Listen to the Rain

Last night, sashagee and I went to a Sailor Moon musical.

I know very little about Sailor Moon and have no emotional attachment to it--I haven't seen a single episode of the original series, though I have seen Crystal, and I was not one of the people who grew up watching and bonded with it as a young child. sashagee is, though, so as soon as she heard that there was going to be a musical performance she asked if I wanted to go with her, and I said yes.

Our original plan was for me to come home, us to eat dinner, and then head down there and get to the doors around 7 p.m. I heard from multiple people that the merch line was insane and sold out extremely quickly, though, so mid-afternoon we changed our plans. She came down and met me after work, in her cutest red dress with her hair in odangos, and we went to Brightwok Kitchen, which was dairy-free, gluten-free, mostly egg-free, and thus while not technically heḥshered I at least felt comfortable eating there during Pesaḥ (my original thought was some other Asian restaurant but soy sauce has wheat in it so that was a no-go). We got some delicious rice bowls, checked to see if the tea store was still there (it was not), and then walked to the Chicago Theatre to stand in line. The line wasn't too long and we lucked out by all the existing VIP people moving through their line, so the back part of the main line where we were was routed through the VIP line instead. We immediately went through the merch line, got through in only a few minutes, and sashagee bought a branded lightstick (lit up in multiple colors and said セーラームーン on it) and a poster, and since we still had almost an hour and a half before the musical began, we bought popcorn and sat up on a bench on the balcony hallway and waited. We saw MomoManLove very briefly, talked with pearl.nongluk and bradford.bensontaylor about their struggles with the merch line, and saw gracielizabeth and pezroan waiting in the merch line which now extended all way down the downstairs hall and up seven(!) flights of stairs. They eventually got down to the front and came back, only to inform us that we were extremely lucky because the branded lightsticks had sold out and only generic Kpop-style ones were left. gracielizabeth had gotten VIP tickets so she was seated in the front with the bigwigs, whereas we were up on the balcony, and as the timer ticked down we took our seats.

The musical was fun! Which is to say, I had a nice time, but I was not one of the people screaming when Usagi did her first costume change and said the famous 月に代わって、お仕置きよ！ (tsuki ni kawatte, oshioki yo, "In the name of the moon, I will punish you!") The first half was a condensed version of the Dark Kingdom arc, which I've heard all of these musicals do, but it makes sense--being the first arc, there's no backstory you have to assume the audience knows, and it's the most theatrically-dramatic part with the love across lifetimes and the forces of the Dark Kingdom, here depicted as pre-War-style with neon and big band music. The sailor senshi fought song guys, Tuxedo Mask threw roses--all special effects were done on a giant screen behind the stage, where the supertitles were also displayed---they went up and down platforms and had fight scenes, and saved the world. If you're familiar all with Sailor Moon you know what happens. If you're not familiar with Sailor Moon, you would probably be in for a rough time because a bunch of stuff was cut out and I would have had very little idea what was happening if I hadn't already seen Sailor Moon Crystal. As it was, I kept thinking, "Wait, doesn't the villain have shitennō? Where are they?" (they were entirely cut)

The second half was a series of idol concert-style musical numbers. Most of them were reprises from the show, and the whole time I kept thinking, what about the theme song? There was a brief wordless version at near the beginning but everyone knows it and they haven't done it yet.

( Well, of course they were saving it for the finale )

We left and met up with people out in the lobby, but everyone decided not to go out to anywhere afterwards. Instead, we all just went home. On the way back, sashagee kept saying how amazing it was and how much she loved it and how glad she was she managed to get one of the coveted branded lightsticks. She gave it 10/10. I wouldn't go that far for the aforementioned reasons that I have no deep connection with Sailor Moon, but it was still a bunch of fun. Be prepared for the idol show, though, and make sure you know the plot. Otherwise you'll be lost.

Once again, I went to go see a play that lisekatevans was in, this time with Black Button Eyes Productions. The last show of theirs I went to see was Whisper House, a musical involving ghosts, which sounds much cooler than my final impressions of the play were. It was disjointed, with the "singing ghosts" and the "exploration of prejudice during World War II" parts never really coming together in a satisfying way. That's not the fault of Black Button Eyes, of course, since they didn't write the script (Duncan Sheik did), and the acting and singing was good, but it was true nonetheless.

Kind of giving away the game here.


If you look at the page for the show and read the review excerpts, you'll see they praise the casting and the special effects and mostly do not mention anything about the story. And there's a reason for that.

