samwinolj, Bonnie, Jerry, daisy_knotwise, and I headed down to the Loop today for the previews of The Addams Family, the new musical starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth. Gretchen's capsule review was "Well, it won't be a classic of the American theater, but it was a fun way to spend an afternoon." And that's pretty much true.

There's a structural problem in the second act that's caused by the leads not being the romantic leads in the show, with the result that a number that should be very near the end of the act ends up being pushed substantially too early. (In my opinion, of course.) This leads to a relatively weak number just before the end of the musical, but I'm really not sure how to fix it. On the other hand, that's what tryouts are for.

There are a number of current references in the show, most of which were pretty funny, one of which falls in the politically polarizing category and resulted in a brief halt due to applause. I'm not convinced that applause is what you want there, because it disrupts the timing pretty severely. We'll see if it survives, I suppose.

Although the show is not supposed to be drawn from the old TV show or the movies, but from the original cartoons, they did have the good sense to license the TV theme. We even had a cameo by Cousin It.

And Uncle Fester, playing the role of Dr. Exposition, does his best to steal the show. And he gives it a very good try.

Gretchen, meanwhile, observes that it appears that all new Broadway musicals are required to have someone fly. She blames Cats.

My pithy observation was that Morticia may well be the role that Bebe Neuwirth was born to play: "Sybil on the Half-Shell".

Of course, after such a show, we find ourselves trying to figure out how to cast it with members of SpaceTime Theater. We concluded that daddy_guido and I would engage in a death match to determine which one of us was Gomez and which one was Uncle Fester. After that, we discovered we would run into an acute shortage of women. And I suggested importing catalana to play Morticia, as she can both sing and dance.

Though it's difficult trying to cast a musical when half of the cast doesn't want to sing. :)

The Heroes season finale was last night. And despite Katie and Julie's best efforts, we did manage to watch it with a bit of help from our DVR. All this means that I'm able to make some serious spoilerish comments.
( Spoilers within... )

Ok, so I've just finished reading all four books of Lois Bujold's The Sharing Knife series. And having done so, I've concluded that I wasn't actually reading a fantasy series. I was reading an SF series with fantasy trappings.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.
( No real spoilers, but just in case... )

Until Thursday night, I'd expected that we'd be spending Valentine's Day mostly at home. Then our friend, Jennifer, called and offered to babysit for the girls until mid-afternoon. This sounded really good to us, so we dropped Katie and Julie off around 10:30 AM and headed out to Schaumburg for lunch and a movie. Because we needed to be back around 3 PM, timing was a bit tight, so we ended up having lunch at the restaurant in Gameworks because it was next to the movie theater. Fortunately, we got perfectly acceptable burgers there.

We then headed off to the theater and caught a matinee of He's Just Not That Into You. The Tribune reviewer didn't much care for it (1.5 stars); daisy_knotwise and I like it a good bit better than that. But we actually like light romantic comedies. :)

Then it was back to Jennifer's to pick up the girls. This was followed by trips to Sam's Club, Home Depot, Menard's, Lowe's, Oberweis (for carryout milk), and Sweet Baby Ray's. We arrived at the last at 6 PM on Valentine's Day with no reservations. What were we thinking?

So they seated us. We had a fine dinner, the head chef brought us chocolate-covered strawberries after we finished dinner (and they were really good), and a wonderful time was had by all.

Now, we're back home. I've assembled the new reading lamp for Katie's room. It should be very helpful when I'm reading her Winnie the Pooh stories at bedtime -- we're now through chapter six. :)

And tomorrow, I'm going to install the new outdoor light fixtures to replace the ones that I installed to replace the really cruddy ones the builder put in 12 years ago. The replacements have clearly seen better days, the brass plating now looking like anything but brass, so it's time for them to go. And the fellow at Menard's gave us the 15% discount on our entire purchase, not just the items that would fit in the 95 cent reusable green shopping bag, so we saved nearly thirty dollars.

But tonight, we're watching a Pooh DVD and relaxing. And that's a fine thing.

samwinolj, Bonnie, daisy_knotwise, and I went out this afternoon to see Wall-E, leaving Katie and Julie with the young lady who lives next door to babysit. I'm happy to report that the movie was a lot of fun. Definitely sci-fi in the sense that there are plotholes that you can drive a starship through, but if you're willing to sit back and enjoy it for the space opera that it is, you'll have a good time.

