Feelin' Good

Began a sunny morning with Banana Pancakes for a late breakfast. Actually, they came out pretty well. I made too many - the side-opening pour spout of the pancake mix box is hard to control - and I slightly burned the side of one. Otherwise, they were fairly tasty.

Ran On Your Toes while I ate. This revival of the 30's Rogers and Hart show was a surprise hit in 1983. Former vaudevillian Junior Dolan (Lara Teeter) is a music professor at Knickerbocker University in New York. Junior has two especially promising students - Sidney (Phillip Arthur Ross) has written a jazz ballet, and Frankie (Betty Ann Grove) wrote a song she wants him to hear. She introduces him to Vera Baranova (Natalia Markarova), whose agent Peggy (Dina Merrill) promises him a role in their show. Even after he makes a laughingstock of "La Princesse Zenobia Ballet," he and Peggy still manage to talk them into producing the jazz ballet "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue." Vera's jealous lover Morrosine (George S. Irving) is determined to eliminate Junior, especially after he's promoted to the star role. When Junior finds out that a gangster will shoot him after he gets offstage, he has to find a way for the show to keep going on.

This is probably the most famous of the 30's media that compared and contrasted classical and pop media. The standards here are the bittersweet ballads "There's a Small Hotel" and "Glad to Be Unhappy," along with the upbeat title song that pits ballet against tap. I also like "It's Got to Be Love" as Frankie, Junior, and the rest of the school wonder about their romantic relationships, and Peggy explaining what love is like to Junior in "The Heart Is Quicker Than the Eye."

Spent the next few hours taking down my Thanksgiving and general fall decorations. I know fall is continuing for another month, but I already had the container there. I figured I might as well get everything. Besides, I'll need to clear stuff to do major cleaning and dusting next week in order to get ready for Christmas. Not to mention, it hasn't really felt like fall in almost two weeks. I think Mother Nature is ready for the next season.

Listened to Peter Pan while I worked. Like Once Upon a Mattress, this 1954 Broadway show is more famous for having been broadcast live on TV four times than for any of it's stage versions. It also has some things in common with Seesaw - namely, a troubled production that saw the original songwriting team replaced and the book re-written. Once again, whatever they did worked. The music, both by Moose Charlap and Carolyn Leigh and Jules Styne, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green, is excellent. "I Won't Grow Up" in particular is iconic today - it was used in the commercials for Toys R' Us for years. Other standards include "Distant Melody," "I've Gotta Crow," and "Never Never Land." You'd think Mary Martin would be creepy as Peter, but she sounds great on the LP and won a Tony for the role. Cyril Ritchard is equally good as Captain Hook (and also won a Tony).

In addition to the three TV casts, this was revived four times on Broadway. Sandy Duncan was Peter in a 1980 revival that was so popular, it outran the original. Gymnast Cathy Rigby appeared in three short-lived but much-loved revivals in the 90's. The recent TV version in 2014 with Allison Williams wasn't well-received - despite having Christopher Walken as Captain Hook, many complained about additional material and updating.

I got to Dad and Jodie's around 1:30, a little later than I planned. It was just the two of them and Vanessa when I arrived. Jodie had hoagies sliced for everyone, along with hot dogs for the kids and leftover desserts from Thanksgiving. (Apparently, they were about the only things that were leftover.) Jessa came about a half-hour later, followed by Craig with Finley and Rose with a subdued Khai. The Eagles started out slow, but ultimately played much better today than they have the past few weeks. They finally beat the New York Giants 25 to 22 in a nail-biter of a game that came down to the wire.

Spent some time with an adorable Finley downstairs, playing with toys and watching Paw Patrol. A group of puppies, each themed around a different rescue or service vehicle, are trained by their young master to help people in danger, or who are even just having trouble. This comes up in "Pups Save Thanksgiving." Mayor Humdinger and his kittens (all of whom are patterned after the Paw Patrol pups) try to steal the big dinner, but they end up floating off in the turkey bounce house and destroying the food instead. Skye the pink pilot dog, Chase the police dog, and Zuma the sea-going chocolate lab have to rescue them while the others help Mayor Goodway of their town clean up the food.

Humdinger also causes trouble in "Pups Save Windy Bay." There's supposed to be a wind surfing contest, but it's hard to wind surf with no wind. Humdinger has a machine that'll create wind, but the kittens can't control it and ends up blowing the contestants off-course and stranding them. Zuma, Chase, Skye, and Rocky the recycling pup end up having to go after them.

Blaze and the Monster Machines is kind of the same deal, only with talking monster trucks instead of talking dogs, and a math and technology theme rather than a teamwork theme. In the episode I saw, Blaze has to catch Crusher, a naughty truck who is on rocket skis that just won't stop, no matter how thick the ropes are that they try to catch him with. It's his Granny who figures out that yarn, when knitted to the right thickness, can be a very strong rope.

Headed out around quarter after 4. There was a package waiting for me when I got home. Lauren sent me a new food processor to replace the old one with the corroded plug. It's huge, much larger than the old one, with a large disc-shaped blade and a plastic piece to push the food in. It's so big, it didn't fit on my counter and ended up on the shelf on the other side of the divider, next to the cookbook shelves.

Did some writing after I cleaned up the cardboard mess. Scrooge figures he's ready for anything by now...but he wasn't ready for seeing a huge white-bearded man in a green robe sitting among tons of food in his parlor room. The man looks like Captain Rex, but he's actually The Ghost of Christmas Present. He's going to take Scrooge to see how his choices are effecting what goes on in the here and now.

Broke for a quick dinner around 7. Did The Roar of Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd while I ate. This simple allegory on classicism from 1965 has "Sir" (Ritchard again) as a smart rich man, and "Cocky" (Anthony Newley) as the guy who just can't catch a break in the game of life, no matter how many chirping urchins claim something better is coming. He loses his job and his lady to Sir and his rules, before he sees a black man finally make it. He too, "wins"...and then realizes that he and Sir can't function without each other.

As simple as this production is, it has a great score, possibly better than the previous Newley-Bricusse show that turned up on Broadway, Stop the World-I Want to Get Off. The big hit was the plaintive ballad "Who Can I Turn To?" Other standards include the urchins' number with Sir "A Wonderful Day Like Today," the black man's triumphant "Feelin' Good," and Cocky's "The Joker."

Speaking of people who can't catch a break, Starting Here, Starting Now is a 1977 off-Broadway revue featuring music by Richard Maltby and David Shire. It's made up of songs from their shows that either never made Broadway, or were never produced. There's a lot of good stuff here; favorites include the title song, "The Word Is Love," "Today Is the First Day of the Rest of My Life," "Watching the Big Parade Go By," and "A New Life Coming."

Their song "I Don't Remember Christmas" is featured in the CD A Broadway Christmas, which I finished off the night with. This Varese Saraband release collects holiday songs from various musicals. Some are well-known ("We Need a Little Christmas," "Hard Candy Christmas"). Others were cut from Broadway shows before opening (the lovely "Christmas Eve") or are from shows that have yet to make it to New York ("Christmas Gifts," "I Thank You for Your Love"). "The Happy New Year's Blues" was a then-new discovery of a previously lost Irving Berlin number.