But first, as the reviews say, the casting and the special effects were good! The actor playing Cornelius Agrippa (the older wizard mentor) had great stage presence and timing. lisekatevans played two characters--a lady's maid and a cacklingly evil servant of the Ancients, giant Lovecraftian monsters threatening England--and looked like she was having a great time leaping around the stage and issuing dire threats of vengeance from her master. The special effects for all the magic being performed were very good, with a lot of lights of various colors and what lisekatevans said were called "Kakubi streamers" that packed a ton of material into small packages so that it looked like streams of fire were coming from the actors' hands. My favorite trick was probably when Henrietta Howel, the protagonist, was being needled by one of her fellow magic students and they kept swapping out the paper globe representing the size of her fireball as her emotions surged. The tentacles sneaking in from when Korozoth, the Shadow and Fog, attacks London were surprisingly realistic-looking for stage prop tentacles.

Alright, so.

A Shadow Bright and Burning is an adaptation of a young adult fantasy novel, and it's hard to tell if my problems with the story are due to the original story or the adaptation. Some of them are definitely due to the difficulty of switching mediums--especially early on in the play, there is a lot of "As you know" dialogue to explain what's going on. For example, the play begins with a description of the three types of mages: sorcerers, who calmly allowing the elements to flow through them and enact their will; magicians, who use trickery and deceit and illusion; and witches, who use the "power of nature," whatever that means. Not that it matters because not a single witch appears in the story. Early on, Henrietta will narrate some of her actions, which seemed counter to the entire point of a stage play to me, like saying that she slipped into the covers and was almost instantly asleep instead of just acting it out. Or the way that there's a lot played up with the relationship between Henrietta and Rook, her childhood friend without magic who was marked by the Ancients and bears scars related to them, and then Rook disappears for big chunks of the play. Those are definitely problems with the adaptation.

But the original story is very clearly Shadow and Bone crossed with a bit of Harry Potter. Main character in a mundane profession (schoolteacher), who discovers her secret magical powers. She is proclaimed the Chosen One, destined to save the country, and taken away to a sorcerer's school to be trained. She is an orphan, who knows very little of her parents, and is the only known female sorcerer. Why this is so rare and believed impossible is never explicitly stated but is implied to be because sorcery requires supreme control and emotional calm and ladies be crazy, which we could pass off as a representation of misogyny that the main character has to overcome except:

Spoilers for an eight-year-old book

Henrietta is not a sorcerer, she's a magician. Her father was a magician and she inherited his magician powers, which...seems to confirm that women are too emotionally unstable to be sorcerers? Admittedly I'm basing this off the play and maybe the book goes into it more, but in the book there are two (one) female sorcerers. One of them went crazy due to dreams sent by the Ancients and devoted herself to their service, and the other isn't a sorcerer at all. So I guess those Victorian mores about women are right? That doesn't seem intentional.

Henrietta studies her powers, deals with her fellow students (as well as Rook), faces threats, and at the end loses her mentor but has a triumph that shows she is ready for future. You've seen it all before and I don't think there's anything new or interesting here other than the Lovecraftian monsters, but despite them sending dreams to people they seem to act more like kaijū. Korozoth repeatedly attacks London and has to be driven off, there's some dialogue indicating that Nemneris the Water Spider is cruising around the English Channel and the North Sea just sinking any British ships it can find. They're not exactly incomprehensible, though this is a young adult book so maybe that's the point.

It is definitely A [Noun] of [Noun] and [Noun] story.

Afterwards, lisekatevans and I went out with one of her coworkers and her coworker's friends, who all met at Bavarian Instrument-Making School (I think it was this one). We had a nice conversation about politics (German and American), what to do in the Bavarian Alps in the winter (cook), and Philadelphia vs. Chicago (they're all in Chicago now). It was a lovely evening.

Yesterday and today is Purim (פורים, "lots" in the fortune-telling sense) and it's the first one since Purim 2020 that I've attended in person. It was even back at the Davis Theatre again, with the food out in the bar area, just like the first Mishkan Purimspiel I went to. The reader who did voices for the different characters was back!

sashagee couldn't make it. Even if we had found a babysitter, she was too sick to go, which was a bit awkward when the rabbi emailed me on Tuesday and told me how happy she was to see our names on the guest list after everything that has happened in the last few months. She found me at the party pretty early (I'm very easy to spot) and expressed her regrets for everything we had gone through this year so far. Then she gave me a hug.

