Seth MacFarlane

Seth MacFarlane was on The Tonight Show back in June and spoke about how he was currently touring around the country performing with various orchestras.  I had no idea he was a singer!  After doing a little research, I realized that he is actually considered a very skillful singer and that this particular tour featured songs from the '40's and '50's.  Given how incredible the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is, I figured we would be in for a very entertaining performance.

Unfortunately, the evening did not get off to a great start because traffic was even more nightmarish than normal and it took much longer than we had anticipated to drive to Baltimore.   It didn't help that several of the roads right around the concert hall were blocked off for various reasons, and by the time we finally got there, we were both pretty frazzled.

After finally making it to the concert, I stopped to take a photo of the stage on the way to our seats, and an usher told me in no uncertain terms that photography was not allowed in the concert hall.  I then proceeded to observe countless people taking photos and not being reprimanded for it, so to say I was unhappy is an understatement.  I did manage to sneak one not-so-great photo of the stage before the show began, but I didn't get any photos of Seth MacFarlane.  However, I had to document these two contradictory announcements because they made us smile:

I forgot all about feeling frustrated and annoyed when the concert began – and not thinking about taking photos allowed me to focus solely on the show.  Not only was the music beautiful, but Seth MacFarlane can sing.  I mean REALLY sing.  As in, it was a delight to listen to him and I was sad two hours later when the show ended.  He was charming and funny and sweet and extremely knowledgeable about the songs he was performing.  He is SO talented.  And he did throw in a few comments here and there in his "Stewie" voice, which was hilarious.

I admit that I did not know about 90% of the songs he sang, but that made not one bit of difference.  The show was awesome.  He came out for three encores because the thunderous applause and standing ovations could not be ignored.  Before the first encore, he did announce that he was not going to sing "Bird is the Word" – and if you're a fan of Family Guy, that joke requires no further explanation.  His final song was the theme from The Love Boat and the audience ate it up.

Speaking of the audience, I wasn't particularly impressed with some of the behaviors I witnessed: people getting up and walking around in the middle of songs, people talking, people recording video of the show on their phones...I mean it's a concert hall with a world-class symphony orchestra performing.  Conduct yourselves accordingly (no pun intended!).  I suppose I have my parents to thank for instilling in me at a very young age how one should behave in such a setting, because I have little tolerance for rude behavior.

Here are some of the songs Seth MacFarlane performed – not a complete list, but it's what I could find online the day after the concert:

Old Devil Moon 

This Is All I Ask 

I Have Dreamed 

I'll Only Miss Her When I Think of Her 

No One Ever Tells You 

High Anxiety 

I Get Along Without You Very Well 

Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart 

Guys And Dolls 

French Foreign Legion 

Love Boat Theme

While I was a casual fan before this concert, I would now consider myself a fairly ardent fan of Seth MacFarlane.  Seeing him in a whole new light really helped me appreciate his talents beyond Family Guy and American Dad!

Happy Tails to you!

Taylor Swift

I've made no secret of my love for Taylor Swift.  I knew she was coming to town, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to go because of my work/class schedule.  Luckily the scheduling concerns were addressed and we were able to get pretty decent tickets about two weeks out – we sat in the upper deck of Nationals Park, behind home plate, in the front row.  Luckily there were huge screens to project what was happening on stage, because otherwise I wouldn't have liked the seats as much as I did.  But since there were screens, I loved our seats!

While there were a lot of young fans there with parents, I was pleasantly surprised to see a wide variety of people attending the concert.  Guess it goes to show that she really does have mass appeal and that I'd wasted my time worrying that we'd be surrounded almost exclusively by screaming teens and twenty-something girls.  Don't get me wrong; that demographic was well-represented!  But there were lots of other people, too.

The opening acts were Shawn Mendes and Haim.  They were fine, but since I am not familiar with their music, I don't really feel qualified to judge their performance.  Apparently due to the threat of bad weather, they cut their acts short so that Taylor Swift could take the stage, and I am not going to complain about that.

