I’m Fifteen For A Woman

That was great.  You know that Five For Fighting song, 100 Years?  Well, it came on at the store yesterday, and Karl and I were working.  So, he hears the first line,a nd says, “What’s this song about?  I mean, ‘I’m 15 for a woman?'”

So, I started laughing, and said that the line was “I’m 15 for a moment.”

So, yeah.  Thta was really funny.  I told him I’d be laughing about it for the rest of the day, and I pretty much was.

So, I got home from work, and went online, and Shannon was on.  I was reading a book, though, and wasn’t paying much attention to the internet.  But she IMs me, and says she’s bored.  So, I suggested hey, why not play DDR over at FunTime America?  But then, I had an even better idea.  I knew that Phantom of the Opera was playing at the Loew’s in the Monmouth Mall, and suggested going there, figuring we could see when it was playing, and then just hang around until a showing of it.

Well, she found out that it was playing about forty five minutes from when we were talking.  So, I said I’d pick her up, and we went.  We pulled around to where the theater is, instead of parking at the entrance and just walkng through the mall, which is what I now know we should’ve done.  It took me about five minutes after I let her out of the car to see if we were still in time, to find a damn parking spot, in the recesses of the lot!!  Argh.

Anyway, it was already dark by the time we got in, but only about two minutes of the movie had gone by.  So, we found seats near the front, and watched.

SPOILERS!!!!!

I’m telling you now, there are spoilers in the following paragraphs, so if you want to see it for yourself without any prior knowledge, scroll down until you see another red label like this one.

Different little things about it bothered me, and a couple of bigger things.  I mean, at the beginning, when Raoul buys the papier mache musical box, with the figure of the persian monkey on it, he’s supposed to sing, “A collector’s piece, indeed.  Every detail, exactly as she said.  She often spoke of you, my friend.  Your velvet lining and your igurine of lead.  Will you still play, when all the rest of us are dead?”  Instead, he only sang, “A collector’s piece, indeed.  Every detail, exactly as she said.  Will you still play, when all the rest of us are dead?”

And other things that were sung in the play, were spoken words in the movie.  Like, when Christine and Raoul are recalling their childhood days, the parts about “Little Lotte let her mind wander . . .” those are supposed to be sung!  But instead they were spoken by Christine and Raoul.

And they fricken cut the Phantom’s best line!!!!!  During Prima Donna, in the play, that song represents how Andre and Firmin are not going to follow the Phantom’s orders and place Carlotta in the silent role, and give Christine the lead.  And at the end of their declaration that Carlotta is their Prima Donna, the Phantom bellows, “So, it is to be war between us!  If these demands are not met, a disaster beyond your imagination shall occur!”  And THEY CUT IT OUT!!!!

Not to mention the fact that they completely canged when the chandelier fell!  It’s supposed to go down right after All I Ask Of You, because the Phantom is so grief stricken and everything from seeing Christine and Raoul together, and knowing taht they love each other.  He comes down off the angel statue, and makes the chandelier crash to the stage below.  And a line in Masquerade even relates to the fall of the chandelier.  “Here’s a health, here’s a toast, to a prosperous year, to the new chandelier.”  And it just bugs the heck outta me that they changed that.  Instead they said something like, “To friends, close and dear.  Eurgh . . .  And there were other lines like that, too, where they changed a word, or something.  I mean, heck, “It’s really not amusing, he’s abusing our position, in addition he wants money, he’s a funny sort of specter, to expect a large retainer, nothing plainer, he is clearly quite insane!”  They changed those lines!!!  As well as, “Here’s to us!  I must say all the same it is a shame that Phantom fellow isn’t here!”  They changed it, and that really pisses me off.

Not to mention, that during Don Juan Triumphant, when they’re singing Point of No Return, the Phantom’s supposed to be wearing this cloak thing, and it’s not until the end of the song that Christin, let alone anyone else, realizes that it’s the Phantom.  She pulls back the cloak at the end of the song, exposing who it is to everyone.  Then, he sings a reprise of All I Ask Of You, saying that he wants her to be with him, and he loves her and all that, and his last line is “Christine, that’s all I ask of–” but he doesn’t get to say the word “you,” because she tears off his mask, exposing his deformed face to the rest of the audience.  Then, they’re able to escape because the rest of the cast finds the body of the man that the Phantom killed in order to take his place on the stage.  Mayhem ensues, Phantom brings Christine down to his lair, etc.  But in the movie, she tears off his mask, and that’s when they have the chandelier fall, in order to create a diversion so Christine and the Phantom can escape.