The spiel was mostly pre-recorded video this year, and the real innovation is that it was a bunch of small skits put together with the aid of the Neo-Futurists, performers of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and Chicago's best theatre group according to TimeOut magazine! And also very Jewish, apparently--the reason this happened is that there were at least six or seven Neo-Futurists in the audience at the Purimspiel. My favorite short was the first one they played, a parody of Seasons of Love called "Married to Mishkan" about being the partner of a rabbinical assistant and the "525,600 emails" they have to deal with, but also shoutouts to "My Dad Blows It Again," about the father of the presenter who literally wrote the book on shofarim, "Shofar Sho'Scary" chronicling how the team tasked with recording Mishkan's 2021 Rosh Hashanah services did not bring a tripod (and thus a parody of The Blair Witch Project), and "Mishkan: Reloaded," which was a Matrix parody by the technical director and ended with:

"I am one with the livestream.

"I am the one.

"I am...אחד." (echad, "one")

There was also a lot less innuendo than in most years:


The one problem I had with the event was that they put out the dinner food before the Purimspiel, and the dessert food after...which meant that anyone like me, who's keeping Ta'anit Esther, couldn't eat any dinner food since the fast ended in the middle of the spiel. I grabbed a plate of a few things and brought it into the theatre, so my dinner was asparagus, mushrooms, a bit of salad, and cheese from the cheese plate eaten about halfway through the spiel, and then the hamantaschen from the goodie bags on the empty seats on either side. And then I walked three miles home because I missed the bus. Honestly, the walk was nice--I used to walk miles home alone at night all the time, back before the Plague Years when I had a full schedule and was out doing things all the time--but a full meal would have helped.

I did get flagged down by bunnydelfuego, who recognized me from running into me at last week's Shabbat services, and it turns out she and her partner live nearby! Maybe sashagee and her will get to meet soon like thedukelord suggested.

---

For future reference, and if anyone is curious, here's some points from the traditional Jewish understanding of Esther's story that aren't necessarily obvious from a straight reading of the text (Heb: פשט‎ pshat).

( Knowledge Within )

On Juneteeth, worldbshiny invited me to watch Tilikum, which she had seen live two years ago and which (as the link indicates) was being broadcast again as a fundraiser for the Let Us Breathe Collective. All I knew going in was that it was about the killer whale at SeaWorld who was...well, let's borrow modern language and say that there were three orca-involved deaths, and I only knew that because I looked it up on Wikipedia. I described it as "powerful" later, and I'll stand by that. I was surprised how directly the metaphor applied when black actors played the killer whales--taken from their homelands and transported to a new world where they aren't free to move around, imprisoned in tiny cells, and forced to work without pay, with a white man (representing the white power structure) frequently talking about how Tilikum is his investment and will do what wants or else, and a white woman (representing the white savior narrative) arguing that Tilikum needs more space and light and air while also still training him in a specific trick that she wants to perform mostly for herself.

The other three orcas had no spoken dialogue, instead being performed by drummers, with specific sequences having specific meaning. Since the whales are all from separate pods, Tilikum can't understand them at the beginning, and part of the play is him learning to speak with the other orcas. It took about half the play for me to understand why these sequences were included , but afterwards worldbshiny pointed out that each of the other orcas had a slightly different set of instruments they were playing their songs on. There was a lot about communication in the play--about Tilikum learning to speak to the other orcas, after which their dialogue is displayed as supertitles during the drumming; about Dawn assuming she knows everything that Tilikum is saying without actually ever listening to him; and about the SeaWorld owner using communication as a weapon, constantly pushing boundaries and then pulling back with that "I'm only joking!" attitude, or the beginning and ending where he tries to tell an inquest how rare orca-involved deaths are as a means of avoiding any meaningful reform and continuing the current power structure indefinitely.

worldbshiny talked about Tilikum's sound design and how effective it was in person, where the drums were echoing off the walls and different orcas speaking came from different directions, or how the crowd noise didn't drown out some of the actors' lines, in a way that just can't be replicated when watching a single-camera video of the performance. Something that we'll have to get used to in the Plague Year, I think, since indoor performances seem like a bad idea for a while.

As the link indicates, it was one night only, otherwise I would recommend it. But if it does come back on streaming, definitely watch it.

---

On Sunday, sashagee and I watched The Mandalorian after she was astonished that I, a fan of Star Wars, had never seen it. I had seen all the Baby Yoda memes, and "this is the way" and so on, but other than knowing it was a space Western about a guy who never takes off his helmet because of his religious convictions and that people had said it justified the existence of Disney+, I didn't know much else.

