Twelfth Night by the ASP

So, a real good sign that you're going to enjoy a Shakespeare production is if four beautiful women come out in their underwear and corsets and dance around, flirting with and throwing Christmas crackers to members of the audience. At least, for me, that's a good sign that you're going to have fun.

And then, as the (live, onstage) musicians finish up their dance number, they go into a slower, more melancholy piece -- and you realize that it's "Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence. As they play, Greg Steres, as Duke Orsinio, enters, hops up onto a window ledge next to the musicians, and tells them, "If music be the food of love, play on -- give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die."

I don't know how many people in the audience recognized what song was being played on cello and piano -- but for those of us who did, and know the lyrics, we realize that they found a song whose (unsung in the play) lyrics and music perfectly compliment the emotion and message of the scene. And that level of craftsmanship and detail is, as we've come to expect from Actor's Shakespeare Project, present throughout.
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Wow, this sucks.

So, I got a phone call a couple days ago from "Audience Studies, Inc," asking if I'd participate in an audience survey of a new sitcom.

I agreed.

So, it turns out that the tape actually includes commercials. And is not fast-forwardable. Now we know what the ACTUAL purpose is. Especially as the sitcom itself was copyright 1997. Ah, well. I'm a sucker.

I've drunk a quarter of a bottle of whiskey, re-read the instructions, and noticed that it says "watch however and whenever you usually watch at home." Thank God I normally watch TV while online, playing Kingdom of Loathing, and reading.

I'm surviving. But I'd still have preferred to have had another root canal instead. My root canal was significantly less painful than this gawdawful tape.

Please understand: I'm not exaggerating when I say that the root canal was less painful -- my root canal was actually quite painless. And I'm not exaggerating when I say "a quarter bottle of whiskey."

I think that the people who paid for this thing ought to be happy that I can't remember exactly what commercials were part of it. Except for Aflak, which isn't available in this state, and Nestle's Crunch, which I will avoid from now on, as I associate it with this painful experience.

After finishing the "post watching questionnaire"

I realized that the purpose of this sucker was to test an Energizer ad. Because the one product asked about in the POST-survey that wasn't in the PRE-survey was Energizer. So I encourage all of you -- when you have a chance between equal values of batteries -- choose the one that's NOT Energizer. I don't expect you to avoid Energizer batteries when they're actually on sale and a better value than other options -- but if you have a totally equal choice of two and one of them is Energizer, choose the other one, please? Thanks.