July 12, 2004

Into the Woods/Wild Wild West

Yes, a strange blend of Sondheim and the old MGM musicals--however, both serve quite sufficiently for yesterday. Leigha is here and as crazy and moody as usual. I house-sat last weekend for Uncle Jacque and Aunt Laurie (they went to Fort Brag, Raven travelled down to So. Cali to visit fam, and Cody is still in Tennessee). Leigha spent Saturday night with me there. We watched the new Peter Pan twice (which we are both still obsessed with), had popcorn (I also had an artichoke. MMM!), IBC root beer from the bottle (Leigha thought it was the greatest thing ever), read Pamela's First Musical (Ooh dahling!), talked, sang, danced, played with Paas and both cats. One set of busy 12 hours!

Yesterday, my parents picked the both of us up after church. We bought ourselves some dandy picnicking foods and headed up to the Lake (Aunt Susan said people in Louisiana call it Lake Tahooie!). We had lunch at Spooner lake and hiked around a bit. Then, we headed where no Brown has gone before. Yes indeedy, folks, we headed to the Ponderosa Ranch, pardners; home of the famous Western television show and the first entirely filmed in color--BONANZA! Dunh dunh dunh dunh da da da DU! Dunh dunh dunh da du da da da!

We saw ourselves some fancy rope trickin', standin' right on a steed, whip lashin', a gunfight filled with comedy, the set of Bonanza, Stinky Pete's prison, the Ponderosa Bible Church (where you can git hitched), ole fasheoned automobeels, lyesince plates datin' back to the 1910s, and much much more. It's almost enough the make a rooster crow, fer a pig ta holler, and a grown man ta up and cry! All in all, it was a fun day.

Kudos to Nina who now has her driver's license--5 days shy of turning 20. Good job Janina! On her first try, too!

Figure out the title yet? "Into the Woods" is clearly from Stephen Sondheim's musical by the same name (an excellent and hilarious musical). "Wild Wild West?" Not the movie or the show. Nope! It's from an old MGM musical known as . . . The Harvey Girls (which I now own on DVD). Cheesy? Absolutely, yet it does have Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Cyd Charisse and a very young Angela Lansbury as a saloon girl. And the defining great moment of the film is Garland singing "The Atchins, the Topeka and the Santa Fe." Good times to be had. And now, a quote from the great Peter Pan movie, "To live is an awfully big adventure!"

1 comment:

Devon said...

Yippee for the new Peter Pan. I LOVED it too. I loved how closely it followed the book (in style, feel, and important lines, I thought, rather than plot exactly)--way better than the cartoon crap, or even Mary Martin's version, although I like that one too. I'm going to go buy it as soon as Hollywood Video has it on the Previously Viewed rack! :)