Yesterday, I played hookey from work, leaving early by claiming I had to go to the eye doctor and instead going to see a matinee of Wicked and then, a few hours later, a performance of Phantom of the Opera. That I was lucky enough to see both for free in one day was amazing, and seeing the two basically back-to-back allowed me to think about those types of productions, the lavish, big musicals. I have been to a few Broadway plays now but had yet to go to what people generally talk about when they talk of Broadway shows - these types of shows. They are both gigantic productions with big casts, fairly crazy stage effects, and things flying through the air over the audience - monkeys in the case of Wicked and a chandelier in the case of Phantom. Both were pretty amazing in this respect and definitely wowed with me with some of the effects. That said, both probably would have been pretty boring without these garnishes, that the effects were a large part of the show. That, however, is not a problem for me. I was trying to tease out an analogy yesterday after seeing Wicked to Gabriel about how the musical was analagous to the wizard of Oz - that both were amazing, Wow-inducing things because of the smoke and mirrors, that really the wizard is a small man behind a bunch of machines, and that this musical also had its power because of these things, bombastic effects to win over the audience. And I am easy, was won.

My job has possibly gotten even more boring, as today I opened envelopes, removed checks from those envelopes, and stapled said checks to envelopes - did this all day long. And yet, today was one of the least boring days as I decided if they were going to give me such boring work to do, I would need to play my iPod to be able to make it through the day, and I listened to loud rock and roll and was there and was not there, was in various songs all day long, living out fantasies and memories for three minute stretches, some pretty amazing fantasies, some pretty amazing memories.