Niko

 Haven't posted in a while.  So... some random.

Went to see Sweeney Todd tonight.  There was a point early on (up to and during The Worst Pies in London, mostly) where I thought it was going to fall totally flat for me, but things improved drastically.  I think Sondheim's style of really weaving of the songs through scenes worked *really* well in movie format... at least as Tim Burton did it.  There comes a point where you stop noticing the line between spoken dialogue and song and the whole thing has this beautiful flow to it.  *happy sigh*  On the gore front, at least the throat slitting was pretty obvious about what was coming so I had a chance to squinch my eyes a bit instead of actually watching.  I *really* could have done without the way we also got a shot of each and every corpse dropping head-first down Sweeney's chute to splat in the basement.  Ugh.  But again, easy enough to look away for.  Overall, I left the theater with my "just saw a live show" natural high, so excellent movie! :)

THIS is the best practical joke ever.  :)  Not sure it's worth $400 (and counting?) though.

Had my first ever snafu with ordering-by-mail for Christmas gifts, and I'm stewing a bit over it.  Ordered a couple small trick-boxes from Bits and Pieces last weekend that were going to be used as gift-card-delivery mechanisms.  I hate giving gift cards, so always try to have some little token to go along with the cards.  I get notified at 5:45 PM on Friday that they haven't even *shipped* the items yet and there's no way to get them to me by Christmas.  My focus has turned to making sure that they *don't* ship it now, as the shipping to me and back is going to be practically as much as the gift itself, and it's got me in a tiff to have to pay that for a package that I know in advance is not going to be useful to me.  Been trying to get through to Customer Service all morning, and it keeps hanging up on me after five minutes on hold.  *sigh*

On the music front, I've very much been enjoying Savvy_Elf's Christmas music meme and Pandora internet radio.  I know there are other sites like Pandora (let you put in "seed" songs that you like, and it plays music that fits your tastes).  Pandora works the best for me of any of the stations like it that I've tried.  I love that you can click "Why are you playing this?" and get something like:  "Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features mellow rock instrumentation, folk influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, acoustic sonority, and extensive vamping."   It's fun to see my music tastes broken down into their component elements like that. :)

I don't really use this LJ for theater stuff so often, but there's no reason why I can't. :)

Just saw this very interesting video about the musical version of "The Opposite of Sex".  I love that it's got some nice meaty content, not *just* the usual catch phrases and propaganda that you get in a lot of clips online.  Plus, I think the show looks much better than I expected.  Loved the movie, but didn't really know what to expect from the musical.

http://broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=11558

I also noticed on G4's coverage of ComicCon the other day (watching it OnDemand :) ) that the musical "Zombie Prom" that had several stage productions quite a few years ago now, has been made into an independent film.  The G4-guy was raving about it.  Interesting to see something that I saw get lukewarm response as a theatrical production achieve new life as a movie, since things seem to go the other way around these days.

Hmmmm...haven't posted here in a while.  Here's another long ramble to make up for it.

Life in General
The last few weeks, I've had my first guilt-free veg out time after probably six months of nothing but work stress.  At first, it felt really weird...like my brain had forgotten how to just relax.  I've started making up for it with some heavy gaming, though... primarily Dragon Quest VIII and Sims 2.  DQ VIII was a great game!  I wasn't expecting much, because I was badly bored by the last one, but VIII has reaffirmed my faith in the franchise.  I just started Sims 2 for the first time last week, and that's owning my soul right now.  I think it's going to have some heavy competition from Kingdom Hearts 2, though.  

(Ack!  Just found out that Suikoden V came out recently, too!  It never rains but it pours.)

Con on the Cob is ramping up for Year 2, and it looks like we're going to be staking our claim as a serious convention with this one.  Big name guests and a "Savage Worlds" gathering that's being hyped in some big places.  I'm a little overwhelmed personally, but luckily I'm just one little cog. :) 

Otaku Stuff
Got some cool goodies in recently that I'm very happy with.  A ceramic Totoro music-box for my little collection, and my first ever order from Amazon.co.jp.  I got two Spiral artbooks (very pretty!), Salty Dog 4 (drop-dead gorgeous), a three-volume manga adaptation of "The Forgotten Beasts of Eld" (my favorite book ever), and a book of Hirashi Hirai illustrations.  The latter was of interest to me because I liked his work in Infinite Ryvius and Scr-y-ed, and there's good representation of those series in addition to Gundam Seed...but the book itself is a little lightweight, both physically and aesthetically.  The artwork is mostly of a fairly generic "collage-y" sort of look from DVD covers, magazine spreads, etc.  A few are pretty good, but it just doesn't feel as polished and appealling as the other three artbooks I got.  Also, the book itself is quite floppy and the pages are a MUCH lighter stock than I usually expect in an artbook...more like a magazine sort of stock than an illustration book.  Still, it was also a less-expensive book price-wise, so I guess it makes sense that the quality would be a little less.

Anime viewing has slowed down a bit lately.  I was way behind in AOD reviewing, so I've been focused on that.  Got Kino, Happy Lesson, DICE Season 1, and 2 volumes of Macross reviewed in the space of about 6 weeks.  Working on "Final Fantasy: Unlimited" now.  This'll be my first 20+ episode series to review in a while (DICE doesn't count), so it should be a challenge.  :)

V. excited for the Saiyuki OVA that was announced recently.  And very bummed that my subscription to ZeroSum is running out just when the Reload manga is getting so good. I can't afford to renew my subscription right now, and I was mainly getting it for Side B anyway.  Saiyuki was just a fringe benefit.  Still, at least I got my hard-copy of that hottie youkai Hakkai closeup before my time ran out.  :) 

Reading
My current reading is *STILL* Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson, which I started sometime before Christmas.  This book is just unending!  Not in a bad way...I'm actually enjoying it a lot.  Erikson is just awesome at this epic, larger-than-life storytelling, albeit with a strong side of rather gruesome imagery.  It's just that his books are such dense reads that I keep picking up manga or other lighter fare at times when I have a quick ten minutes to kill  (which seems to be most of my reading time lately). 

Theater
Went to the Reduced Shakespeare Company's new show, Completely Hollywood, last weekend.  This makes my 11th time seeing the RSC ( + 1 local theater group's performance of the Shakespeare show notable for me getting dragged up on stage to be Ophelia in the audience participation segment).  The show was great as usual, and I picked up the DVD of their Complete History of America (abridged) while I was there, so score.  :)

This weekend I have tickets for "Four Bitchin' Babes", which is most exciting for me because Dierdre Flint is part of the group now, and she's a real favorite of mine.  One thing I'm worried about is that my dad is coming, too.  I'm fretful that he'll have a bad time, since the whole point of this show is a kind of estrogen-heavy girl-centric humor thing.  But he was the one who expressed interest when I invited my mom, so it's his own fault.  :)