hand that feeds them, the creators do a couple great numbers: 'You Won't Succeed on Broadway if you Don't Have Any Jews' and 'The Song That Goes Like This' that are satirical of the formulas in Broadway, which had the audience roaring on Tuesday night. At the same time, I'm waiting for the Seven Days to miss the point by pointing out how politically incorrect the show is.

Humor is something that's tricky. My mother can't stand Rusty Dewees aka 'The Logger' (For those out of State), because of his character and the style of comedy that he does, as a highly stereotypical Vermont redneck. I can't get enough of the guy. Comedy, I think, should offend to the core - it's a long style that goes way back to the roots of comedy. Laughter is often the best thing to get people not only interested in something, but realizing at how ridiculous some of the stands people take on any sorts of issues.

The big thing in the news over the past couple of weeks has been the issue of bullying and high profile suicides of six gay youths who were ousted. I can't help but think back to the line in the musical: "Just think Herbert, in a thousand years, this will still be controversial." This issue probably will be. Hopefully, people will eventually take the stance that the Pythons seem to have run with: life is ridiculous, and it's probably best not to take things too seriously.

Burlington

I spent the entire day up in Burlington today, visiting people. Went by very fast. I left the house at around nine this morning, and drove up, stopping by to visit my friend Sam for a little while. We walked around Church Street and Borders for about an hour, while I looked around for a final Christmas gift for my Father. (Didn't find it) But I did find that there's a new Worst Case Senerio Handbook out there, which is awesome. I love those books, and own the original and Travel editions, which will be in close reach while I'm overseas. At around noon, I drove over to Rachel's apartment, and hung out with her for a while. We talked for a while, and walked downtown to the Merril theater and watched the movie Syriana. I was totally blown away by everything in that movie. Outstanding story, characters, acting, camera work and score. I was completely fixated on it the entire time, and found it to be an extremely powerful, moving and terrifying story. I'm going to type up a full review tomorrow, but in a nutshell, it's a number of intertwined stories that revolve around Oil, Terrorism, the CIA, Politics, Oil Companies, and a bunch of other related things. It's written by the same guy who did Traffic, which I was also amazed at, and they do an even better job here. Rachel enjoyed it. We talked about it over some food at the Red Onion, a small resturaunt at the base of Church Street, which I'd never eaten at before. They made some good sandwiches. After that, we went back to her apartment and talked about a number of things, as usual. I was a little frustrated with myself. There were a couple of things that I wanted to say and do, but I just can't seem to get the right words into my mouth at all. :-\ . I wish that I was better with that. It didn't help that the cold walk was really making it hard to talk anyway. It was great to see her again. After that, went by and met up with Sam at the U-Mall, hung out with him for a while longer at his house, talked about Syriana and politics with him for a while, then returned home. Long, fun and busy day.

Whiteouts and Meetings

I had a very busy day yesterday - Up to Burlington and back, a couple trips around Central Vermont, through all types of weather.Had Math at 9 to 10 and we finally got to things that I actually understand - some geometry and things that I can remember in high school. From there, I drove up to Burlington. My friend Rachel had finished her senior thesis project up at UVM, and was presenting it before a committe of teachers there. She invited me up a couple of weeks ago. So I went up and walked around Church Street for a while, then walked up and met up with her at UVM. I didn't get lost while I was up there, which was a plus, given all the construction that they have on campus there. The presentation went over very well, I think. I'm not entirely sure if I completely understood everything that she was talking about, because it's biology, and I haven't had a bio class for years. But she got through it well enough, and we waited outside for her and the committee to talk privately, while I talked with her roommate for a while. She came out pretty happy and relieved, and we went had some refreshments. I left a little later because I was afraid of getting a ticket where I was parked, (Fortunently didn't get one) and headed home. While I passed Waterbury, I stopped off and visited Eric, who'd just gotten up. We talked for a while and decided to hang out for the afternoon. We drove off to the Berlin Mall and walked around there for a while, then got dinner, headed to Norwich for the Tactics meeting that we had. It actually went over well, with some games locked down for the future, some procedures for those games and some other things like that. Probably one of the most successful meetings that we've had in a long time, which I was really happy about. Then went over to the Library with Eric to show him the Pirates of the Caribbean 2 trailer (Now online at http://movies.yahoo.com) and then we headed home, where we hit a bit of a whiteout. Visibility went down to almost zero and we had to really show down. We got to Waterbury okay, but I ran into troubles as I got home. Backroads were okay, if slightly slippery, but the big hill a couple miles from my house was immpassble and I started spinning about halfway up and couldn't make it to the top. I had to back down a mile or so, almost going into a ditch, and turned around, went back through Montpelier and got home almost an hour later. Wee!