Turns out it's a lot like Cowboy Bebop, so.

sashagee described the best parts of Star Wars as being "bar fights on garbage planets," and it definitely has plenty of those. We were talking about how Star Wars is best when it's run-down and lived in, when the advanced technology is about to fall apart and seems like so much of a part of the world that when krill farmers on a backwater planet have droids helping them but also live in stick-and-mud huts, it seems natural. When most planets Mando visits are wastelands, with small towns or hermits living in the wilderness and civilization is far away, well, that's the best part of Star Wars. There was a lot going in with the prequels, but one of the things I personally disliked was that all the technology was shiny and new. A 50s diner instead of a dusty saloon. There's a quote about Firefly, about the two most important images being Mal eating instant noodles with chopsticks out of a tin cup and a bar fight where a patron gets thrown through a window, but the window is a hologram. For The Mandalorian, it's a barfight where the bartender is a droid.

I really appreciate when Star Wars takes a departure away from the Skywalker saga and tries to tell stories with other characters that aren't about Jedi, the Force, Darth Vader and his legacy, and so on. I saw Rogue One a while ago and the parts of it that I liked the least were the parts of it that tried to desperately forge connections between the original trilogy that weren't necessary and actually made the story worse ("This is a consular ship... we're on a diplomatic mission" when Vader literally followed them after they stole the Death Star plans ). The Mandalorian delves back into the jidaigeki to Western pipeline that inspired Star Wars, so there's an episode that's a version of The Seven Samurai and the basic plot is pretty similar to Lone Wolf and Cub. The New Republic is only mentioned and X-Wings don't show up for several episodes. It's all about space bounty hunting, which, much like Cowboy Bebop, just doesn't pay.

Also, Mando's acting is amazing considering he never once shows his face!

We got through "The Prisoner," so there's only two episodes left. I'm really looking forward to them!

Finally added an extroversion tag because I guess it applies now. Just about everything I was going to do this weekend was cancelled, and then the backup stuff I would have done instead was all also cancelled, so I ended up texting people for one-on-one hangout time because I figured that's pretty safe and also because after one day of sitting at home I was going stir-crazy. Is this was being an extrovert is like? I don't like it.

I do like the Japanese words, though. They're basically translations of the English--extroversion is 外向性 gaikōsei and 内向性 naikōsei, "outward-facing personality" and "inward-facing personality."

lisekatevans's theatre performance is cancelled and they might try to remount it next year. LIVE this month is cancelled, and they said they'll look at next month as the situation changes. Deathscribe, which I first saw in 2018, is also delayed because the theatre where it was going to be held is closed until April. The Art Institute is closed until April. The sea shanty sing for this month is cancelled. The taiko performance I was thinking of going to go to today is cancelled. The Mishkan sing-along today is online, so I might still attend that, but otherwise everything is cancelled. It's for a good reason, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I spent a big chunk of yesterday playing video games and wishing I was outside or a friend's place. Me!

The AMA is still open, though, as of now. Social distancing? Sure, I'll do that and also tomorrow I'll get on the L with hundreds of other people and go into my workplace, which has almost a thousand people. I'm sure it's fine for a medical organization to have everyone come in to work during a pandemic. Nothing can go wrong.

And now, back to translating the Hollow FFVIIR trailer, which I should have done last month but I was too busy extroverting everywhere.

My sister wanderluster_kp came to visit this weekend!

She was originally going to come visit last weekend, but at the last minute she was on call and couldn't make it. She was going to come early on Friday to meet me right after work, but taking the day off turned into being stuck at work until 4 a.m. She's a veterinary surgeon, so almost all of what she does is surgery, and if there's an emergency, she'll get called in to operate, which means that even most of her free time is stuck waiting for her phone to ring and summon her in to work. She works like 80 hours a week and basically doesn't have a life outside of work, going to the gym, and sleeping, though she does get to travel internationally a few times a year (to go to veterinary conferences). That's why she's quitting and doing...something. She's not entirely sure yet, since she hated her first private practice job, and she currently hates her job at a veterinary school, so what's left?

Anyway, she got in late on Friday, so after I left services we met in Lakeview for dinner--it was Valentine's Day, but we found a Thai restaurant that wasn't too crowded after Strings had a giant line of people waiting to get in--and then I texted around to see who was free. britshlez got back to me saying that her sister and her sister;s boyfriend might be coming up from the south side to go out and said we could over while we waited for them. We ended up hanging out and talking until 2:30 a.m. and her sister never showed up, which I guess is par for the course. We drank wine, and wanderluster_kp talked about our family, and wanderluster_kp told britshlez about her work dilemmas, and then we called it in the early morning and went home, and I set up the couch bed for wanderluster_kp and went to sleep.

