Those were the weeks that were

Okay, so I've been ridiculously errant and truant on the updates... apologies to the fans out there. Quick summary of events:

Theatrical
The Lovely Wife(tm) and I caught Golda's Balcony complete with a visit to Tovah Feldshuh's living room, courtesy of the Broadway Cares auction earlier this past fall. Incredible performance, although one that presumably takes substantial historical liberties. Highlight of the afternoon: we were supposed to share a champagne toast with Tovah, but naturally, BC/EFA provided a non-kosher brand. Cheerfully, Tovah asked "would you like a carrot stick on a plastic plate?" Okay, maybe you had to be there.

From there, it was off to catch the latest incarnation of Forbidden Broadway, where long-time favorite Christine Pedi has returned to the cast. As usual with the show, some of the parodies are waaaay too long in the tooth by now (why oh why is the "Annie" bit still in the show?), but there are still some great fun numbers (a hysterical "Wicked" spoof, and a dead-on impersonation of Bernadette Peters's Mama Rose being the highlights for me).

You know you spend too much time around the piano bar circuit when you get as excited seeing Brian Nash, Kate Pazakis, and Julie Garnye in the audience at a concert as you do seeing the featured performer (Jason Robert Brown, composer of The Last Five Years, Parade, and Songs for a New World). Well, we did, and we do.

Health
As year 30 crawls closer and closer, it looks like the old man syndrome wants to kick in more and more. Lower back pain, nasty colds... let's just say the last two weeks haven't been kind to me, and leave it at that, ok?

Scrabble
The diseased obsession rages on, even though I lost all four of my games at the last club meeting (played five bingos, though, two of 'em reasonably nice ones: AILERON and SINUATES). Off yet again to the club tonight; hopefully, won't get clobbered this time :/.

Pol-leeze!

*sigh* I suppose it's not so terrible if I only talk politics once every ten posts or so, right? Before I begin, though, I really should brag about my performance at the club last week. Won not one, but TWO of my four games against ranked players, with one of the wins being against Feliz Solomon, the intermediate mini-tournament winner (I handed her her only loss of the night, in a two point nail-biter). Would've been 3-1 too, if I'd only spotted two different bingos in my rack in game two (ERASION and IRONERS, for those who care... ironically, I played IRONERS in my third game). Not a good night for the bingos, though, with only three in four games (ANESTRI, IRONERS, and MEANIES; all seven-letter jobbies with INES tiles)... oh, well: I'm still working on my threes (MAX is good, MIN isn't; go fig), and will be going back for more punishment tomorrow. Been practicing against the computer on my Palm pretty regularly, and winning quite often, even when such repulsive words as GJETOST (some kind of cheese) and HYAENIC (hyena-like) get played against me.

Okay, on to the politics. If there's one thing that I've learned from this last election, is that there's a very strong need for the press to take a chill. We needed it in 2000, and we need it even more now. The sheer number of stories with "oopsies!" has just gotten out of hand, and both political parties share blame on that. Give the friggin' process a day or two to do its job, fer cryin' out loud.

The overall rhetoric has gotta stop, too. Quite frankly, today went by more or less the same as yesterday, and I don't see tomorrow being all that different. Bush is not Hitler (a comparison which caused me to go ballistic on some nitwit on the street a short while back), nor is Kerry a terrorist-loving, fiscally irresponsible wimp. Bush is not "the best friend Israel ever had" (wake me up when the POTUS finally signs off on moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, willya?), and Teresa Heinz Kerry is not a "PLO supporter." Gay marriage would not have been any part of a Kerry presidency, nor would (or could) he have stopped any of the state legislators who have passed "defense of marriage" acts. Our men and women abroad (one of whom is a former colleague of mine: come home safe, Carlos) are no more or less safe because of what 51% of the country decided last night.

I am incredibly annoyed that there has been no major initiative to upgrade the voting systems in place of most states; the margin of error in these elections should be a whole lot closer to zero than it is.

Okay, enough of that. Off now to get started on a diazonium-based synthesis at school; step one of a ten-step proposed piece of an improved Suzuki-Miyaura catalyst, doncha know? (Tina, stop laughing at me!)

Oh, before I forget: a "get well soon" to Brian Nash, our favorite pianist at the 'plex, undergoing vocal surgery soon, and "bon voyage" to the Toxins, off to cruise the world for a little while.