Airplanes

I hate flying on planes. I realize that unless I learn how to levitate or grow wings or mutate into a superhero who knows how to fly, I will need to get on a plane to fly across the country.

I used to look forward getting on an airplane when I was younger. It didn’t happen often and I sort of viewed it as an experience plus not everyone at the place I grew up in even had the chance to ride on a plane. Plane tickets were too expensive (not that they’re any cheaper now).

I’m just not as thrilled now as I used to be. I guess when you keep on doing something regularly, the novelty wears off. It turns out to be a boring, tedious thing that I have to go through to get from here to there and from there to here. I can’t remember how many times I’ve been on a plane this year and I think I’ll be on a couple more flights before the end of the year the way things are going right now.

I really hate take offs, landings, and whenever the plane hits turbulence. My heart goes to my throat at these times. I usually sleep through the take off and if I’m able to, I would love to sleep through the entire flight. Landings are tricky. There’s nothing much I can do except sit through it and hope for the best.

I’m at NY’s JFK Airport right now waiting for my flight home. I can’t think of a better way to spend the time than to blog. (re: I AM SO BORED!). In about an hour and a half, I’m getting on a plane for a boring 6 hour trip home.

So ready to go home...

I am so ready to go home now. I fly out on Wednesday night. I really cannot wait. I'm feeling homesick. I miss Arvin (my hubby) and I miss my furbaby Jack. I miss seeing my saltwater aquarium as well. I just hope that everything is okay with it. I am really going to cry if my tank is dead because I've been away for so long.

I am sooooooooooooo tired. I usually don't sleep well when I travel and not being able to sleep well for a week is catching up on me. Eastern time sucks for me. I have trouble adjusting to the time whenever I go East.

In as much as I love coming to New York City, I don't think I can ever work/live here again. It's just too stressful for me. It's too crowded and people are always in a hurry. Sure, I miss going to Broadway shows since San Francisco is not much of a theatre town. But then again, I seem to be coming to NY a lot lately.

36 hours, 30 minutes and counting and I am flying out of here...

Maybe surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
I just wanna go home
Babe I miss you, you know

--Michael Buble, Home

Wicked Stagedoor Picture with Eden

I normally don't like posting pictures of myself on my blog. A picture paints a thousand words and I'm the type who would rather write a thousand words than post a picture. However, I think this picture merits being posted on my blog -- not because of me (oh puuuhhllllleasssseeee... I wouldn't have posted it otherwise!) but because of who I'm with. I finally have a picture with Eden Espinosa! Yay! I'm a huge, huge fan. I loooove listening to her sing!


Thanks Illene for taking this picture. I totally forgot to bring a camera on this trip. Last time I attempted to have a picture taken, my camera crapped out on me.

Musicals (On this trip)

It's not a perfect show but it does what a musical is supposed to do. It takes you to another world and it gives you a little tune to carry along in your head for when you're feeling blue. --Man in Chair, The Drowsy Chaperone

Every time I am in NYC, I always, always make it a point to watch a musical. It’s something that I always do. I don’t think I have been to NYC and didn’t watch a show at all. It’s always on my to do list. I love going to a show. Watching a musical takes me to my happy place.

For this trip I went to 4 shows. I know, I know, I’m still here so it’s still possible for me to go to 1 more show but I doubt it since I have plans tomorrow and on Tuesday. Anyways, I went to watch Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Wicked, Altar Boyz and 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I really enjoyed these 4 shows.


Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (8/15/2006)

I flew in on Tuesday and got into the city at around 5:30PM. Checked into the hotel and ran to TKTS since I wanted to squeeze in a show that night. DRS was on the board and at 50% off so I got a ticket for it. My seats were pretty good. 3rd row stage left. There was an overhang that blocked some parts of the scenery but it wasn’t that bad.

I love, love, love, love Sherie Rene Scott! I didn’t even know she was still in the show. It was a very nice surprise. I’ve never seen her live but I keep on listening to the cast recording of The Last 5 Years where she sings the part of Kathy. I love, love, love her voice! It has this distinct sound and is so full of emotion. I’m so happy that I actually got to see her perform live!