I woke up at 10:30 a.m. the next morning, and apparently wanderluster_kp woke up around the same time but kept drifting in and out of sleep. I guess I happened to catch her at all the wrong times, because I checked on her several times and every time she seemed to be fast asleep to me, only waking up at 1 p.m. That meant we missed the Chicago Folk Festival down in Hyde Park, so instead I made us breakfast and then we walked around Andersonville and looked at the shops--mostly antique shops, since I didn't want to bore her with shoe shopping or the other things I have to do, though I did go and buy more groceries at the Middle Eastern Grocery Store--went back home and ate dinner, and then came the time for the evening's entertainment.

I had originally planned to go with liszante to Whisper House, a musical by Duncan Sheik, who I was only familiar with though his 90s hit Barely Breathing before. I knew that lisekatevans had gone to see it and said she liked it when I asked her about it, so I suggested it to liszante, and when wanderluster_kp was going to be here I asked if it was okay that she came too. We arrived just barely in time thanks to my local Red Line stop being closed for repairs, but liszante saved seats for us, so we sat down and the musical began.

It was...extremely odd. It was almost like there were two separate productions going on which had been uncomfortably smashed together. In one of them, a boy whose father had died in World War II and whose mother had suffered a nervous breakdown went to live with an aunt in a remote lighthouse in Maine. His aunt had a clubfoot and so had a Japanese handyman, and the boy--and some of the surrounding people--weren't happy about having one of "them" so close by, so the play was a story about prejudice, love crossing barriers, overcoming tragedy, and the way the past comes back to haunt you. In the other one, there were two singing ghosts who kept popping up to perform musical numbers like Better to Be Dead. They were kind of the narrators, if the narrator only talked about the emotional undercurrents of what was happening rather than a strict recounting of events.

It didn't quite cohere for me, though. Very occasionally the ghosts would speak, and very occasionally other people would sing, so the musical illusion--that this is a world where sometimes people just burst into song--never took hold. It was jarring when the ghosts spoke, and it was jarring when the others sang, and sometimes the ghosts would sing songs that weren't entirely relevant to what was happening on stage like The Tale of Solomon Snell. The singers were talented, and I liked all the ghost songs...and the actors playing the other characters were compelling. The stage was well-ordered and they maintained proper distance, so that even on a small stage, when they went back behind the pillars and across to the other side, it was obvious they were going to the bell house, or the basement, or were otherwise in a separate location even though the two stage sides were maybe two meters apart. But like I said, it was like two separate performances that just happened to be taking place on the same place. I had a nice time, but I don't know that I'd recommend it.

Afterwards we went out to Murasaki, a sake lounge in Streeterville, for their monthly City Pop night. Again I texted around and again no one could come, so wanderluster_kp and I went and sat in the corner and each had one drink. I got a Minty Kiss, which both looked and tasted like mouthwash, and wanderluster_kp got a gin and tonic, and then a second gin and tonic for free because they had used the wrong gin in the first one. She drank the second one, I drank my mouthwash, and then we went home and went to bed.

The next morning we woke up at a much reasonable time, and after I made Japanese breakfast, we walked down to Andersonville again and went to the Swedish-American Museum, which I wrote a bit about here a while ago. The permanent collection was the same, though this time there was an exhibit of photography by someone who went to the Chicago Botanic Garden! There were several pictures of trees and parts of the garden in fog that looked gorgeous, but I didn't take any pictures. I suggest you go see it while you can, if you're in Chicago--it will only take a bit.

We left the museum, walked across the street, and hopped on the Clark bus to head to Boystown for Milt's Barbecue for the Perplexed, which wanderluster_kp, who has a mild dairy allergy, was extremely excited to go to because she could be sure they had no dairy on the premises. Unfortunately, while we were on our way, lisekatevans texted me and told me that Milt's was closed for a private event. I asked her if there were anything nearby that was suitable, and of the choices she suggested, I picked Shiawase, a sushi restaurant, because it was at least likely to have little dairy. We sat down and talked a bunch about the show that lisekatevans is in--she was rehearsing lines when we came in--and about wanderluster_kp work woes while we ate bento box lunch specials, and then we all rode the bus back north so lisekatevans could go to rehearsal and wanderluster_kp could pack up and go home.

