Dimmer Rack, Unexpected Opera, and Celebrity Death Scandals

Work today was another assortment of random tasks.  I find it almost funny that I seem to be consistently busy just as I am ready to make my way home.  Today, my end of the day activity (after a morning of random fetching and sorting) involved helping Ed construct a dimmer rack for the Rec Room.  The dimmers lead up to the attic, so needless to say, we were pretty gross by the time it was done.  It was actually pretty toasty outside today, so I can only imagine how you are all feeling back home.  Before I left, I also ran into Josh, who has been appointed as our technical guru for YPT, so we had a brief chat about the effects.  He is going to handle the hourglass effect.  I'm pretty stoked about that.  :)

We had a choice of cultural excursions tonight, and I opted to go to The Unexpected Opera Company's performance of "The Barber of Savile Row," a version of the original opera set in 1950's London...a pretty clever twist if you ask me.  Figaro's hair itself deserved a round of applause...I have never seen something more magnificently awful in real life, only on the covers of Harlequin romance novels (Megan, I'm talking to you!).  Had I known the breaking news at the time, I might have not mentally compared it to that of Farrah Fawcett.  The show was delightful, and a different experience from what I had expected.  It was performed in The Scoop, a small outdoor amphitheatre on the southbank (right next to the government offices)...if a show can keep an audience entertained for three hours while sitting on concrete steps, it's a success.  :)  One character in particular, the head of police (from the Royal No-Cockup Metropolitan Police Force), was absolutely hilarious and made the opera feel like a stand-up act whenever he was onstage.  (One particularly fun moment was when he announced the audience participation bit: "We'll be doing Wagner's 'Ring Cycle'...you half can be Vikings, and you lot can get raped and pillaged!"  He also referred to his nightstick as a "Hackney Lie Detector.")  The villain showed his evil colors by condemning the modern music in favor of Gilbert and Sullivan (just as he was about to start singing "Modern Major General," the head of police marched in with the troops shouting "Don't you bloody dare!")  Also, being the good Catholic girl that I am, I found the sequences involving men in drag as nuns hilarious.  :)

Speaking of drama, Nido is in an uproar right now over the "Michael Jackson: Dead or Alive" scandal.  (And yes, I am aware that making that joke just secured another few bricks in the pathway to purgatory...)  According to the BBC website, his concert has been postponed...I'm not really sure how that will work...:)