http://www.denverpost.com/theater/ci_12513230 John Moore writes the following about our little show: I was driving from the Denver Victorian Playhouse’s simple, mostly wonderful staging of “The Fantasticks,” when onto the iPod shuffled a tune by that most melancholy minstrel of indie rock, Conor Oberst. “The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won’t exist,” he sang. It was a piercing lament. And it was pure “Fantasticks.” There’s a reason this bittersweet little miracle of a show, which cost $1,441 to mount Off-Broadway in 1960, went on to become the longest-running musical in history.

Ok, admittedly, the title is dramatic. But I am just so tired of picking up pieces of so-called “indestructible” dog chew toys—whether that’s before the dog has eaten them or after—that I am tempted to give them nothing at all. Or at least nothing that isn’t edible. Dogs will eat anything, and frequently do, and I just don’t feel comfortable feeding them plastic. But these toys are cheap and plentiful and colorful—all attributes the human owners notice and about which the dogs couldn’t care less. Unfortunately certain dogs don’t seem smart enough to learn not to eat anything and everything so we must limit what they can put in their mouths: at least those things that humans have artificially created for their pets, for their owners, to clean up after they are obliterated, regurgitated, or expelled in one form or another.

I interviewed today at a [local] Theater/Film/Video department to teach advanced postproduction this summer and got the job. The pay was decent and the actual work seemed like fun, too. The Chair of the department essentially offered me the job this morning and we set up a meeting to go over paperwork on Thursday. I was excited and happy, not only to be making money but to be working and teaching in my field. Then I get a call this afternoon and he says that after talking with the original instructor that I won’t be able to teach the class because the first guy will be teaching it after all.

I’m not gonna lie. I’m a little sad. I’m sad that my name did not get mentioned in the lastest review of The Fantasticks. I wouldn’t have minded a bad review, or good review, or no review at all, but not mentioning me kinda hurts a little. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional; I just wish folks had a better understanding of what a Musical Director does… for… um… a musical. ☹️ Sarah, our director, posted this on Facebook just now so it’s possible that the text was truncated in some fashion.

Remember the marketing hype of many years ago that went something like this: “By the year 2000, every home will have a videophone.” Yeah, what happened to that? Why doesn’t everyone have a videophone? Do you want to know why everyone has a telephone? Because they all work the same. Sure, at some businesses you have to dial 9 to get an outside line first. And in some areas, local calls are 10 digits instead of 7. But the basic idea is always the same: pick up the phone, dial a number, let it ring, and either the other person answers or they don’t, in which case it usually gets answered by a voice message of some kind.

Let’s face it. When read aloud, number 7 and number 0 take longer than the other numbers. They both have two syllables while all the other numbers have one. This creates inefficiency for people who work with lots of numbers all the time. I propose we shorten “seven” to “sen” and “zero” to “zoh” (or “zo” for short). That way, the people who say “oh” instead of “zero” when reading telephone numbers and addresses will be happy, and sen now gets to be as cool as all the other numbers.

I found out a great way to keep your brown sugar from going bad and hardening up into a rock: seal in an apple slice. I imagine this would work with any moisture-retaining object such as a fresh slice of bread or a ceramic object of some kind that had been soaked in water (see: Brown Sugar Bears). But not only does the apple slice keep the brown sugar moist, it restores previously semifossilized brown sugar to its former pliable glory. Seriously, we had some brown sugar here that must have been hard and dry for at last 6 months.