The Phantom of the Opera was there! In Ohio!

A couple nights ago I went to Columbus Ohio to see THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. It was AWESOME!! And "WOW" worthy. I mean, I thought Butler from the movie did a good job and all, but he can't sing at all compared to the guy who did the Phantom in the musical. He was just... amazing. I mean, because it was on stage and not video everything had to be dramatic and exaggerated and they weren't worried about sex appeal, therefore Erik (The Phantom) was portrayed closer to what he was in the novel: More monster than man. Older. Tortured. Hideous. (I mean, that disfigurement in the movie? Hah. It looked like a bad rash. A little bit of stage make up and he would have been fine.) I loved it. And I got the score, and I can acutally play the songs! I mean, not perfectly, considering I neglected my piano for most of the years I was having lessons, but with some practice I'll be able to play them well. And I have been. Practicing, that is. Its been driving my father up the wall, because he's been trying to watch TV. He gave me this dinky little kayboard that he bought at a garage sale for five dollars some odd twenty years ago in the hope that I'll play that in my room instead. Yeah, right. This thing has only four octives and the key are mini-sized. Nope, I'll be playing the real piano, thank you.

Columbus seemed a very odd city. Everything closed at eleven, and the entire city was a no smoking zone. Of course, that didn't bother me, but my dad went crazy. I was sleeping in the hotel room, and my dad, who was down stairs on one of his many trips to the smoking corner of the street, came back to the room and woke me up. Two o'clock in the morning. Now, I'm usually one who stays up until six in the morning before actually falling asleep, but I was extremely tired that night. He says that there's about a million kids in the hotel and the mall it is connected too, that its some type of youth convention and that there is about seven bands taking turns playing in the middle of the mall. But most importantly, he says, is that the food places are open for the teens. He had been complaining that he was hungry for hours now, but everything closed at eleven. So he tells me to get up, get dressed and go down with him, cause he felt uncomfortable being surrounded by a bunch of teens, and since I was a teen he would fit in better. So I get dressed, grumbling all the while (I was VERY tired, and unlike him, not hungry at all.) and go down with him. We stand in line FOREVER and it turns out I do not fit in, for I am the only female in the vicinity not wearing a skirt. Turns out there was a dress code. Ah, well. We got our pizza just as the last band finishes. And later, I find out that Audio Adrenaline was there! And I had missed them!!! Gah! They used to be my all time favorite band when I was little, I still have there entire first three CD's memorized. I really wish I knew about them being there... and that I had worn the skirt I wore to the musical. *sigh*

Anyway, it was a pretty interesting trip. Though PHANTOM was absolutely the best part of it. The next day we drove to Indianapolis for the St. Francis picnic and I sweated a lot at the Zoo. It was HOT. That wasn't too much fun. I got pretty sick of all the monkeys.

I do not want to go back to school. They are evil for making us go back so early in the summer.