Bewitched, Bothered, and Bret Michaels

Well, ladies and gentlemen, last night was the night of all nights. The gay man's Super Bowl. The Tony Awards. Man oh man how excited were we to watch the one awards show a year that we can actually sit through. We were even more excited to turn on NY1 here in the city and see "Live on the Red Carpet". And our excitement faded after one minute when we realized how horrible it was. Tony Awards fashion is definitely not as exciting as Academy Awards fashion. But the night isn't about fashion - it's about incredibly talented artists who can't dress to save their lives (see: Carrie Fisher). And the nominees for Best Featured Bullets in a Blog are...

• Let's get the bad over with. The two bad things about the show were the ridiculous choices of musical numbers and horrible sound engineering. Sure, Shrek isn't the most amazing musical on the block, but they could have picked a much better number. And Billy Elliot should have picked a different song, as well. We haven't seen the show yet, but judging from that one performance, we would say that Next to Normal kind of got robbed. And all the sound mixing was way off. Thank you alto 2 part... and Jennifer Cody.
• The first go round we completely missed Bret Michaels getting clotheslined during the big opening number. Then we watched the video over and over. We don't necessarily think him falling is funny, but we think the fact that Stockard Channing completely has no idea what's going on is pretty funny.
• Of course we had a lot of fun watching the Rock of Ages performance. How cool was it that people in the audience had lights? And we will never stop loving Amy Spanger. But what we loved the most about this performance was the ridiculous camera angle at the end of the song. Did anyone else notice?? Hello crotch shot.
• How about that Guys and Dolls backdrop, eh? It reminded us of the national tour of Starlight Express. And that should never be an association made with a Broadway show.
• The opening number was amazing. That was the first time we cried last night. Other times included Karen Olivo's speech, Next to Normal's performance, the "In Memoriam" presentation, and when we ran out of bean dip.
• We're so glad the Tony Awards weren't hosted by Hugh Jackman. And of course we loved Neil Patrick Harris's final song that was written by the hilarious South Park guys, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. Does anyone else think Neil Patrick Harris and Gavin Creel would make a cute couple? They would have gorgeous kids. Dad? Help?

Even though a lot of sound engineers were fired last night, we think the 2009 Tony Awards was very entertaining! Next time let's leave out the touring shows. And get ready for a blog starring YOU guys! That's right, let's see what you all thought of the Tony's!

This blog is dedicated to the valiant man who ran Titus Burgess's microphone onstage when he was in dire need of salvation.

It's the Day of the Show, Y'all

Update time! Keep your eyes open for posts about Toxic Avenger and 9 to 5 which we just saw! They're coming we promise. Right NOW, though, we're too busy getting excited about Chef Chris Collins's famous 7-layer dip.

OH. And the Tony's. We cannot wait. We're expecting to feel literally every emotion known to man. Get ready for a crazy Tony's blog!

Bloggin' and Boppin'

Everyone, it's summertime. Meaning lunch is eaten at Melito's everyday, Gelati Celesti is eaten for breakfast and dinner everyday, and there's generally no thought of getting in a swimsuit because of the fact that Melito's and Gelati Celesti is all we eat. But for those of you who CAN chill by the pool and not get second-degree burns after being outside for three minutes, working out to fit in your itsy bitsy teeny weeny bikini or speedo (?) is a must. In workout magazines, celebs often give their ultimate workout playlist for their iPod. Since we're celebs, and since we work out (again, insert question mark in parentheses...?) we've decided to give you the ultimate playlist for your iPod- BROADWAY STYLE!

1. "So Much Better" from Legally Blonde- The rhythm is perfect, and all you need to do is picture all the tiny sorority girls in this show and you'll be sure to crank that treadmill up to 6. Or 5.2.... for a minute and then stay on 4.0 for about 30 minutes.

2. Literally any song from Altar Boyz- did you see those Swift Creek boy banders? Talk about a workout! And with songs like these (we especially love "God Put the Rhythm in Me") you'll be sweating almost as much as Chris Stewart and Annie did after "NYC" in Annie.

3. "Mamma Mia" from Les Miserables- Har har. But again, perfect rhythm, great tune. Just try not to picture Meryl Streep when you're pumping.

4. "Go, Go, Go Joseph" from Joseph- Stop laughing. Or rolling your eyes. The only problem is fast-forwarding through the blah of the Baker and the Butler or whoever.

5. "It Won't Be Long Now" from In the Heights- Karen Olivo is SO awesome on this song. And Lin-Manuel Miranda, well, you know how we feel about him. Just pretend that you're running toward him...