I suspect Gretchen will give me leave to add this one to our DVD collection when it comes out. And then Katie will probably be old enough to start appreciating it. :)

daisy_knotwise and I watched 27 Dresses tonight. It's pretty thoroughly formulaic, which is pretty much what I want to see in a romantic comedy. I get really annoyed at romantic comedies where girl does not get boy, girl gets killed tragically, boy gets killed tragically, etc. I rather prefer happy endings.

(Yeah, I know. The Grim Roper. Who'da thunk it?)

But I watch romantic comedies not so much for the plot as for the journey and the acting. Katherine Heigl does a fine job with the part and watching her I conclude that there's some serious danger that she's going to get all the parts that Diane Keaton used to get, which is a pretty good career path, all things considered. James Marsden demonstrates that he doesn't have to play a stick, unlike in the X-Men movies. And Malin Akerman (who IMDB tells me is about to be in the new Watchmen film) could be stealing Cameron Diaz's parts shortly.

So it's a pretty happy little ensemble. And the movie isn't laugh out loud funny, but it's fun to watch.

That'll do nicely.

Courtesy of shsilver who loaned us his family's copy, daisy_knotwise and I got to watch Enchanted tonight. It's a lot of fun.

You get a nice romantic comedy, several fine production numbers, and a CGI-animated chipmunk who would really like to steal the movie. What's not to like? :)

And having seen Order of the Phoenix, I'm of the opinion that this was an action-adventure film as opposed to the previous films which weren't.

Let's start by saying that I found this to be a very solid episode. Then let's dive into the spoilers.
( Spoilers in here. Got it? )

daisy_knotwise and I watched the first two episodes of this NBC series tonight. Our first thought? "We could do that." Of course, we've been doing improv comedy for over 20 years, so if we're given any sort of survivable script to fall into, we'll probably succeed -- at least in our own minds! :)

The gag here is that everyone else has the script for the bit except for the guest actor who needs to figure out what he or she is doing. And, of course, you're greeted on your entrance with "Thank God you're here!"

There was one completely non-survivable script that was given to Monique. She was in a situation where there was no possibility that any answer she would give would be correct. For example, she was the co-host on a TV game show and was told to introduce the three contestants. Now, there was no reason that she needed to be contradicted, as it was completely immaterial as to whether they were Heather, Bob, and Sue or Jane, Dick, and Spot, but contradicted she was. It was poor sport and I suspect was the reason she was declared the ultimate winner for the night.

The other nine sketches (four solo sketches and one group sketch per show) were survivable and most of the guests did pretty well. However, much like the Game Show Network commercial where the viewers are shouting "Marsupial!" at the screen, when Dave Foley is the show's judge and you are playing Miss Caicos and are asked who your dream date would be, the correct answer is always "Dave Foley". Not Chewbacca. *sigh*

daisy_knotwise, Katie, and I had a fine time at FilkOntario.
( And it went like this... )

This show is in its second season now and continues to be as much fun as any sitcom that I've seen in recent years. Along with the writers' entertaining insistence on putting the act breaks where the story calls for, as opposed to where the commercials are supposed to fall, the ensemble is good, the writing is sharp, and the sense of humor is just demented.

Take, for example, this week's episode:
( Mild spoilers inside )

The Toshiba DVR/DVD writer combo unit that I own last night corrupted its disk while I was deleting programs, with the result that it lost everything that was recorded on it. How nice.

At least VCRs could only eat one tape at a time.

To celebrate the successful completion of the taxes, daisy_knotwise and I decided to go see an early movie. We checked the schedule and the winner (based more on timing than anything else) was The Break Up.
( Spoilers inside... )

So yesterday, Jeff, his friend Pete, and I headed out to Ultimate Electronics where Jeff bought the Samsung HLR6178W DLP HDTV. This is similar to the HLM507W that we bought three years ago, but bigger, newer, and smarter. Curiously enough, about the same price that we paid...
( And then the set arrived... )

daisy_knotwise and I headed out to the cheap theater to see the new Wallace and Gromit movie, Curse of the Were-Rabbit. We hadn't realized it was preceded by a short cartoon featuring the penguins from Madagascar, which was quite a bit of fun in the old Warner Brothers tradition. (We haven't seen Madagascar yet.)

