in retrospect: AWESOME.

Okay. So for those of you who don't know, I was born and raised in New York City. In downtown Manhattan, to be specific, but that's neither here nor there. But, yeah. I also had the very great fortune of having parents who were avid theatergoers, and who instilled a love of theater in me from a very young age. (Since theater is currently my career, I owe a pretty huge debt of gratitude to them.) And they devoted a pretty huge chunk of their disposable income to the arts -- opera for my dad, ballet for my mom, and Broadway shows for the whole family. Starting at about age eight, my big birthday or Christmas/Hanukkah gift every year would be tickets to the Broadway show of my choosing. THIS WAS MADE OF AWESOME, no lie. And ever since then, I've been collecting every Playbill to every show I see. Primarily Broadway, but any professional production anywhere, I try to save the Playbill. Some people collect stamps. I collect theater memories. This is my career, this is my life. I haven't counted in a while, but I'm probably about up to a hundred by now -- and I've been slacking off on saving them in the past couple of years. My parents are moving out of my childhood home this summer, so I've been salvaging any of my old stuff that I still want, and my Playbill collection has only recently joined me in my current apartment.

Anyway. Back to theater. In particular, my mother raised me to believe that there is one God, and his name is Stephen Sondheim. (This is only sort of a joke.) For those of you who don't know much about musical theater, Sondheim is The Major composer/lyricist of the second half of the 20th century. He wrote the lyrics to West Side Story, for starters -- and that was just his first professional show. Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, A Little Night Music, Company, and a whole bunch of others -- all of these are Sondheim shows. I love his music LOTS AND LOTS. (The guy just turned 80 this year. This was a Big Deal for Broadway devotees.)

So when I was about 14, there was a show running on Broadway that was a revue of Sondheim's music, called "Putting It Together". That was my birthday present that year. I haven't thought about it in YEARS -- it was a fun show with some major musical theater legends performing in it (Carol Burnett, George Hearn), but being a revue, it doesn't stand out in my list of Awesome Shows I Have Seen (I prefer proper plotlines). But this afternoon, I was browsing wikipedia (like you do) and had a minor revelation moment. When I got back to my apartment, I dug through my Playbill collection and found it.

Guys.

GUYS.



-

I SAW CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS LIVE ON BROADWAY WHEN I WAS FOURTEEN AND I DIDN'T REALIZE IT UNTIL TODAY.

!!!

This does not quite top the fact that I have seen Neil Patrick Harris performing Sondheim live twice -- once in "Assassins", once in another revue. I was at least aware of it at those times. Also, twice. BUT STILL.

the revenge of the tv meme

I'm bored. I mean, I am eternally grateful that for a short space of time I have had ACTUAL WEEKENDS, and I'm sure I'll be kicking myself this time next week when I realize yup, they're going away again for another few months. But I have no particular fannish projects holding my attention at the moment (still in post-Big Bang slump, though it still needs another round of editing once my betas have had a chance to slog through it) and nothing much to DO. I've watched another disc of True Blood, which finishes the first season. There are other shows I'm vaguely interested in, but none enough to seek out for download. And while I would love to curl up with my laptop and read good fic, I'm still in a Jack/Ianto frame of mind and I've spent the past month rereading just about every halfway decent fic for the pairing, and I want to read NEW fic. But that fandom's taken a bit of a hit since CoE, and even the CoE fix-it phase of fandom seems to have died down, at least for the moment.

And there is no new Doctor Who today. TRAGIC.

So instead I'll knock out a few more of the TV meme, since I am terminally incapable of posting on anything resembling a regular basis.


Day 19 - Best TV show cast

I freaking LOVE ensemble shows. TEAMS! The biggest downfall of Doctor Who, for my particular tastes, is that it focuses too tightly on the Doctor and the Companion. This is why I get so bloody excited about multiple companions, like Nine & Rose & Jack, or Eleven & Amy & Rory, and why for all of the many pitfalls of "Journey's End", I will love it forever for giving us all of those awesome people flying the TARDIS together. The TEAM! element of Torchwood is vastly more important to me than my shipping Jack/Ianto, and my biggest problem with CoE. But I digress, clearly. So: Whoniverse, basically out for this one.

THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD ENSEMBLE SHOWS, guys! I clearly cannot pick just one! Here, have a celebratory picspam of AWESOME TEAMS BEING AWESOME. ( ensembles FTW! )

Day 20 - Favorite kiss

I was going to say, there is no way I can narrow this down. And then maybe try to picspam you again. Because there's Mulder/Scully in "Millennium", and Nine/Rose in "Parting of the Ways", and Simon/Kaylee MAKING THE FUCK OUT FINALLY in "Serenity" (yes I know that's the movie, but it's just an extension of the show and it totally counts), and Stuart/Vince at Vince's birthday party, and and and...

But no. Look, I have a ship for every show, and every kiss is awesome. But I do play favorites occasionally. ( yeah, that one. )

Look, this is the scene that made me start watching the Whoniverse as a whole. I had seen nothing, and then I saw this scene on YouTube, and then I downloaded the first episode of new!Who and went for it in order to eventually see this in context. That is one damn important kiss in my fannish life.

Also, NNGK.


Day 21 - Favorite ship

DO WE HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS AGAIN.

Picspams take a freaking long time. I'm going to be lazy now.

Torchwood - Jack/Ianto. Doctor Who - Doctor/Rose, Amy/Rory(/Doctor). West Wing - CJ/Danny. Firefly - Zoe/Wash. QAF UK - Vince/Stuart. X-Files - Mulder/Scully. All of these are ships for which I will trawl the internet for quite literally weeks or months on end, to varying degrees of success. Every show has its own ship, but those are the ones that are still my bulletproof kinks. I am not shippy to the exclusion of other pairings, nor to the point of hating any pairings involving just one of my ship. But yeah.


Day 22 - Favorite series finale

...hmm. Most series tend to drift by the end; there are very few series finales that leave me satisfied. I'm definitely not counting miniseries here, because they're written to be one complete story -- otherwise "Points" for Band of Brothers would be an automatic win.

Toss-up: "West Wing" ended VERY well, given how long the show ran; the final episode is a bit sentimental, but god knows it earned it. And I love love LOVE Josh in the Oval Office with Santos -- "What's next?" BIG SPARKLY HEARTS.

But also? Queer as Folk UK. Now there was one show Russell T Davies showed out with style. Everyone gets their own freaking awesome epilogue -- Hazel gets married (for tax reasons)! Bernard becomes a porn baron! Nathan becomes king of the world! -- and, most importantly: There are many rumours about Stuart and Vince -- all of them true. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3