The Fractured Follies: CAH Fundraiser

The Follies turned out to be a GREAT success. (You would never have predicted that based on the dress rehearsal Thursday night.) We finally nailed the square dance, really for the first time since we started rehearsing it. The opening and closing numbers with Mom in the big chorus were stunning. And the Tico Tico dance (Copacabana) brought the house down both nights. Most of the other numbers were jaw-droppingly good, especially the one from Nunsense starring Kelly Taylor-Wilson and Barbara Barrows (BC's director of PR) along with Jae Bryan, Judy Hussey, and Lori Brown.

Here is a picture of the Copacabana Cuties:
Front row (L to R): Pete Genta, Clay Heinz, Phil Williams, Rick Geninnati. Back row: Roger Goodman, Larry Clark, Steve Carr, Bob Schwab, John Lapp, Jim Salske, Bob Anderson, Andy Zilm, and Me!

And here is a picture of most of the Federated Church people who were in the show, minus Sam and Nate, Eldon Wold, and Katie Bloomer:

Front row (L to R) Elise Schwartz, Mom. Middle row: Char Genta (as Loretta Lynn), Mary Ann Harp, Kelly Taylor-Wilson, me. Back row: Pete Genta (as Conway Twitty), Mark Kaiser, Sue Holtz-Kaiser, Mary Loveless, David Schwartz.

Besides being a really good show, it was a LOT of fun!

Tabula Rasa: Good vs Evil

Ostensibly Tabula Rasa is about Kate and her "clean slate" on the island. but it seems to me to follow directly from Locke's "light and dark" discussion on the beach in the pilot. Several characters are presented in this episode as having indeterminate morality, most notably Kate. It is revealed that, before the crash, she was a prisoner of "the law" for having committed an unknown crime. And yet she shows real compassion for the people around her, including the marshall himself. She helped him on the plane, and she had a chance to kill him on the beach, but didn't. It isn't clear from this episode whether the marshall himself is good or evil. Jin and Sawyer both seem to be less than stellar individuals, but both show flashes of compassion in the episode. Perhaps most enigmatic is good old Locke, already a figure of mystery. He seems to be a decent chap in his relationship with Walt and Michael, but oh, that episode-ending, bone-chilling scowl....

Carlinville Color Tour

Last weekend we drove over to the river to see if the colors were any good. They weren't. It turned out that the colors in town were better. This weekend they are the best we've had here in west central Illinois for many years. Here are some examples.

Tabula Rasa

Having just watched Tabula Rasa, I know all over again why I fell in love with this show. The ending scene of the episode is classic Lost. Even though I knew what would happen, I was enthralled. In a way it was even more interesting to watch the tableau unfold, knowing what the last shot would be......
The arrow-straight line between Locke's "light and dark" conversation with Walt in the very first episode, and the iconic conversation between Jacob and his Nemesis on the beach in the very last episode becomes crystal clear upon rewatching. Light and dark, good and evil, which is which is which?

Lost clips

I’ve finished rewatching the first two episodes (Pilot, Parts 1 and 2). I found two different series of YouTube clips summarizing the major themes of seasons 1 - 5. They were put together by fans, ttheblackbox and campetin, using music not original to the series, but appropriate and moving, mostly. The first series (ttheblackbox) is far superior to the second series (campetin), except I enjoyed the second campetin episode “Happy Moments” very much. I think even non-Lost fans would be moved by it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxT3Z_Wz6oI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVMZGYJFpxE

Watching these and the Pilot have raised some questions and thoughts. See my next post.

Lost - Video Podcast: The Variable

Interesting little clip about the literature of Lost.

Lost - Video Podcast: The Variable

Lost Rewatch

I'm starting Lost all over, because I was undergoing withdrawal. Watching the second time is an odd experience. Some of the charm is gone because half the fun is not knowing what will happen next, and of course now I do. On the other hand, it is fun to see the familiar characters develop, form their relationships and experience their lives on the island all over again.

I have just finished the first half of the pilot, and already I have noticed some things I didn't notice the first time. I hadn't remembered that Rose said about the tree-crushing monster the first night: "That sound that it made, I keep thinking that there was something really familiar about it." I wonder if that has any significance. And now I'm not so sure that that monster is the same as the smoke monster we meet later. And why would it have killed the pilot so quickly?

It's also fun to compare incidents with what we now know to be significant about them from later episodes. For example in the first episode, Jack tells Kate the famous story about overcoming his fear during his first spinal surgery. What he doesn't tell her is that it was his father who gave him the idea, which we only find out in a flashback in season 5.

Did the monster kill the pilot because Jacob had no use for him? If so, why not any of the rest?

This is going to be fun! (And no spoilers possible, so we can discuss it in as much detail as we want!)