Around here we have been watching a lot of musicals. I mean a LOT of musicals. Part of the reason for this is because Emma is portraying Ethel Toffelmier in her junior high production of "The Music Man"; another part is that Sammy is obsessed with being a Broadway star; a third part is that they are awesome. But it's not just for them -- L. and I stayed up way too late last night watching "Cabaret," which we hadn't seen for some reason. (Turns out that it was a good reason...we found it massively overrated, although we did argue about it a little.)

Here is a partial list of all the other musicals we have watched in just the last two weeks:

Kiss Me Kate (I don't know about this one, not as great as I remember it)
Once Upon a Matress (I didn't see this, they watched it while I was at work)
Oklahoma (Adding TWO half-hour ballet numbers might not have been a great idea)
The Sound of Music (Say what you want but you cannot eff with Robert Wise's direction, the most underrated director in Hollywood history)
The Producers (New "musical" version, great in some ways but just not as awesome as the original)
The Pajama Game (Playing right now, very odd but I love it a ton, and Doris Day should always have been cast as a hard-boiled labor activist, hubba hubba)
Bye Bye Birdie (This movie has some awful moments, Dick Van Dyke was right to hate it; but OMG ANN MARGRET OMG SO HOT)
Take Me Out to the Ball Game (Unjustly forgotten but very surreal)

That doesn't count the original The Producers or Billy Elliot, both of which are pretty much just musicals, nor any of the other DVDs we've been renting from the library at an alarming rate. We still have How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the Gregory Hines movies Bojangles and Tap, and a couple others around here for watchin'.

(Well, plus the fact that Sammy got West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, and Guys and Dolls for Hanukkah, and Emma got the High School Musical DVD, which we didn't really need because we've memorized it all from having it on the DVR for months and months.)

Okay, so who cares? Well, that's a damned good question. But [REDACTED: HUGE SECTION TALKING ABOUT MY LIFELONG OBSESSION WITH MUSICALS AND PLAYS AND MY THEATRICAL "CAREER" AND MY OWN FAILURE AS A PLAYWRIGHT]

Anyway, Carol Haney is awesome in The Pajama Game, but it was her only movie. Read more about here and here. So tragic!

Nothing tastes better
than Fritos and Mountain Dew
at the cast party