RENT #8, 9, 10, 11, and 12

So during the months of September and October Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal returned to their roles of Mark and Roger in RENT. I couldn't resist playing the lottery as much as I could to try and see them and was lucky enough to see it 5 times. I was obsessed.

Here is my rundown of their recent return to RENT.

Adam Pascal is sexy as hell and I could watch him sing and jump off tables in plaid pants all day long. He and Tamyra Gray were fantastic together. His little dance during "I'm Roger" was priceless. It was hysterical to watch him goofing off with Angel during Over the Moon.

Anthony Rapp is fantastic and should be my new best friend. It was so much fun to see his spaz dancing in person. He and Adam have amazing chemistry, you can tell that they are close friends. The tension between them at the end was incredible.

The crowd at the Nederlander while they were back, was so much better than the crowd a year ago. I met so many nice people teaming up for lottery or chatting at intermission.

Yes, I got a lot of crap for spending so much time trying to get tickets, but they were cheap, and I could not have had a better time doing anything else.

RENT my history

So I am a bit of a RENT head and proud of it. Back in 1996 when articles first started making their way to Colorado Springs my mother brought them to my attention. I was groomed from childhood to desire a bohemian NY life. The baby picture my parents chose to put in my yearbook shows me wearing my favorite NY T-shirt that was lost on the flight to Colorado when I was 4. She would tell me all about Greenwich Village and how bohemian and NY cool it was. Initially she thought I would appreciate, and I did/do the costumes. Funky, bright, outrageous and mismatched, sparkly and totally my style. I would pour over articles from the Denver Post and Newsweek. Reading over and over about this cool, passionate, unknown rock and roll cast and the tragedy of Jonathan Larson's death. I taped and watched the 20/20 episode about Jonathan Larson about 100 times rewinding and listening to the short sound clips over and over because there was no CD yet. All of this made me long to be a New Yorker, not just by birth (I was born here) but I wanted to be one of the teenagers waiting all night for rush tickets and living in the big, bad, scary, exciting city.

That summer I took my first trip by myself to NJ to visit my grandparents. I was 15 and at the start of my musical theatre obsession. My grandparents knew I wanted to go to Broadway and managed to get me tickets to RENT that August with the original cast and all. I don't actually remember much from that night except that I thought the building was really cool (lime green), the music was amazing, and that the girls in the front row were close enough to get spit on by Adam Pascal. I was a naive 15 year old and it took years before I realized how drop dead sexy Adam Pascal is in RENT. That night I bought a T-shirt and the large poster. I had to wait till Christmas that year to get the CD because it was still not released when I saw the show. I still wear the T-shirt to bed and love that it is full of holes. The Poster, which is no longer available, is framed on my wall.

Later that trip I got to see Miss Saigon. I got my first lesson in TKTS by going with my grandparents to the World Trade Center to get tickets. Miss Saigon was incredible of course. I am a sucker for the big melodramatic Webber musical and was able to get that CD immediately. Although this show was awesome too, RENT had made the biggest, most lasting impression.

Irregulars

I heart the Kiki Strike books by Kristen Miller. The two books follow the adventures of a band of smart, sarcastic, Girl Scout rejects as they explore and defend NYC. Their adventures are the kind I would day dream about while working summers at the zoo or painting sets in high school. Their attitude is one that I always wished I had, pretended I had, but in reality was too practical to embody. The best part is they are well written and clearly from an older standpoint. The language is sophisticated and doesn't dumb itself down to mimic a teen voice. I hate when adults write teen fiction and insert "like" into every other sentence to sound like a teenager. Here are the covers so you can easily recognize them at the book store...

The First Book


The Second Book

I must admit that kid and teen books are a guilty pleasure that regularly indulge after reading a few good true-life NY books or autobiography/memoirs.

If you want more info on Kiki Strike go to www.kikistrike.com and pay particular attention to Annika's blog which is chock full of weird stuff. I soent hours googling the stuff I read about on that blog.

Say something, Anything

So I am testing this whole blogging thing. I like reading them so much that I thought I might like making my own. Unlike all of the NY and knitting themed blogs I like so much, I am a bit more A.D.D. so this blog will contain anything and everything that interests me, bugs me, anything I am creating, my slow meandering journey towards starting my own business, and my thoughts about where and what I want to be when I "grow up". Here goes something...