6. "Comfort and Joy" from Bat Boy- This song is GOOD. We'll always have memories of Scott Wichmann doing such an awesome job at this role at the Firehouse. Just pretend that you're running toward him...

7. "It's Your Wedding Day" from The Wedding Singer- Who doesn't like working out to 80s music? Or in this case music that sounds like it was written in the 80s and comes with choreography that literally throws in every stereotypical 80s move in a time-span of about 90 seconds?

8. Literally any song from Fosse or Movin' Out- We particularly like "Crunchy Granola Suite" or "Angry Young Man." Just think of Elizabeth Parkinson's ridiculous abs and you'll push yourself like crazy. Or hop off the Elliptical and down a milk shake because really, how will you ever get your body to look like hers? Seriously.

So let's start sweating to showtunes so we can stroot our stoof. If you have any other musical theatre workout songs, let us know!

Next to Perfect... a.k.a. The Post with the Cheesy Title

Friday night while Elyse was still in NYC, the sisters went to see the Broadway production of Next to Normal. We've heard so many awesome things about it, so we were excited to see it for ourselves. We were even more excited when Mario Cantone sat down two rows in front of us. Celebrity spotting week! And we will choose to ignore you if you are one of those people who's like, "Please. Celebrities go to the bathroom just like the rest of us." Umm. First of all, never use the word "bathroom" to prove a point. And second of all, no matter what, it's always fun to see how much you tower over them in real life. Anyway, let's talk about the show!

It was incredible. Seriously we're not yanking your chain or saying we loved it just because there are songs we can belt in our car or because Aaron Tveit (a.k.a. Nate Archibald's cousin on Gossip Girl) is perfect-looking and can sing perfectly and has a perfectly-flexible back arch that sort of comes out of nowhere. This is a show where you are literally hypnotized the whole time. Word to the wise, do not read the synopsis beforehand. Annie didn't and it was so amazing for her to be able to gasp and choke and sputter and cry while Elyse pretty much knew what was going to happen.

Every single one of the characters was believable with voices that blew us away. J. Robert Spencer (who looks a ridiculous amount like Ricky Martin) had us in tears in a good way every time he sang. Jennifer Damiano is a teen prodigy. Alice Ripley is just TOO GOOD. With her slightly Irish twang and her somewhat crazy eyes, she delivered a performance that was so heartfelt, you sometimes can't believe someone can actually be packed with that much talent.

Usually woe-is-me, woe-is-our-family stories tend to annoy us, because a lot of the times they're not done genuinely. The teenager is usually a stereotype, pissed off at the world but only because a 50-year-old writer wrote her that way. This show presents a family whom you connect to, who you root for, and who you pity. We know we're coming off a little bit serious here, but to us, this show proved a point. Although the lite-brite set with its sliding panels were awesome, they could have done away with that and just presented us with a group of musicians and actors- and the show still would have been incredible. This was a rock musical, with belting and a lot of riffing on the electric guitar. Yet there was no unnecessary stomping. There was no yelling to get a note. There was no forced emotion. It was incredible.

Hopefully this show will last really long, even if it doesn't win the Tony. Which it totally should. And we say that having not seen Rock of Ages or Billy Elliot. We feel like since that show won every award possible in London, it shouldn't be allowed to win that many again. Although we do love Elton. Speaking of Elton, do you remember when he sang with Eminem on that awards show? And speaking of Eminem what are you guys' thoughts on him walking out of the Movie Awards? Was that fake?

Good, We Weren't Hallucinating...

Do you agree? Scary looking.

Where Did We Go?

Ahhh! We're so bad at sticking to things! And by things we mean this blog. And diets. But we're feeling creative now and we felt like writing blogs that anyone who likes theatre will enjoy. Or not get it but read anyway because they're related to us. 

Right now the two of us are in New York because Annie is temping at BAM for a few weeks and Elyse doesn't have anything else to do. We're trying to see as many nominated shows as possible before the Tony's because we want to have an educated opinion on who wins as opposed to in the old days when we really wanted A Class Act to win because we apparently LOVED the song they performed on the Tony's? He looks like a combination of every boy in Sunday School with us. And what's the deal with pre-Lady-of-the-Lake Sara Ramirez? Anyway, last night our mom took us to see Hair so we have some thoughts about it! Let the bulletshine in.