The show started a little bit slow for me. I had a hard time understanding some of the characters in the beginning because of the accent they used (British and French). After a while you get used to it. When Sherie Rene Scott came out, I was blown away by her voice!

It was a fun show. I really liked it. Lots of catchy tunes and it was pretty funny. I was laughing throughout the entire show. Too bad it’s closing in 2 weeks.

It was a ball… It was a blast…


Wicked (8/18/2006)

Umm… need I say more? I blogged and entire blog just for this. Scroll down below. ;) Yes you can do it.... Keep pressing the arrow key down. You'll eventually get there!


Altar Boyz (8/19/2006)

I got my ticket off TKTS for this one. I actually passed by the box office to see if they still had the rush seats for the matinee performance. They didn’t but TKTS had it for 50% off as well. My seat was on the second row, stage left.
This show was HILARIOUS! It was like a boy band rock concert. I was laughing my ass off during the entire show.

Jason Celaya is a hottie! :D

I normally don’t go watch Off Broadway shows. Since I seem to be running out of shows to watch, I’m slowly venturing towards Off Broadway shows.



25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (8/20/2006)

I didn’t have anything better to do today. I decided to go try my luck at the Wicked lottery. I can’t remember how many times I’ve tried the Wicked lottery and so far I have not won. (Anyways, last Friday is probably the last time I’ll watch Wicked for a while unless I can get my butt back to NYC to see Eden’s last show in October.) The Spelling Bee’s lottery happens right after the Wicked lottery so I put my name in. I was thinking that if I still didn’t win, I’d head to the Drowsy Chaperone lottery and try my luck there. So they picked out the names and my name was the last one that got picked! So I got front row seats.

I’ve seen the San Francisco production of the show a while back and I liked it. I’m familiar with the songs. It was nice to actually see this show on Broadway. No offense to the SF cast but I liked the Broadway cast a lot better. I really enjoyed the show. The big plus for me was I got to see Barrett Foa again! He’s such a cutie! :D I saw him in Avenue Q when I went to see it 2 months ago.


I really can’t wait for the new theatre season to start. I’m running out of shows to watch. Well, there are still shows I haven’t watched but for the reason that I just do not have the desire to watch them. Oh please… I don’t need jukebox musicals or musicals that have been adopted from movies (ok, DRS was from a movie but I never saw the movie).

NYC Again...Wicked Again...

I just realized that it has been 2 months since I last blogged. It is such a coincidence that the last entry on my blog was about my last trip to New York City. Yeah, I am back in the big apple again for work. I was actually supposed to go home tomorrow (well, technically today since it's already 4 in the morning) however, I needed to extend to finish a bunch of things in the office. The problem is I didn’t bring enough clothes with me.

You might be wondering what the heck I am doing still up in the wee hours of the morning. I had too much sugar so I am fully wired. Thanks to a HUGE serving of Frozen Hot Chocolate at Serendipity 3 and the adrenalin that has been pumping through my system almost all day long in anticipation to watching Wicked from "god" seats that I scored for free. :D

Yes my friends, I did go to watch Wicked again for the 4th time. My seat was amazing! I was seated at Row C Seat Number 106. Yup, about 2 seats off dead center on 7th row. Awesome sight lines -- well, they should be for premium seats (re: EXPENSIVE!) at the Gershwin theatre. Close enough to see facial expressions but far enough to not see spit flying out. I felt like the actresses and actors were singing directly to me which in itself was an awesome experience. Think Elphaba looking down straight at you while flying off on her cherry picker holding a broom and singing Defying Gravity.

Here's my mini review of tonight's performances by the different actresses/actors in the show (8/18 uummmm... last night?).

Eden Espinosa (Elphaba)

She's amazing as always. She gets better and better each time I see her perform in Wicked. I've seen her in Wicked 4 times. She has definitely grown into the role. She plays this role with so much heart and soul that when she's on stage, she IS Elphaba. That's something that I actually love about her performance. I thought I've seen almost all the nuance that she could possibly bring into the role. However, each time I go and watch the show, I never fail to find something new that she brings into the show. Hand gestures, riffs and how she stings her notes together. I absolutely love listening to Eden sing live. She has such a broad range in her voice and she is such an unbelievable belter. It feels like she’s trying to blow the top off the Gershwin Theatre when she belts. You know what they say about being able to find everything on the Internet. Sure, there are clips of her singing songs from Wicked however, there's nothing like listening to Eden sing live on stage. I know when I'm listening to a very good singer (at least in my opinion) when I get goose bumps and the hair behind my neck starts standing up. There are a few singers that have that kind of effect on me and Eden is definitely one of them. I just love the sound of her voice.