The show was SO great.  So highly entertaining!  And the girl can sing and play instruments and certainly knows how to keep the crowd engaged.  On the outside, I may not have appeared to be one of the screaming 15-year old girls, but inside, I certainly felt that way.  Her set list was as follows:

Welcome to New York 

New Romantics 

Blank Space 

I Knew You Were Trouble 

I Wish You Would 

How You Get the Girl 

I Know Places 

Want to Want Me (with Jason Derulo)

You Belong With Me 

Clean 

Love Story 

Style 

Bad Blood 

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together 

Wildest Dreams 

Out of the Woods 

Shake It Off

Obviously most of the songs were from 1989, which I fully expected, frankly, they are really good songs.  I'm not going to lie, though…when she sang "You Belong With Me" and "Love Story," I freaked out a bit.  I love those songs!  I really don't know what would have happened if she had also performed "Mean"…pass out, maybe? I was secretly hoping she'd play it, but since it has a decidedly country feel to it, I was not surprised that it didn't make the cut.

As you may or many not know, she has been having a guest artist join her on stage each show.  One of my friends saw TS in Philadelphia and her guest was Echosmith – amazing!  Another friend was at the TS show the night before us, and her guest was Lorde – again, amazing!  So I had high hopes for the surprise guest, who turned out to be Jason Derulo.  I am not a fan, but the crowd went wild for him.  For me, it was the lowlight of the show, but he gave a very energetic performance, and it was cute to watch TS dance and sing with him.

One thing I really liked was that she comes across as a very sincere, down-to-earth person, and she repeatedly chatted at length with the crowd between songs.  She also had videos playing during her costume changes of her female friends talking about how real friends support one another and about the importance of women building each other up – important messages for impressionable young fans to hear.

One thing that was really cool is that everyone received a wristband upon entering, and they all lit up in unison, coordinated with the music.  It was awesome.  I didn't want the concert to end because everything about it was impressive.  She saved "Shake It Off" for the encore and it was incredible.  I would pay to see her again in a heartbeat.

The weather turned out to be a non-issue, which was good, but I must say that DC needs to take some lessons from Disney regarding how to move thousands of cars in a short amount of time.  It took FOREVER to get out of the city and we didn't get home until well after 1:00 am.  Pretty ridiculous for a Tuesday night when people have to work the next day.  I don't know if there were other factors impacting traffic that night, but seriously, get it together.  The exhaustion the next day was totally worth it, though, given how fabulous the concert was!

One final thing:  obviously the event staff was predicting the audience to be largely female, because they had designated many of the men's restrooms as women's restrooms for the evening.  This was excellent planning on their part because the typically long lines were vastly reduced or non-existent.  This photo was taken in one of the restrooms I was in, and believe me, I was not the only woman taking photos of this!

Happy Tails to you!

Newsies

Disney has transformed several of its films into Broadway shows.  Until last month, we had only seen two of those shows – Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.  Beauty and the Beast was incredible (and I've already written about it), but I am not a fan of the Broadway version of The Lion King.  I realize that this is a very unpopular opinion.  It sometimes seems like everyone who has ever seen it loves it except for me.  Perhaps I just have such a fondness for the movie that the Broadway show never really stood a chance.  I don't know.  I mean I love the film and Broadway versions of Beauty and the Beast, so I just can't explain it.  But I did not enjoy The Lion King on Broadway at all.

So when I learned that the Broadway adaptation of Newsies was on tour, I was unsure about whether I'd like it or not.  I love the original movie, whose soundtrack is a permanent playlist on my phone, and even though it was very much a complete box office disappointment, I thought it was great.  An Alan Menken musical starring Christian Bale?  Yes, please!  I don't care that it is a little cheesy!

After twenty-plus years of working quotes from the movie into daily conversations ("Headlines don't sell papes!  Newsies sell papes!"), we decided to risk being disappointed and bought tickets.  After all, my dislike of The Lion King on Broadway did not diminish my love of the film.