She told me she was meeting our parents at a truck stop so they could give her back the dog they've been taking care for a couple months, and that she suggested we all meet in the city for brunch, but they said, "We saw dorchadas last weekend," so

But I'm really glad that wanderluster_kp came to visit! And hopefully next time she'll have more time then, and Milt's will be open, and more people will be free to meet up! And maybe she'll come in the summer or spring when the icy winter wind won't be blasting us into ice as we walk down the street. But even with the winter wind, it was a lovely time.

I refuse to spell it "Xanuqa" even though that was the second-most-popular spelling at my party.

( Eight crazy nights )

Tonight I'm going over to koppel's place to watch Zardoz, which I introduced to him at the quiet hangout I went to on the 25th, and which fired him up to get people together to watch it. It seems like a great way to usher out the old decade, with a bunch of ridiculous 70s imagery to purge all the venomous nonsense from the last year. And there was so much venom, but I feel like all the candle-lighting I've done lately has helped.

The year and the decade are almost gone. Let them go.

"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die."
- Alfred Tennyson, Ring Out, Wild Bells

Lots of religion in this accounting of my life, and for once, it's not just Judaism!

( Omurice and Chanukah Stories and Singing )

One more week of work and then I have two weeks off for the New Year! I'm really looking forward to having a long vacation. Maybe I'll even play a video game--it is time for me to finally get to Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness.

Could have used more sleep, but otherwise I don't have any complaints about my weekend.

( Spooky Halloween times )

Last night I went out to Otherworld Theatre and saw Super Richard World III. "It is just Richard III but with Nintendo characters" was the tagline, and that was absolutely correct.


The play started with the GameCube boot music, and then Mario (Edward IV) and Luigi (Richard III) fighting Donkey Kong (Henry VI). Luigi handed Mario a hammer, and he smashed the building Donkey Kong had climbed and took the crown for himself. And then the others exited the stage and in a perfect Charles Martinet voice Luigi said:

Now is-a the winter of our discontent.

So that's the kind of play it was.

Pauline (Margaret) showed up occasionally to the tune of her theme song to utter curses and imprecations. Link had no lines at all, but after he showed King Luigi the body of Baby Mario and was left alone on the stage, he sadly knelt down, sadly took off his gauntlets, sadly pulled out an ocarina, and sadly played the Song of Time. All of Lord Pikachu's lines were "Pika! Pika pika!" and some other characters understood him and some didn't. Princess Peach (Queen Elizabeth) would take out her parasol and threaten people with it during her angry speeches. During scenes where Luigi received bad news, he’d look from side to side while trembling and knock his knees together. The characters all swore to Hylia and Ganon rather than G-d and Jesus. When King Luigi was inducing Link to kill the children, he pulled a rupee out and Link took it and held it above his head with appropriate fanfare. Every time Bowserham (Buckingham, of course) exited or entered the stage, he did so sideways because his shell got in the way. When King Luigi was having a dream before the final battle at Flower Field, Kirby, Pikachu, Waluigi, and the others he had executed all showed up as boos to torment him.

The final battle was Smash Brothers, completely with character introduction callouts and sound effects. Luigi entered first to give a speech while wielding his trusty vacuum cleaner. Link fought K-Rool and, after dodging an attack, the stage lighting flashed and Link performed a flurry rush to win. When Link fought against Meta Knight, Meta Knight activated Galaxia Darkness and then Link had a death scene where all his lines were "HAA! HYAAAH!" over and over again. Rosalina (Young Elizabeth) killed Meta Knight with telekinesis, and the final battle came down to Diddy Kong, son of Donkey Kong, vs. King Luigi, who cried out:

A kart! A kart! My kingdom for a kart!

Then after Luigi was stunned, Diddy Kong killed him with a blue shell.

Most of the actual dialogue was taken straight from Richard III with only minor variations on the theme of that last line--inserting "Hylia" for "G-d", references to stars or coins or barrels. Whenever Luigi signaled for everyone to leave the stage, he did it with a hearty 'Let's-a go!" and then leapt through the door. When Mario showed up after taking the throne, his first line was, of course, "It's-a me, King Mario IV!" But other than that, most lines were from the original text, and the actors did a lot with which character spoke which lines and their demeanor in doing so. Bowserham's growl, Luigi's Martinet impression, Link's silence, Toad (Lord Mayor's) screeching, all of them helped blend together the Nintendo side with the Shakespearean side. It was a lot like Muppet Christmas Carol, where the premise was totally ridiculous but they were fully committed to taking it seriously and that's why it worked so well.