Other than that, and some small other things, like frankly, the Phantom was nowhere near deformed enough.  I mean, with what they had with his face, it’s almost as if, “What’s there to hide?”  You know?  It just wasn’t enough.  I mean, this man is supposed to be hideous, half of his face, and a good deal of his head are supposed to be majorly deformed.  Instead, it’s about two-thirds of the right side of his face, and it’s almost as if his face was burned that way.  Yet, where the play, and therefore that movie are concerned, the Phantom was born that way.

End of Spoilers

Anyway.  All in all, I guess it was pretty good.  After the movie, we went to FunTime, and played DDR a couple of times.  Shannon’s getting better.  Then, we went to an ATM so she could get money, because I’d suggestedgoing and getting something to eat.  So, went to the ATM, and she said she picked a place to eat last time, so I should pick this time.  And I said, “How about the Court Jester?”  I’ve never been there, but I know other people I know have, and I’ve been curious about it in the past.

So, we get in, we get a table, and it’s about fifteen, twenty minutes before the

waiter even comes over to take our drink orders.  By that point, though, we knew what we wanted, and ordered our drinks as well as food.  We both got this nacho platter that was advertised on the appetizer list.  Frankly, this thing should have been put under “Four Course Meal.”  For one thing, it had all four food groups.  For another, here’s the appetizers at Friendly’s, ::picture me holding my hands about five inches apart::  Now, here’s the appetizers at Court Jester’s, ::picture the space between my hands widening another seven inches::

Yeah, the plate was big.  We just ate those plates of nachos as our meal, paid, and left.  And we’d been talking about writing and whatnot while we were eating the four course nachos, and that got us talking about these character sheets that Shannon has, where it’s a really detailed outline you can use for a character.  So, we went back to her house and filled those out, and we’re going to E-mail them to one another and write a story based on the other’s character.  It’ll be interesting to see what we come up with.

Hmm…  I made myself hungry, talking about those nachos.  I’d like to go to Pathmark now and buy nacho stuff.  Mayhap I will do this.

Anyway, not much has happened today.  I went to work in the morning, Karl and I had some laughs, as always, and when Shanna got there, we were hanging out at my register talking.  Then Ali got there, and I was able to proof (count the register) so I could go.

And when I came back to the house, I found out that Mike wasn’t here.  Apparently, “his parents went and picked him up.”

Frankly, I find so many things wrong with that sentence, I don’t even know where to start.  First off, what the Hell?  No, he made no definite plans with me, but even so.  Both of his parents claimed that his mom had “such a busy schedule” the rest of the time she was here, and that was why it was “so important” for Mike to come up there last week, and why the gave him such a hard time about seeing if he could come up on Sunday when he already had plans for that day.  Supposedly, he was only going to see her on Thursday, because “she had other plans” for the remainder of the days.

But then, yesterday morning Dan shows up here, and Mike leaves to go with Dan up there to visit, the same time I left for work.  Now I hear that he’s with them today, too?  What the freakin’ Hell???  I mean, they give him all that freakin’ grief about not being able to visit with her, they stop by and whisk him away last Tuesday, they try to get him to drop his responsibility, not to mention his promise, to Mike Keller to go to that draft tournament on Sunday, and now two days in a row, he’s seeing her?  I mean, what the f*ck?  What the Hell is their problem that they give him all the grief they did last week, claiming that his mom’s gonna be “so busy,” and “has no other days to see him,” and yet, what?  Miraculously, her schedule just happened to clear up?  I don’t buy that one bit.  She was more than likely just lying from the start, trying to get her way on how she wanted things to be, despite the fact that Mike had already made obligations and promises prior to her ever showing up in the state!

And now, once again, Mike claimed to be back, or call, or something, by a certain time, and of course, it’s about two hours after that time.  I swear to God, why does he even bother pretending to have an idea of when he’ll be back?  I mean, seriously.  He should just say from the getgo, “No, I have no clue when I’ll be back, because I’ll shoot for (whatever time,) but since I’m me, I’m gonna lose track of time, and be three hours late.”

Yeah, his mom has succeeded in receiving a few more nails in the mental coffin I’ve constructed.