kayaking musicals

And what a full weekend it was! On Saturday I went kayaking with some lovely ladies down on Lake Washington. I've never been to Magnuson Park, and could have spent an afternoon just walking around looking at the abandoned military base buildings. Seattle Raft and Kayak seemed like it was squatting in one of them----I'm sure it's all very official, but there is an overwhelming feeling that it's a ghost town in there. The bathroom for the shop was through a locked door, in a hallway next to big doors marked "Private, Goggles Must Be Worn" and had metal diamonds baked into the wavy glass windows. Very horror show, very oh-please-explore-me. If only I could have! Instead, the lake beckoned. The sun stayed behind clouds for the most part, but that was actually to my liking. Less crazy sunscreen slathering. Windy, too, which made for some energetic paddling. Happily I did not have a repeat of my Uncle Kai kayaking injury from several years ago.

Uncle Kai, I shake my fist at you and your crappy kayaks!

Then on Sunday I took Charlie out on a date to see Young Frankenstein. It is one of his most favorite movies ever, and you have to love a man who not only tolerates my love of Broadway musicals but also admits to liking them himself (he knows the words to The Music Man now!). It isn't often that Seattle is the ramping-up city to a broadway musical, but when it happens MAN do you realize the high caliber of Broadway talent! We sat in the 11th row and spent most of the time laughing uproariously at the unabashedly ribald lyrics and ogling the awesome special effects. I don't think I'm going to rush out and buy the soundtrack, but the entire "Another Roll in Ze Hay" act was really out of this world. I'm torn, because this video showcases the utter idiocy of local news (dig that Enormous Phallic Microphone! Thrill to the embarrassingly dumb constant tv references!) but it does show the most clips from the musical that I could find without outright pirating it. Plus you can hear Mel Brooks make an awesome Danny Kaye reference. Oh god, that enormous phallic microphone.


I might end up buying the soundtrack after all. I mean, there's yodeling in it! The more I write about it the more I remember how incredibly awesome it was. And I haven't even gotten into what is probably their biggest hitting number, the Putting On The Ritz montage where there everyone is wearing tuxes and dancing, and suddenly the theatre goes dark and the strobe lights WHAM every .5 seconds and you see dancers frozen in the air with their top hats and canes and WHAM another pose and then WHAM another and you try so damn hard not to blink because if you do you'll miss something.

It was a super good weekend. Did I mention that Charlie didn't go to work at all? Yay!