The main feature was a lot of fun. It felt maybe just a little long, but I think mostly because we're used to seeing the characters in the short form. And we're going to have to get the DVD just so we can hunt down all the gags in the background. Dogwarts University, indeed! But the story was solid and silly in the way that Wallace and Gromit usually are, the claymation looked just fine, and poor Gromit suffers and suffers and suffers.

I'm assuming that my niece still likes Wallace and Gromit. I'll bet she liked this. We did.

Hey, we've gotten a review of The Cunning Blood, Jeff Duntemann's first novel that we're releasing at WindyCon this weekend.

Sam, Bonnie, and I went to see Sky High last night. daisy_knotwise was feeling under the weather and decided not to come.

It's a fun romp. It beats the conceits of the comic book genre to death while merging them with high school teen angst and romance.

Two of the actresses (Danielle Panabaker playing Layla and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Gwen) look remarkably familiar, but IMDB doesn't show them as being in any roles that I would have seen them in, so I dunno. It's possible that Panabaker just looks a lot like a red-headed Amber Tamblyn, but I have no idea why the other actress looks familiar to me. *shrug*

I say it's space opera and I say good for it!
( Spoiler-free Serenity review inside... )

Interesting return of The West Wing tonight.
( Spoilers inside... )

daisy_knotwise and I watched our usual assortment of Thursday night TV tonight: Joey, CSI, and ER.
( Spoilers inside... )

daisy_knotwise and I watched the premiere of E-Ring on NBC tonight. It's from Jerry Bruckheimer, who also is responsible for CSI, but is highly reminiscent of various series by Don Bellisario in that it shows the military in tough situations working to do the right thing. It has a strong line of tension -- no surprise in a Bruckheimer series! -- and an appealing group of characters. We definitely enjoyed the episode.

We'll probably watch it again and see how it grows on us. Of course, it's up against Lost, so many of you would need to queue up the VCR or Tivo...

Today's Jimmy Buffett concert at Wrigley Field was a fine time in a fine venue. I was amused when Buffett noted that the folks at Wrigley managed to spell his name correctly, which was more than the CTA or Tickets.com had done. (Buffet is dinner. Buffett is a performer.)

Many of my favorite Jimmy Buffett songs weren't well suited for this sort of party atmosphere or were older, so I wasn't overly surprised not to hear them. It didn't stop me from having a good time.

We met up with pheltzer and drawshad after the game and had dinner at Gulliver's.

After the events of the week, it was a good day to spend with 30,000+ people who were in a good mood.

daisy_knotwise and I went out with the rest of the SpaceTime crew after rehearsal today to see Must Love Dogs. This turns out to be a delightfully witty romantic comedy which seems to have been too intelligent for at least some of the critics, although I see that, upon checking back at the review list, the Tribune reviewer did give it three stars, which was one more than I remembered. I particularly enjoyed the scene when Sarah met with Jake after he went out to see Doctor Zhivago.

Billy Dee gives it at least 3.5 stars. :)

Now, back to our regularly scheduled anniversary celebration.

I went over to Rich's mom's house and knocked off eight games of APBA baseball today, splitting them to remain at .500.

daisy_knotwise asked if I wanted her to make stir fry or if we should go out for dinner and have the stir fry on Monday. Since the cleaning lady is coming tomorrow, I voted for fewer dishes, although -- in one of those perverse bits of logic that I occasionally come up with -- I ended up suggesting we go to one of the local Chinese buffets. (Gretchen's stir fry is not a Chinese buffer, nor is a Chinese buffet Gretchen's stir fry.)

When we got there, we discovered that the Chinese buffet had morphed into a Cici's Pizza, a buffet pizza chain that we weren't familiar with. I shrugged and suggested that we try it, since we've been looking for new local pizza to replace the pizzeria that closed due to a fire.

It's pretty much decent buffet pizza and the price was certainly low enough -- under $13 for both of us with sodas. The deep dish pizza was the best of the lot and actually worth ordering as carry out, with a lot of good spicy pizza sauce on top. The Caesar dressing for the salad had a nice bite. And the cinnamon rolls I had for dessert were really good, suggesting that they were probably really bad for me. :)

They also had an arcade in the back with an air hockey table.

I doubt we'll eat there often ourselves since there is better buffet pizza available about 20 minutes away at Perry's, but I might take the baseball league there for dinner under the right circumstances.