Bullet Hole Stickers

Okay, so heres to another wasted day, I've been surfing on youtube (with what limited speed these proxies give) on a Disneyland binge... again... probably because i'm heading for HONG KONG NEXT WEEK!!!

So, the Jungle Cruise is one of my favorite attractions and D*land. Especially with the talented skippers, 10 minutes of extremely sarcastic, dry humor is a great thing to put in one of the "HAPPIEST PLACES ON EARTH". And apparently, the skippers hold a "skipper stand up night" where these jungle venturing comedians get to crack their corny jokes off duty as well. And then I uncovered this little gem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP7kzzOf6qs&feature=related

Thank you proxies for not letting me format this post whatsoever. Anyway, the little spastic man in this video is named Jason Michael Hammond. All i can say is, this is hilarious. So many quotable lines, (my title is an example). Seriously, when you say that you counterattack gangsta car music with Phantom of the Opera, you have to be loved.

After finding a related video of this Mr. Hammond singing "Music of the Night" (and doing it EXTREMELY well), his youtube page filled with POTO songs and a link to his "professional" website, i did what any Theater fanatic would do: RESUME-STALK HIM!!!

Some pretty fun stuff, especially in musical theater like Music Man (Shipoopi anyone?), Guys and Dolls (Nathan), Cabaret, and of course, Into the Woods (Jack, and with his voice i have no trouble imagining it :D). Noises Off also caught my eye :)

Oh right, for those who are actually reading and have no idea why it "caught my eye", i was in Noises Off too (as Poppy). And when I say, "and of course", I was also referencing being in Into the Woods (as the Baker's Wife), if you haven't be following this blog (see post back in October). SHAMELESS SELF-ADVERTISING *aaheemm* anyway...

He went to Seoul, Korea for a while to work for an edutainment company that specialize in English teaching shows. Expatriat performers ftw! Following the resume drill, I went over to the headshots section and I can say I definitely approve of them, especially the ones with glasses >:) *rape face*. What can I say? I like a man with nicely framed lenses.

My verdict: This man is worth following, CHECK HIM OUT! He has a very pure and clear voice, you don't really get that as much anymore with men these days, especially SINGING men. And he's a great comedian to boot. So Jason Michael Hammond, I salute you. If you keep singing like that, you will definitely one day play the Phantom (in the Webber version AND the equally-awesome-if-not-more-superior Maury Yeston version). I would request a CD if i could (he offers them if you make a donation to his "Make Jason Famous fund" lol) but sadly when you live on the other side of the world you can't do that kinda thing.

So Jason, I send my post full of spaz, virtual love and support to you.

If anyone finds a suitable proxy for blogspot that actually lets me format a post NORMALLY (like actual bolds, italics and images), PLEASE TELL ME!!!

3 more days till 2011. PEACE OUT.

EDIT (11:52PM aka 3 hours and 40 minutes later): Okay, just saw him sing Bring Him Home and Empty Chairs and Empty Tables (from Les Mis). Jason, please play Marius in the near future, PLEASE!!!!

The First Baron

Okay, so first i'd like to share my latest discovery. :D Well, he's not really a discovery to the actually world, he's been around for a while, but I have to honor him some how because of his astonishing voice and I wish he was appreciated a bit more.

So I was watching that awesome video of Brent Barrett and Michael Jeter (RIP, but he's not the center of todays piece, although i might do one on him later) dancing like a madman in the Tony performance of Grand Hotel, I wiki'd up the musical and realized that the sexy Brent was in fact NOT the original Baron (although he did a damn good job playing it).

The original Baron was this man named David Carroll, whose last production was in fact, Grand Hotel. He left the show pretty early due to sickness. 2 years later when the song-writers finally settled their bitching over song rights, They finally decided to make the cast recording of "Hotel". By then, Carroll was already very ill with the late stages of HIV. This poor man literally DIED the day recording for the OBC of Grand Hotel started... in the bathroom of the recording studio... Very sad.

So i tried to search him up, finding this video of him sing "Anthem" from Chess (again, as the original cast member). Most of you know Chess from the 2008 concert version with Adam Pascal and Idina Menzel, and "Anthem" being sung by THE Josh Groban. I thought it couldn't get better than Josh. I was SO wrong. Originals kick ass, and this was GORGEOUS. Whoever caught it live was one lucky cow. One of the very few of the dying species that is "the musical theater baritone".

And who better to obsess with me about David Carroll than our very own Seth Rudetsky! For those who don't know Seth... well you should... or you have been deprived of all MT awesomeness. Anyway I'll let you see for yourself. Seth explains Carroll's death then goes on to do a deconstruction of his song "Love Can't Happen" from - guess what - Grand Hotel. Listen to the last note. and look at Seth's face when David hits that note xD.

