I've Had a Great Run of Seeing Theater The Last Couple Months

Now, I usually see 2-3 shows a year. Obviously, I would always like to see more, but there are things called time and money that can put limitations on things. I have a whole rant on ticket prices, not just for theater, but in general, that I could go on, but I'll save that for another time. And I never win lotteries. I enter them, never win.

However, the same could not be said for my sister the last couple months. It seemed like the only lottery she couldn't win was the one for Oh, Mary. In the last two months we saw The Notebook, Our Town, and Gypsy (in previews). That's a pretty good run. The Notebook really is a notch above most of the other movie to musical adaptations we've been getting lately. It changed enough from the movie, especially how the flashbacks to Young Noah and Allie were told to us, to make it feel like it's own little thing. Our Town is Our Town. I had never seen it before and now I can say I have. And now I can say  I've seen a Kenny Leon directed show, too. 

But the grandmommy of them all was Gypsy. I got to see Audra on stage for the second time, and my sister got to see her for the first time, and what an introduction for her. It's such a staggering performance. This production better be filmed for PBS Great Performances or something because it's a great revival that makes such smart choices. I want to see it again. And I need the cast recording so I can listen Audra's "Rose's Turn" on repeat.

Then my family sees a show together every Christmastime, and this year's selection was Sunset Boulevard because that was the one my dad was most interested in seeing. Thank god he's not a Gypsy fan, or otherwise we would've been out of luck when they had their flu outbreak. It's a great production no doubt. With multimedia becoming a trend on Broadway in recent years, this seems to be the only show that it really felt essential to the telling. But I'm still not an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan.

And there's so much theater coming this spring that I want to see. 

I still need to see Death Becomes Her. That looks like a freaking blast of musical comedy. I want to see Maybe Happy Ending because I've heard nothing but good things, and if we want original musicals on Broadway, we should go see the ones that make it to the Great White Way. I want to see BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical. And now I'm blanking on what's coming but I know there will be more. There will always be more.

journal, the theatre

The Best Movies I Watched in 2024

Here are the best movies I watched this year. Also check me out on Letterboxd. Honestly, not my best year for watching new movies, but I did catch up on a bunch of classics. And since I'm posting this late, I'm including one Babygirl, even though I just saw it yesterday and it is now 2025.

• Babygirl
• Challengers
• Conclave
• Fly Me to the Moon
• Gladiator II
• The Greatest Night in Pop
• Hit Man
• Juror #2
• Twisters
• Wicked

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cinema, lists

Trying to Utilize YouTube Playlists More

When I watch videos on YouTube, even if I like a video, I very rarely hit the like button. So when I want to go back and watch one again, I have to scroll through my history to try and find it, and it's finding a needle in a haystack. 

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I Think I'm Actually Going to Leave The Bad Place (Twitter)

I'm actually doing it, this is not an empty threat. My biggest obstacle in the past has always been me never deleting the app off of my phone, and I actually did it. it's no longer. 

I’ve just become a rat that keeps pressing the button. It’s the first thing I check in the morning, and I check it frequently, and just scroll. And scroll. And scroll. Even as a write this, I go to my phone and click the app that is now taking up Twitter’s spot.

I joined Threads when it first launched, and just today I joined Bluesky, so I am still on a social media platform like Twitter, but since I haven’t developed the habit like I have with Twitter, it might be easier to wean myself off the platforms.

We’ll see how long this lasts.

journal

Just Numb Right Now

How the hell is this happening again? Honestly I don't have anything else. We'll probably have a better picture in the next couple of weeks how this happened once every vote is counted and all the data is analyzed. Though I do have theories that I'm not brave enough at this moment to share. 

We have four more years of fighting like hell in front of us. But right now, I'm just numb.

journal

Not Every Movie Has to be the Best Movie Ever

I think the sentiment that every movie has to be 4/4, 5/5, or in the 90% range on the tomato meter to be worthy. Honestly, I think we see a lot of this discourse with the superhero franchises and the delusion of the stans about the real quality of the MCU and DCEU films, and that has spread to film discourse at large. Not every film needs to be defended to the death that it's great or shouted down for being bad.

Three-star films are still films people should see. People should even see bad movies, cause it's good for the film going diet, you might even find a good-bad movie, or a bad movie that you just can't stop thinking about. 