As I told goodbyeomelas and drydem in the lobby afterwards, it reminded me of Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom.

I invited worldbshiny but she couldn't make it to the theatre in time before the curtain, and when I posted about it, aaron.hosek, who's on vacation right now, was very disappointed to learn that it only runs through this Sunday. I kind of wish I had gone earlier so I could have told people about it when they had more of a chance to see it. The performance I went to was sold out, and good--they deserve the attention.

I had never seen Richard III before this production, and now I want to see a more traditional take on it. The next Stupid Shakespeare production is Pickilerickelicles, which is Ricky and Morty crossed with Pericles. I haven't seen either of those, but based on this, I'll probably go.

Last weekend was one of those weekends where you feel like you need a weekend to recover from the weekend. But mostly in a good way.

Wednesday was mostly ordinary, except that the previous week a real phishing attack happened to hit us at exactly the same time as an IT-initiated phishing exercise. Some people fell for the former, so IT pushed a company-wide password reset. So I reset my password, left, and prepped for a four-day-long weekend.

Thursday was theoretically going to be mostly cooking the Seder dishes that would keep, like the flourless choco cake or the kamaboko, but what I actually spent most of the day dealing with was the plumber. I put in a maintenance request for a leaky faucet and a non-functional sink stopper on Monday, and on Thursday the plumber (unexpectedly) arrived, so I guess it's a good thing I was home. He inspected things, stepped out to get parts, then came back and spent a couple hours working on the pipes. He replaced much of the visible kitchen sink piping and bathroom piping, installed new faucets, and then left. And when I went to take a shower, I discovered that he hadn't actually attached the bathtub faucet and the pressure of the shower stopper forced it off of its pipe.

I told the handman, who reported it to the management company, who told the plumber. After an extremely uncomfortable and awkward shower, I went shopping for my Seder ingredients, and about fifteen minutes after I got back, the plumber showed up again and finished the job. That meant I had time to eat dinner and go to therapy and then only a little time to do the cooking, but I did finish the charoset and the flourless choco cake, so at least I got something done.

Friday was Seder prep and my Seder.

Saturday I woke up early, went back to sleep, and then woke up again later and spent the morning watching anime and otherwise taking a bit of time to decompress. Then in the afternoon I went to gothiklezmer's Seder out in Avondale, which was lovely. gothiklezmer asked me about what was different between her Seder and mine, so for posterity I'll record it here: there was a lot more discussion during my Seder, probably because my Seder had more people who had never attended a Seder before and her Seder had a child in attendance; my Seder was on the floor in a circle and hers was at a table, as is more traditional; and her Seder had more vegetarian-friendly food. Like me, though, she also made her own gefilte fish , though hers were due to her family's long residence in the Pacific Northwest, so it was made with salmon and cod (substituted for the original halibut). I ate a half-dozen of them, and more like a dozen of the deviled eggs. There were maror-themed versions, with pickled ginger and wasabi, and charoset-themed versions, with nut butter, and both of them were fantastic. As was the homemade ice cream for dessert, especially the matcha flavor.

As I mentioned before, though gothiklezmer had built her own Haggadah using Haggadot.com, and a couple times during the reading--we went around and read in turns, of course--I read part of the Hebrew that's usually sung, because I'm so used to hosting Seders now where Jews are in the minority and if there's any singing of Hebrew, it's just us doing it.

I don't often get to attend First and Second Seder, but this is two years in a row it's happened. If I had attended even one Seder, it would have been enough (), but I'm certainly glad I got to go to both.

I left almost immediately after the Seder ended, turning down the offer of leftovers since gothiklezmer and I both knew my fridge couldn't handle any more food, because I had another obligation. lisekatevans had invited me to an Easter Vigil suite of events starting at four o'clock--pool swimming, dinner, the vigil, and a gathering in her hotel room--but she had done it at 3:15 p.m., just when I was leaving for second Seder. I told her that all I could probably attend was the party in the hotel room, but I specifically made time to go to that. I was only there for an hour or so, since the reason she and some people from her church had gotten a hotel room downtown in the first place was to more easily attend the dawn Easter service the next morning, but it was lovely company, even if I couldn't eat the homemade brownies, cookies, or other treats available.

I also learned that Easter begins at sundown, which was new information to me.