This song was so good i actually bought it off iTunes. RIP David Carroll. Your beautiful voice will ring forever in my heart.

That aside, below was a small side discovery of a video i found from the user who posted the Chess song. An awkwardly cute song that makes me smile. And yes, that's Anthony Rapp (the 3rd RENT-y i mentioned today).

Senior Retreat tmr... yay... i have to wake up EARLIER than i do on school days... My head is exploding from self-produced stress. I'm a sad person. Ah well, Sheehan will pull me out of my my misery tmr. He was seriously on a ROLL today with the jokes during the workshop. Love him to bits.

Peace out,

Tenshi

Jets and Sharks and Scrubs

Once again, i have returned from a blogging hiatus, mostly because i've been so engrossed in my summer I've barely had time to really sit down and thing about anything to write. But to recap, after Vassar, I visited Brown and Yale, then headed straight to CMU for pre-college drama. In short, it was epic. You can find our pretty awesome counselors dancing to "Single Ladies" here.

Since my mother was out today I took advantage of the empty house to finally let go and belt in prep for this years musical Into the Woods. So while I was screaming "I Know Things Now" at the top of my lungs, my mind wandered and I decided to go on a YOUTUBE ADVENTURE WOOT!!!

I landed on some old clips of West Side Story. One of them was a rehearsal video for a segment at the 2007 Gypsy awards for the 50th anniversary of WWS with about 22 of the ORIGNAL cast members. Watching 70 year old Jets singing and snapping their fingers made me cry tears of joy. Oh and Chita Rivera was... Chita Rivera... only she was 74 years old and doing the Gym Dance. I honestly couldn't stop watching the video. MAMBO! :)

Continuing on that adventure led to a clip from an episode of Scrubs that pays homage to WWS by paralleling Jets and Sharks to "medical" and "surgical" (dances included) and a very familiar fire escape scene between Turk and J.D. This pretty much revived my love of Scrubs after my recent revival of my love for Chuck. What can i say? I have a thing for leading men whose first names are Zach.

Then COMPLETELY unrelated, after a stop on Broadway.com I spotted a rather interesting new play running on off-broadway now called Trust starring - what do you know - Zach Braff. Also starring Sutton Foster... as an S&M dominatrix... WHAT???!!! See for it yourself ---> Click. What makes me laugh even more is that Braff references West Side Story in the preview video for the show. If you're in New York, run to your local TKTS and please see this play for me, cuz it sure looks interesting.

Thats just about it for today. Tmr, I will official be a Senior and start my last year of high school.

Peace out,

Tenshi

OMIGOD U GAIS!

The title's mostly an homage to Legally Blonde the Musical which I am listening to and hopelessly addicted to right now. Its like one of those musicals that you want to hate cuz its campy, but SO CAMPY that its actually catchy.

OBC starring Christian Borle (Emmett Forrest) and Laura Bell Bundy (Elle). And for those who don't know, Borle is currently in Mary Poppins as Bert, which makes me want to see it again just because he's in it. But right now I'm obsessing over different Emmett Forrest: Noah Weisberg. He was in the OBC as Aaron (the "How man yachts can one man own" dude in the song Harvard Variations) but i managed to snag the show he went on as Emmett and I've thoroughly fallen in love with him and his hair. Yes, his hair. He's so adorkable I just want to hug him. Oh and he's TALENTED. I had a couple of laughs listening to him sing "The Understudy Blues".

Noah, if for some strange reason you come across this, I hope you are not offended by anything i have said here because you are awesome :D.

The wonderful Annaleigh Ashford, who originated Margot (and who I had great fortune of seeing as Glinda in Chicago's Wicked) understudied Elle. At one show Noah and Anna went on as the leads together. These are 2 performers I absolutely love and if anyone has THAT show with the 2 of them as Emmett and Elle, PLEASE leave me a comment.

Legally Blonde closed on Broadway almost a year and a half ago, so this is technically old news for some people. But the National Tour is going on so check out the website here and go see it if they head your way. It’s a great musical to get stuck in your head... really... especially funny seeing the look on your friends' faces when you break out into "Bend and Snap"

I can't post any links right now cuz proxy had issues and i had to delete it. So bad proxy right now.

edit: 10:05 pm- Proxy up and working again but still has some issues. Added in links :)

And that’s my obsession rant for today. I think i lost a little bit of my dignity there ha ha. For non-MT people out there, don't worry, I will be speaking in normal english in posts to come :D On another note, I shall be leaving for Chicago the day after tomorrow. The start of an intense week of college roadtrips. Oh joy… Wish me luck!

Peace out,
Tenshi