On her MySpace music blog, Hayley Bennett (played music star Cora) explains to her fans that the character she played in the movie was just a character. I almost want to message her and go: no we don’t assume that you have no morals because you play a strange character in a movie, we’re just generally untrustworthy of anyone in the movie/recording industry. But whatever. The soundtrack to the movie is really awesome. Unfortunately, I’ve got the song Buddha’s Delight nailed into my head. You know all those times I’ve hummed It’s A Small World and got it drilled into your head? That how I remember this song…drilled into my head. It’s excruciatingly annoying. One of the commercials before the movie was for Windows Vista and made me laugh hard. I mean it’s actually a really good commercial: a bunch of people doing normal things when suddenly they see something extraordinary, stop and say, “Wow.” Then they finally show a guy at a computer using Vista and Aero Glass (the 3-d desktop thing?) and he goes, “Wow.” Just makes me laugh.

So I today I picked up Katy at Disneyland and we drove to NoHo (North Hollywood) to see The Marvelous Wonderettes, which was choreographed by my godmother, Janet Miller and features Kim Huber (whom Dad has known since she was a teenager in Young Americans), Julie Dixon-Jackson (whom Dad “worked with” in the West Coast premiere of Sideshow at the Colony Theatre in Burbank), Bets Malone (Dad claims to have met her) and Kristin Chandler (married to Stan Chandler of Forever Plaid fame). Before that I spent a little time inside the park with my new phone and my iPod and my Bluetooth hands-free headphones doing some very interesting things like: dancing to the Shim Sham in my headphones via my phone, recording the Space Mountain soundtrack (the recording cut off right at my favorite part (right at the end where the guitar does a high solo) to remind me that I was going to go see the Wonderettes that night…darn reminders) and getting off of the ride and listening to the real song. I also counted the number of paces from the dog kennel across the esplanade to the bathrooms (150 paces). Eventually I will compare/contrast that with the distance (in paces) from the kennel to the bathrooms near the picnic areas to see which is closer. But that’s beside the point.

So anyways: The Marvelous Wonderettes. It started in September and has continually been extended in its run at The El Portal Theatre (very near to where I saw Barnum and City of Angels presented by Chromulome Theatre Company). The lobby is themed to the exterior of a high school gym on prom night and as you walk in you are handed a program, a dance card and a “Vote for Prom Queen” card and a pencil. The school mascot is the Chipmunks and even the pencils’ reflect school spirit (Go Chipmunks!). We are also invited to dance inside the gym if we know how to dance to 50’s music. Katy and I look at each other and laugh. Unfortunately, we can’t go right out on the floor because it’s open seating, so we save seats for the rest of my family and when they arrive we start dancing. But…the song’s don’t end! They keep feeding into each other (as pre-show music is wont to do), leading to this horrible dilemma. Eventually we stop and have a seat, ending with a short dip and some applause from the small house that just sat and watched us. It was definitely fun. Then the show begins. It’s a really fun show about 4 girls and their senior prom (2nd act is their 10-year reunion) with great 50’s (and 60’s) music. Definitely worth the drive if you can make it up there. More information at their website.