Rant RENT

Took the surrogate daughters to see Rent yesterday. What happened to American musical theater when I wasn't looking?
OK, so Broadway has been gentrified and Disneyfied and all that, and Lion King and Beauty and the Beast are hits... But so is/was The Producers, and that was original. Avenue Q... ditto.

But Rent? I mean, aside from the fact that it's a lame ass grunginization of La Boheme, the book itself was awful. Act One drones on and on and on in what must surely be real time as it tells the story of one fateful Christmas Eve in a New York City that is no more real than the Disney version of Times Square.

AIDS, trannies, lesbians. Whoo-hoo. Was I supposed to be shocked or tittilated, or even interested? And the performance art piece at the end of the first act... help me out here, someone. The way it was played yesterday was as a really bad attempt at art by someone who seemed like an art-school dropout from Scarsdale. I thought the character, by other descriptions in the play, should have been played like Courtney Love: a desperate train wreck, but talented.

Anyway, we had fun on the ride home, when I taught Daughter2 the anal game. That's where you put the word anal in front of the car model: Anal Discovery, Anal Probe, Anal Lancer.... If you really want to get into the game, then you have to say what that is: an Anal Discovery is when you get the x-rays back and it's a coke bottle....

Hey. It was the high point of the afternoon, OK?