Happy Christmas

  • snow!! lots of it!!!
  • semi-successful shopping
  • coat! nanos! laptop! 88-key midi controller!
  • road trip! no traffic! shortcuts!
  • florida
    sunshine
  • crazy vegan eats with supreme
    leader
  • 50-degree swimming!!
  • 5-star hotel for a song
  • breaking
    into harry potter world
  • no-line
    rollercasters!! the hulk!!
  • murder
    mystery!!
  • 45lbs of chinese
  • invoicing
  • retro
    rollerblading
  • htdj playing christmas
    music
  • south of the border restroom
    exerience
  • pirates’ cove!! spot it!!
  • ipad alaska photos
  • good times for
    all :-)

peace

Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me

Ryan's latest hit

Andrea and I braved the rain to see another awesome production with my buddy Ryan, this time by the justice theater project, with his pals Byron and Dave, playing three hostages imprisoned and chained in a windowless single room. Ryan played the Englishman, Byron the American, and Dave the Irishman – sounds like a cheap joke. But their plight, and willingness to find ways to support each other, draws you into an intense couple of hours. Once again, it’s theater like this that gives you more than any other form of culture.

Ryan stars in “A Numb3r”

Andrea and I went to see another great performance by my coworker buddy Ryan Brock, again with The Raleigh Ensemble Players, who tend to put on the more interesting material in really intimate settings – you can’t find better entertainment. This one dealt with cloning, challenging Ryan to play three different characters differentiated only by their accents (which were great and enough reason alone to see the show). Ryan’s intensity made the hour fly by, leaving you wishing for more. Enough said. One week left, don’t miss it!

Killer Joe, the play

We were blown away this weekend by the Raleigh Ensemble Players’ presentation of the off-broadway show “Killer Joe”. As a member of the audience, you’re practically injected into the living space of the trashy trailer that takes up 80% of the little theater, with three thin rows of chairs lining each side of it (we were on the “Pabst Blue Ribbon” side). It was like watching dysfunctional fireworks. My friend Ryan played the core role of Chris, down and out and looking for a way out. It was awesome to watch him nail the part.

SPOILER WARNING Continue reading “Killer Joe, the play”

Let it snow!

We’ve got a white day-after-Christmas!

It was snowing when we woke up this morning, and it kept up for an hour or two – just enough for us to scrape out a few small sled runs, throw a few snowballs, and harvest up enough snow for a snowman “little person”. Once we were frozen we headed back inside for some Burgundy Soup that Grammy and I scrounged up. Yum!

And Happy Birthday Grammy! We gave her tickets to see The Nutcracker performed by the Carolina Ballet Company and the Carolina Symphony Orchestra. We had to leave extra time for driving on the icy roads. We ended up in the FRONT ROW! We got to watch the percussion guy pull out all kinds of special noisemakers – he was only 10′ away from us. It was a great show, full of beautiful costumes and mesmerizing dancing – leaping acrobatics, a choreographed war between the rat and his mice and the nutcracker and his toy soldiers, and the enchanting “coffee” dancer – quite a hottie! And it’s a pretty rare treat to be that close to a full orchestra.

Mamma Mia!

With Grammie visiting for the weekend, Andrea and I headed over to Charlotte on Saturday to see Mamma Mia, a musical jammed with two dozen Abba tunes. Rockin campy wild hilarious cheesy rowdy fun! We’re still not quite sure how they pulled it off, but they overlapped a great comedy with nonstop disco jams (yeah baby) and actually made it all come together. We were all jumping out of our seats by the end. To cap it off, we went to “the best vegetarian restaurant in Charlotte”, as voted by readers of Creative Loafing (flashback!), called Kelly’s Kitchen. Yum…