Sunday I woke up early, fell back asleep, then woke up again and read a bit before it was time for meowtima's birthday celebration! I could only attend a bit of it, the opening lunch at SUBO Filipino Kitchen in Albany Park, but the food was delicious once I took a bit of time to navigate the menu and avoid all the treif and chametz it was covered with (no lumpia for me, sadly ). At one o'clock everyone got up to go to a nearby park to break open a piñata, but I had another obligation, so I said goodbye and walked down to the Windy City Playhouse to attend a performance of Noises Off with liszante.

I had never even heard of Noises Off before liszante invited me to it, but nearly everyone I told about it told me how much they loved it so I guess I'm just out of the loop. It started slow for me, because while my parents love watching shows like The Vicar of Dibley or Fawlty Towers or Keeping Up Appearances, I've only seen them in passing while at their house, so I'm not familiar with the tropes of British comedy. Once we were moved backstage, however, and we saw the deteriorating relationships among the cast members while they were still trying to perform to the "audience" out in front, that was when I really got into it. By Act III, when we moved back to the front and the third run of the play-within-a-play disintegrated into chaos, I was laughing as hard as anyone else. It's already been extended--liszante originally saw it in January and she said the entire cast is different--but I highly recommend it.

At that point I had to run to finish my chores, so I went home after a stop at Whole Foods and spent the rest of the night doing laundry and cooking. Today is more laundry and hopefully nothing else. This last week has been amazing, but I need a day to just sit. Starting Thursday and going right through Sunday, it was like Clock Town Day 3 from Majora's Mask was just playing on loop in the back of my mind.

Here's to a day that's not just . And I hope you all had a great weekend too!

We're supposed to get six to ten inches overnight, but I'm dubious. The snow was also supposed to start earlier today and mess up the commute and, at least in Chicago proper, it didn't start until about thirty minutes ago. It's falling pretty heavily now and the street is coated but it's definitely not enough to impede driving. Fortunately, I have a long weekend anyway thanks to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so I don't have to care one way or another.

It does mean I can use my Chicago icon with a double meaning once again, though!

ping816 was going to have his annual Space Dragon dinner tonight, but I was already wavering on going. I've slept terribly this entire week. After nightmares on Saturday that kept me up, I couldn't get to sleep on Sunday until one a.m., and then slept badly every day other than Thursday night, where I finally went to bed early and only woke up ten minutes before my alarm. And now I have an extra day off so I'm definitely going to get extra sleep. The only things I have planned this weekend are going to another Anime Chicago season sampler tomorrow and going to the Art Institute to see the ukiyo-e exhibit before it closes next weekend. I'll either go with lisekatevans on Monday or by myself. I'm not going to miss this.

On Thursday night I went to see a play called Cardboard Piano with worldbshiny. Despite some transit difficulties--I wavered between taking the bus and taking the L, decided to take the bus, and ended up having to get off a couple stops early and sprint to the theatre thanks to it taking much longer to get there than my transit app told me that it would--I arrived on time, a couple minutes before the show started, which meant that I didn't know what it was about or have time to read the program. It turned out to be about homophobia in Uganda, forgiveness and whether it's possible, and how much one should be trapped by one's past. I thought it was good but not particularly noteworthy. Not something I would ever have thought of going to see if I wasn't invited, though, so I'm glad I went!

I got out of work early today because of the holiday, but I haven't done much with the time. I started playing ゴッド・スレイヤー はるか天空のソナタ ("God Slayer: Sonata of the Far-Away Sky"), or Crystalis as it was called in America. Playing this is reminding me of how much of my taste in fantasy comes from it, and from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which it liberally borrowed from. It wasn't until I read the Nausicaä manga a decade ago that I realized where the original source for my love of fungal forests, ancient and vanished technological civilizations, desperate battles against a seemingly-unstoppable empire, floating towers, and saving the world. And yeah, the floating tower is from Laputa, but if you're going to plunder anyone's oeuvre, Miyazaki is a good choice.

And now, off to watch more Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara and then go sleep. Probably more either tomorrow or after I go to the ukiyo-e exhibit!

I was pretty busy last weekend.
( A tale of party after party )

Tonight I'm doing something once more. As is the way of my people, I'm going out to Chinese food! meowtima is going too, so I imagine it'll be wonderful. Going to need to make space in my stomach for the food.

This kind of weekend is something that I used to absolutely dread, but I had a blast. It was great and I was looking forward to it the whole time, but I admit sitting here and writing this with no other real obligation is pretty nice. I do have to go shopping and go pick up a package, but that'll take an hour at most. Then dinner tonight, and tomorrow I'm doing nothing. What a lovely few days.