They ironed out a lot of the crap after the Broadway production closed- the touring version is what's licensed now, and it drops so much of the garbage and adds a little more material from the film, and the new tour-version material that wasn't in the film is better than the Broadway new material.

When Brooks made the movie, that joke was just another dashed-off subtle witticism. When the musical premiered about a decade ago, "How I Did It" got enormous laughs, because a book of that title has a very different connotation now than it did in the Seventies.

My guilty pleasure is a strange animated musical called "The Electric Piper." I got a screener of it from the composer/screenwriter… apparently Nickelodeon aired it just once, without any fanfare, and then stuck it in the vaults forever as "too weird."
It was a reimagining of the Pied Piper of Hamlin as filtered…

That's the point. It wasn't a fluke. She's a stealth genius, but she lives like it's easy and she loves life (and is also an attractive white blonde), so no one expects her to cut it with the other students, who are deathly serious and agonize over the difficulty and solemnity of an academic life.

Sheridan Smith all the way- get the London Live Cast Recording. It's more complete, it represents the licensed version of the show (ideal for musicians who need to learn the score or singers preparing to be in it), and Smith's Elle is feistier and less helium-voiced.

True Showbiz Tales #8: The only time I have ever bled onto my piano was when I was hired to play "keyboard 2" for Legally Blonde the Musical for a small regional theatre. I assumed I'd be playing a standard Keyboard 2 book, as provided by the orchestra… but no. I was one of two keyboards in a four-piece band playing a…

Takei just produced a musical about the interment camps, loosely inspired by his family's experience there. It got mixed reviews and did terrible business, but he pumped his own money into it to keep it afloat, because he believes in spreading awareness trumping commercial art.

Take-a the five pounds… and may the Good Lord smile upon ye until we meet again.

That doesn't feel too out of character for Culkin… he has the air of someone who simply could NOT CARE LESS, and does exactly what he feels like when he feels like it.

Ryan Gosling is making a musical… but it's not "Dead Man's Bones," the horror-romance musical he wrote and recorded with his folk-punk band and a children's choir? I'm a little disappointed.

True Showbiz Tales #7: My most recent show is opening in two weeks at the New York Musical Festival, where up-and-comers get to debut their shows for critics, producers and audiences. One of the other shows in the festival (the one that is getting the most buzz of all) is "Newton's Cradle," by Heath and Kim Saunders.…

American flags for the rest?

I'd be more interested in Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell making a picture book of dating advice. Nightmare fuel for millennials.
Or how about Stephen Schwartz giving dating advice? The melodies would all be poppy and instantly memorable, but the lyrics would be a little too clever for their own good, with outdated…

So it's a gender-flipped version of Oingo Boingo's "Only a Lad?"

Actual conversation among two teenagers I am in a show with:
FIRST GUY: "You know, PokeStops is an anagram for 'smoke pot.'"
SECOND GUY: "Wait… no it's not."
FIRST GUY: "Well…. uh… it is if you're already high."

Having read that page, the two most interesting things uncovered are: the use of "What what!" as a jovial or boisterous exclamation dates back to the fifties at least; and (in a link at the bottom), the old-timey swear "tarnation" is short for "eternal damnation."

IT'S GOOFY TIME

This is the second best Thunderbird commercial ever; the best involves James Mason, at his most "Sir Digby Chicken Caesar" dissolute, damning Thunderbird with faint praise.

I thought they were the Big Bug Scourge of the Skies?

One of my biggest "right person, wrong time" pairings is that Mark Hamill, who became a Broadway song and dance man between Star Wars and Batman, never got to play Msr. Thenardier on Broadway. His sleazy Joker/other villains voice fits the character perfectly… although given his complaint about how hard it is to…