Cabaret!

Cabaret time!

Not the musical, mind you. People keep getting confused when we talk about cabarets. 

Let's clarify. 

There's Cabaret, which according to Wikipedia "is a musical with a book by Joe Masteroff, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions."

Then there's the type of cabaret we went to on Monday night: "a form of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue—a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables (often dining or drinking) watching the performance."

If I understand correctly, there are cabarets in Cabaret. Hence the name.

The cast of Spring Awakening has been doing cabarets for their charity (Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids) in the past year and a half they've been on tour. Ryan and I have depended on the people who've gone to past cabarets to video tape and youtube the experience. Our favorites can be seen here, here, and here. 

And finally we got to actually go to a Cabaret ourselves.

On Monday night, the cast performed a cabaret called Girls will be Boys will be Girls will be Boys at a popular venue in Hollywood for Upright Cabarets. Ryan got us dinner tickets and we were set to go.

Even leaving at 3:30pm didn't get us there in time for our 7pm reservation, dang L.A. traffic. But we made it early enough to get center seats at the third from closest table, so not too shabby. We ordered drinks, dinner, and set in to wait for the show.

Since the show was all about boys singing girls' songs and vice versa, our first taste was Chase Davidson, singing Wendla's role in Mama Who Bore Me... complete with confused facial expressions and gestures. It was made of awesome.

More of the boys- this time singing My Junk.

The girls followed it up with the traditional boys' pieces in Touch Me.

Then it was time for the individual pieces. Steffi D did a very... unique medley of patriotic sounding songs. That's all I'll say.

Christy Altomare sang a song she wrote for a friend to sing to his girlfriend. Apparently she's always wanted to be able to sing it herself, so 'girls sing boy songs' night worked out perfectly for her to sing "Alessa." Loved it. Christy Altomare is going to be a household name someday. And we'll be able to say we knew her as little ol' Wendla Bergman. :)

Krystina Alabado sang a fierce version of "Lost in the Wilderness" from Children of Eden.

Kimiko (she's so cute!) Glenn sang a song called "You and I," which I'd never heard before.

There were much more, of course, but the blogger uploader's being slow, so I'm skipping right ahead to the end of the night. Here's Shingledecker singing one of the encore songs.

The girls hugging after a little Mama Who Bore Me (Reprise).

And the finale song, led by newbie swing Kayla Foster, "Let the Sunshine in."

After we left the cabaret, Ryan and I decided to re-enact our TGO friend date of six months ago; so off we went in search of a Little Caesar's. We found two. Neither were open. Don't they know we were trying to have a moment! Eventually we had to settle on a Wendy's for drinks and fries. It was meh. 

Timeline Part Two

So we left off at pumpkins. Next was the OSF's birthday at Disneyland.

... followed by our first day of road tripping, which ended with SPRING AWAKENING in San Jose...

... which was followed by American Idiot in Berkeley on Saturday....

Then we came back for a week of work, and on Friday Chris and I left early to start the journey to Fresno to stay with his Aunt Mari and Uncle Moose and play Wii games with Jessica. 

Saturday morning we all headed an hour and a half north of Fresno (to Mantica?) for Chris' cousin Kelsey's wedding (which was freezing!):

Then one last morning of playing with Jessica (tug of war this time): 

And back home to a normal life with no traveling!

Timeline

I feel that with my new methodology, the timeline of the last month has been thrown off. So I'm here today to bring everyone up to speed on the goings-on of mid-October to now-November. I'm just going to start from where I left off on POTD #285:

This picture came right after this one:

I was trying to get a good picture of Chris' little work station he set up for a TV Monday night as his place. The rest of us were squeezed onto the couch and a couple of chairs in the living room, but Chris needed some more space to do his farming. (See Facebook: Farmville.)


And somewhere in between clicking this picture, checking it, and setting up for another shot, he bounded up the stairs in sneak attack style. 


It was a good sneak attack.


Hence the blurred picture of the day. I felt it told the story better than the first one.




I also scrapbooked somewhere around this time. Must've been a Wednesday when Chris was at golf.

Yep, it was definitely a Wednesday, because here's the beautiful quesadilla I made him for dinner that night:

(I'm getting good at this cooking nonsense.)

Let's see. Friday night was Wii night at Ryan's house, preceded by a trip to the Studio Diner for dinner. Went against my better judgment and got buffalo wings instead of the wonderful breakfast I had last time. They were good, but when Britt and Ryan's breakfasts came out, I'll admit it I was coveting their toast and eggs. Mmmm... toast and eggs... Studio Diner....

Back on the farm (I mean Ryan's apartment), Ryan had lain out four controllers and nunchucks across the coffee table. We played his new game, Rabid Rabbids (which some may remember from last year's birthday party) and had some wine and mixed drinks. Muy fun.




That Sunday was the Christmas Announcement Party. 

What? I haven't written the blog about the Christmas Announcement Party yet? I could've sworn I did... oh. Turns out I only uploaded the pictures and forgot about it! Blog to come soon. Blog now here!

Some more POTD's...

 

Whoo, this is getting long. Part two coming up soon!

Picture(s) of the Day

Thursday night, we finally got back into the swing of things and had our first TV Thursday in a few weeks. How I Met Your Mother, Glee, the Office, and Big Bang Theory made for a fun night, as per usual. But I think the best part was the container of leftover Irish Car Bomb cupcakes Ryan had in his fridge. Yum.....

Aw, shucks, he's cute....

And look what he did when I wasn't looking! That's what I get for leaving my computer on at his house, I suppose...

I heart black and white photos.

I know, I know: we are sickeningly cute.

"Nobody likes you, Everyone left you...

... they're all out without you...

     HAVING FUN!"

Such a mocking song... that was in American Idiot the Musical!

Saturday of our musical road trip extravaganza, we woke up, checked Ryan's computer for directions to our next adventure, and packed up and piled in the cars to head to Berkeley, California. 

Berkeley is really cute. I kind of wish I'd gone to college there. Just for the cute town.

American Idiot was play at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, a really awesome, very modern looking, theater along a whole row of theaters just down the street from the university.

In the spirit of my OSF Chris, who steals nearly all of his demonstrative pictures from online (or from me), here's a pic of the Berkeley Rep I found online: 

We were sitting on the closest side, but it's mirrored from the side you can see here. Chris and I were seated in that first "balcony" on stage left, and the others were seated front row underneath us. The theater overall is very small, so we would have had good views from nearly anywhere. 

Outside the theater, we wait for the show to start. Chris flashes our tickets:

We pose at the sign.

All right, here's some more Chris-style (aka, not mine) pictures of the actual show:

This one's mine! I am the queen camera smuggler! Well, only at final bows when the ushers aren't watching anymore.

And the OSF, as he waits for Ryan and I to have our fill of talking with John! Gallagher! Jr.!

The Going's On

It's another quiet morning up in Nor Cal. Let me tell you, I've never spent so much time in the central valley area than I have in the last two weekends. Last weekend was our musical weekend road trip (which I will write about, I promise), and this weekend Chris and I drove up with his parents to his Aunt Mari and Uncle Moose's house for his cousin Kelsey's wedding on Saturday. Aunt Mari and Uncle Moose are the owners of this wild monster, who is still the undefeated boxing champ as of this morning:







She's a fiend, I tell you!


So now that we're all tuckered out from our five-year-old pounding, I've retired to the comfy couch to upload some pics and sort through some more of the road trip ones from last weekend. With a little luck, I'll be able to post a few things before Jessica calls me back.