You're probably wondering how many more times I would be watching Wicked before I get sick and tired of it. Ummm... well, I can still count on one hand the number of times that I've watched it. Then again, wanting to hear Eden sing live has really been the driving factor on why I keep on coming back to watch the show. In as much as I love the show itself, there are parts of it that I don't really care about anymore (It starts to become fluff after the 3rd time). I would still be willing to pay premium seat price just to listen to Eden sing "The Wizard and I", "I'm Not That Girl", "Defying Gravity" and "No Good Deed". Hehehe... I just realized that it comes out to around $75 per song if you’re in a premium seat. LOL! The other parts of the show is pretty much added bonuses at this point. I heard she's leaving in October. Will I still be watching Wicked once she leaves? Well, it really depends on who's replacing her. I would probably go and watch the replacement at least once just to see how well she performs.

I met her at the stage door after the show and I finally have a picture with her to prove it! Yay! I'll post it when I get a chance... Hopefully it won't take 2 months before I get to do it.


Kate Reinders (Glinda)

Kate has definitely gotten better. The first time I saw her, I wasn't really impressed but tonight (last night?) I really enjoyed her performance. Her rendition of Popular was hilarious! I absolutely loved it. She portrayed the role in a very ditsy manner -- having to risk being un-PC, she portrayed it as the typical blonde in the blonde jokes that you hear everywhere. She and Eden have great chemistry.

Looking back the first time I saw her, I may have been a little bit biased and was really comparing her performance with Megan Hilty's performance which really wasn't fair since when I saw Megan, she had been in her role for quite some time and when I first saw Kate, she was in her role for only about 2 weeks. I'm actually glad to see that she's growing into the role.


Carol Kane (Madame Morrible)

This was the 3rd time I've seen Carol Kane in this role. The first 2 times that I saw her, I had a hard time understanding what she was saying because of the weird accent that she was using. It doesn’t bother me now. This time, I wasn't really concentrating much on the story anymore (I was looking for small details that I never noticed the first 3 times) since I pretty much know it by heart and most of the lines are familiar (no, I can't memorize them). I enjoyed her performance a lot more tonight.


David Garrison (The Wizard)

This is the 2nd time I've seen David Garrison. I've always enjoyed his portrayal of the wizard of Oz. Whatever little material he's got, he played it really well. I don't really care much for the songs sang by the Wizard.


Derrick Williams (Fiyero)

This is the 4th time I've seen Derrick Williams in this role. I'm not really a fan of him. There's just that something’s not right about his performance. Something's missing. He's not a bad actor at all. He has a nice butt and arms. I'm just not impressed by his singing voice. I guess it's because I absolutely love Norbert Leo Butz's voice in the Original Broadway Cast Recording for Wicked (I love his work period). After seeing him for the first time, whenever I go back and watch the show, I keep on wishing that an understudy or standby would be playing Fiyero’s role during that performance. Sorry Derrick if you happen to stumble upon this. Although tonight (last night?) he actually sounded better. I guess the acoustics at the Gershwin is better when you're sitting at the premium seats. :)


Logan Lipton (Boq)

I miss Robb Sapp! I really didn't care about Logan Lipton's portrayal of Boq. I was not impressed at all -- acting wise and voice quality wise. I should really give him the benefit of the doubt since he's new. Hopefully he'll grow into the role as well.


Jenna Leigh Green (Nessarose)

This is the second time I've seen her in Wicked. Great voice and good actress as well. I loved her portrayal of Nessarose. I wish she had a lot more stage time (is there such a thing?) and she had more songs to sing.

Ok, this blog is long and I need to go to bed since I don't want to sleep through the weekend in New York city. I did get to watch the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels -- I'll write a separate entry for it. Promise.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

*** I wrote this early this morning however I was having problems posting it on blogger. So it’s a little bit behind.