In short, Newsies was PHENOMENAL!  While there were some changes to the plot and the lyrics, the spirit of the movie was very much alive.  The set and the choreography were absolutely unbelievable and the actors did an amazing job!  In Beauty and the Beast, during the song "Gaston," there is a stein clinking routine that is very impressive.  I had no idea that Newsies would have something just as awesome…during "Seize the Day," the actors danced on newspapers and it was nothing short of riveting.

I am so glad we were able to see this show because it exceeded my expectations at every turn!

Happy Tails to you!

Summer Movies

I knew we'd be going to a few movies and concerts over the summer, so I had been planning on writing one blog post sometime in September about all of them.

I have recently concluded that it would make more sense to write brief posts about each of individually because these will be more manageable.  I am teaching and working throughout the summer, in addition to writing this little thing called a dissertation proposal.  So I figured before I have to return to my fortress of solitude where I have minimal contact with the outside world and can be found sitting amongst stacks of articles and half-full cups of coffee with a crazed look on my face, I should post a few updates on my blog.

I've decided to start off easy with movies.  If you are a person who goes to the movies all the time, this might not seem noteworthy to you, but we very rarely ever go to the movies.  We're talking maybe once or twice a year, typically only when a Disney or Pixar movie is released.

So when I say I've been to the movies six times this summer, it's very, very unusual for me.  What I need to explain is that I've only seen two movies.  If that doesn’t seem to make sense, it's because I saw Inside Out five times.  Crazy?  Maybe.

But as I alluded to in my Lava post, it is a deep movie and I noticed different things with each viewing.  I went twice with family and three times with friends who have kids (I absolutely love having friends who have kids for this very reason), and it was interesting to me that the adults all seemed to have a more emotional reaction to the film than the kids did.  I say interesting because it was not surprising to me at all; I really do think this is a film for adults.  And for me, it actually became more sad and more dark each time I watched it.  That is not a bad thing.  Merely a personal reflection on my experience.

In her NPR article published on June 19 entitled, "Why The Key Character In 'Inside Out' Is The One Who Isn't There," Linda Holmes wrote one of the most poignant sentences I have read about the film.

"Riley is, in one sense, fighting a battle we know she will lose:

the battle for Joy to rule all things forever."

Realistic or not, this is an incredibly sad statement in my opinion.

Let me be clear.  I loved the movie very much.  It's just made me think a lot about my own childhood and my own "imaginary" friend (my Pooh Bear).  Adult life is so complicated and busy!

It also reminded me of one of Don Draper's quotes from episode 13 of the first season of Mad Men, called "The Wheel":

"Nostalgia - it's delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, "nostalgia" literally means "the pain from an old wound." It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards...it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the wheel, it's called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved."

Such lovely words.

As for the other movie I've seen this summer, it was Jurassic World.  We've owned the soundtrack to Jurassic Park since 1993, and every single time we clean out our CDs for donation purposes, it makes the cut because the music is just so beautiful.  John Williams is a genius and his music is magical!  If you don't know who he is, I guarantee with 100% certainty that you know his work.  Google him.

I didn't love the second or third installments of the Jurassic Park franchise, but I certainly did love the original.  In light of that, I wasn't sure if I would like Jurassic World.  In short, here is my grade sheet for the film:

Chris Pratt: A+

Dinosaurs/Special Effects: A+

Dialogue: F

Plot: I liked it the first time when it was called Jurassic Park.  In other words, not a lot of originality.

Just my opinion.  And being a devoted fan of Parks and Rec, I already loved Chris Pratt, so I can't claim that "A+" to be an unbiased opinion.  I don't regret seeing the movie, but I do recall rolling my eyes throughout.  The dialogue was painful at times.  It was beautiful to look at, though, and there was a lot of action.  I'll leave it at that.

I was disappointed to learn that John Williams was not composing the music for Jurassic World, but was pleased that his "replacement" (I use that term loosely – no one can replace John Williams) was Michael Giacchino, who wrote the music for Up.  Clearly I am a fan.

That's it for movies at the theater, but C and I have started watching all of the Disney animated movies in chronological order.  There are currently 54 of them, and we've only made it through 8 so far this summer, so obviously this endeavor is going to take us a long time!

Happy Tails to you!