Keeping it fresh and friends

A couple of people have asked me about the new look for the blog. Two reasons for the change: I was really getting sick of looking at that old design. And also, I wanted to take advantage of all of the cute new widgets that the blogging programmers have come up with. I’m still figuring most of them out so some of the categories of listings that were on the old blog haven’t transferred over yet. But they will resurface as soon as I figure out how to incorporate them all. Honest.

One of the widgets is the “Followers” option. If you want to get notification when I post, it’s a handy little feature. I noticed that John Porter has more than 25 followers (oh, and his rave about “Legacy of Light” was posted recently). Do I have follower envy? Yes, I believe I do.

I don’t know why exactly, but I’ve seen a lot more sensitivity in the press and in marketing about how Valentine’s Day isn’t such a great celebration for some folks. At least one site I’ve seen suggests we remember the importance of friends at Valentine’s Day as well as loading up our sweethearts with gifts. I think this is a great idea. In fact, I was going to relate it to some recently opened theater productions. Sure, “Romeo and Juliet” is more famous for the titular love story but isn’t the friendship between Romeo and Mercutio also a pivotal and near-equally heartbreaking aspect of the play?

There isn’t an exact female equivalent in "R&J" but in “West Side Story” I think one of the most affecting and in some ways disturbing scenes is when Anita, still freshly grieving over the death of Bernardo, goes to the diner to tell Tony what’s going on only to be taunted and nearly raped by Tony’s pals. That’s some kind of strong bond that makes Anita willing to do that for Maria (that her lie about Maria’s death in response to the abuse ultimately leads to Tony’s death just makes it all the more tragic).

If you are looking for something to do with a friend to celebrate Valentine’s Day, you could always rent a classic old MGM musical to watch and bond over. Here’s a pretty amazingly comprehensive review of the best of all those old musicals that I came across recently.

The struggles of “Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark” have reached a new level of recognition in the cultural zeitgeist: if you happened to check out Saturday Night Live this past weekend, there was a moderately entertaining faux-commercial with a personal injury lawyer handling grievances from those injured by the production (he won awards all consisting of...wait for it...tickets to see the show). I’m still wondering whether all of this attention is a good thing or a bad thing; there is, after all, no such thing as bad publicity right?

I haven’t seen reviews of “Godspell” and “R&J” yet; I guess other things (the Grammies?) pushed them off the pages of the T-D. If anyone sees them before me, please let me know. I mean, that’s what friends are for, right?