I also think this is a function of people misunderstanding how to actually read and use Rotten Tomatoes and Letterboxd. Those platforms are not meant to be the critical end all be all. I use Rotten Tomatoes rarely, but when I do,  I really scroll down to the critic's reviews and clink the links to take me to the full review on whatever site they write for, and then I spend more time on that site clicking around, or at least until I hit a paywall. I might even decide it's a site that's worth subscribing to. It really is a good starting place to find critics whose work you want to follow. Letterbox is a good way to log films you've watched, much like Goodreads for novels. Those two sites are not a place for critical discourse. It's a place to talk about things between peers, much like you would in real life. A written word of mouth, which is how movies can build momentum at the box office and gain more traction with audiences. Unless the review on Letterboxd are a professional film critic's, I don't think they should be given the same weight as a published review. Speaking of which, it's also a good place to follow your favorite critics as well, and see what they're watching and rewatching, get a real idea of their taste in film. 

Both of these sentiments I think are bad for movies across the board. If you expect movies to be 5/5 all of the time, and you build up this hype you can only be disappointed when a movie is only good or great, and angry when movies are bad. And it can lead to a frustration and an unwillingness to give a new film a chance. A healthy discourse and a healthy film industry means that the good, bad, and great films are made, released in theaters, given a chance to find an audience (and make money), and have people talk about them. 

cinema, thoughts

After the Madness of March, I’m Going to Try to Watch More Women’s Sports

 The WNBA draft is upon us, after an electric and record breaking Women’s March Madness. This was the first year I really paid attention to the tournament, after only watching last year’s championship. I watched as much of this year as I could, watched both Final Four games. I didn’t end up watching the final because I had tickets to the final performance of Spamalot on Broadway. I contain multitudes.

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journal

The Best Movies I Watched in 2023

I had a lot of time on my hands thanks to the dual strikes this year. So, I ended up having a lot of time to watch movies, especially movies that I had managed to miss up until this year.  

Here's what I watched. Check me out on Letterboxd.

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cinema, lists

The Allure of the Days of Analog

I miss the days before tech took over our lives. I know I only got to experience the tail end of that time, but I keep running the thought experiment in my head. 

What really started it was when streamers decided that they were just gonna remove their own movies and television shows from their platforms, and just not release completed projects. (Justice for Batgirl!) That got me interested in building up my DVD collection, and now I've got a Google Doc two pages long of suggested titles I wish I had the disposable income to purchase every single one of. A lot of them from the Criterion Collection. It also had me rediscovering network tv, and actually watching it as it airs, or at least the magic of the DVR if I missed the original airtime. 

But it's also things like picking up an issue of a magazine, watching the news on tv. And when I'm finding articles online, I go directly to publication's sites and not just scrolling Twitter and looking at links the people I follow share. I'm also trying to read more books, but that's been a separate battle. 

It's missing the water cooler, where no one was watching things on their own schedule and we were all participating in a lot of the same conversations about it. And just flicking channels and catching a movie or watching a marathon all day while you do chores or work. The simpler times. 

So, while the studios still won't come to reality and give the WGA and SAG-AFTRA what they want and need, I will keep looking at the way I watch art and read about it. 

journal, thoughts

My Style Crisis is Never Ending

It's been about a year since I first noticed my inability to buy new pieces for my wardrobe. At the time I didn't worry about it because all I was really wearing day in and day out were jeans and a t-shirt. Working on a cold and dusty soundstage all day didn't really want to wear things I cared about getting filthy. But, doing that for over a year has really ruined my personal style.

I don't know what it is anymore. I go into stores and nothing grabs me. I try things on and they don't feel right. I try to put an outfit together with I have and inevitably go back to the staples in my closet. 

One thing I haven't brought myself to do is a closet purge. Just get rid of the stuff I don't really wear anymore. I could probably take them to H&M and take advantage of their clothes recycling program and get my good human points for the day. Also, I think there's some sort of discount you can use at the store if you bring in your clothes, so that's a plus.

My hope with the purge is that I can figure out my personal style and figure out what I have that fits it and I can get rid of what doesn't. It's just, I have this fear that if I do it, it won't solve my problem of actually buying clothes. I go and try things on and they don't feel right, and I don't know how to work past it that's not just continuing to try things on, and it's really ruining my enjoyment of shopping.

I could shop like no other. I used to be able to spend hours at the mall, just browsing and trying things on. My mom and sister are not shoppers. They are more in and out of the store kind of people, so the fact that I'm becoming more and more like that is annoying. 

Obviously, one of the other things hampering the actual purchasing is money. Building a whole new wardrobe is expensive, so whenever I do figure things out, I won't be rebuilding all in one go. It'll be spread out over time. I take donations. Kidding, of course.

Can the Sabrina the Teenage Witch opening credits be my life? That always looked like fun!

journal