•  Okay so first off, our seats were in the third row so we could kind of see backstage and 5 minutes before the show started, Elyse looks in the wings and goes, "Is that Adam Lambert? That's Adam Lambert. That's totally Adam Lambert. Look, it's Adam Lambert." And lo and behold, a couple seconds later Adam Lambert strolls into the theatre from the side door and sits a couple rows behind us! He looks scary in person. It was cool because every cast member of Hair pumped up their performance so much for the idol  in the audience.
• Everyone knows that Hair is the show where they get naked. Well, they got naked all right. But it was so unnecessary! They chose the most unassuming song in which to get naked. And Will Swenson (Berger), who was INCREDIBLE in the show apparently had an inferiority complex during the naked scene... he was hiding. And so was his -
• Mom had some hilarious one-liners. When they all got naked, she leaned over and whispered, "Hmm. The whole time I thought one of the actors was a girl. He's not." And then when Gavin Creel was trying to find ways to get out of getting drafted, she said, "Once the officers see that he's slightly cross-eyed he'll get out of duty." 
• Sasha Allen played Dionne. As in the "How Shall I See You Through My Tears" girl from Camp (once again, if you haven't seen this movie yet, you HAVE to). Apparently she's the one to go to if you need to open a show with a girl staring at you wearing a lot of lip gloss. Seriously, when she was standing at the point of the triangle before "Aquarius", we thought it would pan out to her wearing a tie-dyed tube top and a prepubescent Robin DeJesus would walk up to her with his shirt off.

The show was awesome and we're totally rooting for it for Best Revival. But we kind of think West Side Story is going to get it because of the whole bilingual thing. We'll see. When it gets closer to the big day we'll have our picks for the winners and maybe we'll do a contest to see who can get the most amount of guesses correct. Or something. Or we could have a Guess How Early Elyse Will Start Crying During The Tony's contest. 

Glad you're here reading this, you loyal friend, you! We promise we're not gone. Sorry you kept coming to the page to see "LUGUBRIOUS." 

"LUGUBRIOUS."

We sisters are together at last! Together forever! We're tying a knot that can only be severed when one sister promises to call the other one back because the other has big news and then the other sister "forgets" to because she has "light strike." Anyway, sorry these blog posts are so sporadic (again, thank you Cher Horowitz... and again, thank you makers of Clueless for making her last name so obviously Jewish). But we plan on making them much more frequent because there seems to be a lot we want to talk about. For now, let's rock out with our bullets out!

• Did you think we'd go without talking about the Tony nominations? Well here they are, in case you haven't seen them yet. We're a little ashamed because we haven't seen a lot of the musicals that have been nominated for a lot (like Billy Elliott, which we had the opportunity to go to but opted out because we weren't in the mood to cry all of the liquid out of our body). Um, Rock of Ages for Best Musical? Seriously? Even though we haven't seen it, that title makes us throw up in our mouths a little bit.
• We're so excited that Stockard Channing got nominated for Pal Joey. For some reason, she feels like the long-lost alcoholic aunt we never had. We're also excited that Hunter Bell got nominated for Best Book of a Musical for [Title of Show]- too bad it didn't get more nominations. Other than that, we don't have much to say other than obviously we can't wait to watch the awards and eat and drink "Angel HAIR Pasta," "Pal Cups o' Joe-y," "Next to Noodles," and "Guys and Dills..." Hm, apparently the rain stunts our puns. And apparently we will be having a lot of pasta on Tony night.
• This doesn't have to do with musicals or theatre but there's a website we found out about called Awkward Family Photos and it's so funny. There are only archives from April and May so it hasn't been around long but it's bound to get more and more hilarious. Go to it and read the captions. We want to send one of our family photos in and hopefully make it on the site. Here's our top contender so far. We're bound to find some that are even more awkward. Probably the best part of this photo is the cow holding yarn?
  
• As Mr. T. pointed out, theaters in Richmond are starting to announce their season. It's funny that there's talk about who will play who because it reminds us of high school. Obviously we wonder as well! What's on our minds right now is Spelling Bee at the Barksdale, because auditions for that are going on at the moment and it's just such a freakin' awesome and hilarious show. When we saw the show in New York we loved it and hoped that our friend Mike would get asked to be one of the spellers but he wasn't :( Oh well, Mike, maybe in Richmond.
• Anyway, who knows who will play who. It could go a lot of different ways. But out of the people we know, we know we're rooting for Drake the Butler to play William Barfee with an accent aigu. Seriously, we'd pay so much money (wow, maybe even $38!) to see him spell words out with his magic foot and have an allergic reaction to peanuts. It'd just be so great.

The one year anniversary of our blog is coming up kind of soon! ...........punch and pie.