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Lambtown and Etc.

I always feel somewhat guilty when I am in the Sacramento environs and do not tell my friends Malvina and Sam that I will be in their vicinity, as we always have fun and delicious foods whenever we get together.  However, my appearance in the state’s capitol was rather spontaneous: my mom and I trekked up to Dixon to attend their annual Lambtown festival, then followed up with a trip to the new yarn store I found the last time I was in Sac over Labor Day.

Lambtown was fun, if a bit smaller than I was anticipating, but we are not talking Maryland Sheep & Wool or Rhinebeck here, we are talking Hick California Town Sheep Thing. (No offense to Dixon, which is a cute little farm town about 20 miles from Sacramento.)  There was plenty to look at and a whole multi-purpose room full of yarn and fleece.  I even looked at a drop spindle, but dudes: come over here and punch me if I ever start spinning because cripes in a kayak I do not want to. I haven’t even used my loom this year – let’s master rigid heddle weaving first, shall we? Oy.

Didn’t take any pictures of the yarn room, but I did take adorable shots of alpacas and sheep:

Lambtown

Lambtown

Lambtown

Lambtown

Plus, I got a shot of this beauty:

Lambtown

Poor guy is in need of some orthadontia, I think. Heh.

Anyway, it was a good time and afterwards we headed up to Fair Oaks to go to Babetta’s, which my mom hadn’t been in before. We were discussing what to have for lunch and couldn’t really decide, when we noticed that like three store fronts from Babetta’s was a Thai restaurant! So after yarn we went over there and had a very nice lunch.

We got a peanut sauce salad, which was kind of your basic salad but it had this awesome peanut sauce and braised tofu bits and was just really tasty. We also had pad thai, which my mom had never had. I liked it, but I’m not too picky about pad thai. She wasn’t super thrilled with it. It lacked in the peanut department, I thought, but was otherwise good. We also tried the chicken and red curry which was also good. I must say no place has ever equaled the unparalleled greatness that is Coconut Bay in Burlingame, so if you take that place out of the equation, this place was quite good.

I have been sick all week with a minor cold, and I feel a bit better today – a lot less sniffly which is nice. I mainlined the zinc Cold Eeze on Wednesday and Thursday and that seemed to do the trick. I’ve slept a lot, which is definitely nice. I don’t think I’ll last too late tonight either. I should look for something for dinner, maybe.

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Cindy & Bobe Hope



Cindy & Bobe Hope, originally uploaded by Pynnski.

My uncle posted this picture to Facebook of my grandmother and Bob Hope at a USO show in the 1940’s. It has completely blown my mind – doesn’t Bob look young, and isn’t my grandmother gorgeous? I wish I’d known about this picture earlier. Uncle Joel says he didn’t know about it for a long time and when he asked my grandmother about it, she said it was “No big deal.”

I wish Cindy were still alive, there are so many questions I would like to ask her.

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Wicked the Musical

It takes a lot to tempt me into wandering into a theater.  I can count on one hand the number of professional shows I’ve been to – and the last time I saw a show was in 2001 when Rent was playing at the Orpheum in San Francisco. 

Now I’ve added Wicked the Musical to that list. 

Wicked the Musical

It was first workshopped here in SF years ago, and then there was a previous run a few years ago.  I wasn’t interested then because A) I was still living in Texas so I wasn’t exactly near where it was playing and B) I read a review in Entertainment Weekly that kind of panned it with a C grade and C) I hadn’t yet reread the book so I didn’t quite realize what a literary masterpiece it was! (Honestly, don’t be 15 and try to read the book, no matter how much you love the Wizard of Oz.)

Anyway, so six months ago my sister and I decided to go see the new run at the Orpheum and Abby ordered our tickets.  Finally the day came and we headed to the city.  The show has been sold out, so the theatre was packed.  Somehow, Abby managed to get seats on the bottom floor – there are two sections on the bottom, orchestra level and mezzanine, I think (louge [sic?] is upstairs) and we were in the mezzanine in the middle of the left side section.  Really decent view of the stage and kind of exciting to actually be on that level, especially since I thought we’d be upstairs.  My participation in acquiring the tickets was pretty much telling Abby to keep it around $100 if she could and then paying her back for my ticket. So it was a nice surprise that we were so close!

I will say right here that I am not a fan of Stephen Schwartz, the composer of this musical.  I think his work lacks cohesion and singable tunes.  He’s responsible for the crap soundtracks of Disney’s animated musicals Pocahontas and Hunchback of Notre Dame, and various other stage musicals that I’d like to punch him in the face for (Godspell, etc.). I’d gotten the Wicked soundtrack out of the library last year or the year before and was disappointed at how ultimately blah it was. 

So, yeah, I still decided to go, despite this.  I do love the book, and I love the Wizard of Oz.

The sets were amazing.  The costumes were fantastic.  The woman who played Glinda was absolutely fantastic (Kendra Kesselbaum, I think her name is).  We had a surprise in that Madame Morrible was played by Patty Duke! She was great. (Abby was all, “Who’s Patty Duke?”) Also, the Wizard was played by the guy who played Steve on Married With Children – he was good too.  But nobody was as good as Kendra Kesselbaum, who I was pretty much blown away by.

Wicked the Musical

There was a cop-out happy ending, which I found slightly irksome, though understandable. However, because of that, I would definitely say that it’s kid-friendly, since, basically, NO ONE DIES. Also, it’s totally funny.

My ultimate grade would be a B- because I feel that the music really does drag it down that much.  But as a stage production, the sets, direction, comedic timing, fabulous costumes, and excellent performances really elevate the show past lame music.  I would definitely recommend going to see it if you have the opportunity!