Media/Celebrities

This Sunday was a day I've been looking forward to for a very very long time. Every gay boy's favorite musical about... well gays.. and uh.. AIDS and drug addicts and the bohemian lifestyle and stuff... was playing at Hollywood's Pantages Theater and WE HAD TICKETS!!

That's right.. it was RENT! But this was no ordinary production of Rent. It featured original cast members Adam Pascal (left) and Anthony Rapp (right) reprising their roles as Mark and Roger, respectively.It was such a rare opportunity, that it was actually only in town for 5 days (compared to Wicked [another AMAZING musical, but that's another post], which was at Pantages for like 2 years). All of the performances sold out almost immediately, but fortunately, Play scored us pre-sale tickets with his AmEx benefits -- go that! (crap, I better not start saying that)

We got to the show a bit early, so we hit the theater bar to have a pre-curtain cocktail. Play had his favorite disgusting Christmas-tree tasting beverage, and I had a Long Island (which I noticed for the first time also has Christmas in it... hmm).
Pantages tip-- clever twinks prepay for drinks before the show, so they don't have to wait in line during intermission ;)

I actually saw Rent a few years ago when it played at the San Diego Civic theater, but my seats were so bad I couldn't see the stage without binoculars. There's really no such thing as a bad seat at the Pantages, but even so, we opted for Orchestra seats so we could get the most of the experience. Unfortunately some tall motherfucker with an annoying habit of swinging his head from side to side sat right in front of me.. but we still had a great view.

Once again I was blown away... the music in Rent is absolutely beautiful, and I had forgotten how much more poignant it is live than watching the movie. I mean, it's a good movie, but in my opinion it really doesn't do the play justice. Adam Pascal does play Mark in the movie as well, though, which is pretty cool. In my opinion, the Mimi and the Maureen in the play did a much better job than the ones in the movie. I also thought that the energy of the audience and their enthusiasm for the show made the experience all the better-- every time a popular song started people would cheer and occasionally clap along (at one point prompting one of the actors to yell "Stop Clapping!") There was actually a pretty amusing point during Maureen's performance where there were some technical difficulties, but the actors did a really good job of covering it.

Now I've been annoying my roomie, my coworkers and Play by listening to the soundtrack non-stop. haha

Here are some of my favorite songs from Rent (though these clips are from the movie, so they lose a little something):

Go ahead, be jealous :-p

For those who were alive in the '80s (which eliminates several of our Twinkish Brigade), you'll probably recall news events on the spread of AIDS. You'll likely also remember that it was common place belief that gay men were the sole cause of the disease from all the heathenish anal sex. It seems perfectly rational to blame the gays, right?

New studies show gays are not entirely to blame. According to Malcolm Ritter at the Associated Press, AIDS is more likely to have originated from the late 1800s (between 1884 and 1924) rather than the mid 1900s as speculated when the disease received official recognition in 1981. Scientists say this discovery is more of a "fine tuning" of what scientists already knew. This discovery is no surprise, says researcher Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, "it means the virus was circulating under our radar even longer than we knew."

So next time you run into a fundamentalist who still believes AIDS is caused by gay men, ask him what he was doing during 1884 and to watch out if any monkeys were involved.

 - Play

-Alcoholist