Putting the Camp in Camp Half-Blood

I didn't even know that there was a Percy Jackson musical till I saw a poster on the subway a few weeks ago that announced its one-week engagement in Toronto. I decided on the spot that I basically had to give it a look.

And hey. It was a time. It almost felt as though it was made by people who just got thrown together and wrote the whole thing in order because it really got progressively better as it went on. Everything got tighter and more decisive, but it never dropped that bathetic whimsy, which so heavily defined the books. Honestly, I'd put it around the level of the movies, but its strengths and flaws were wildly different. Still. A good time. And the kind of thing I basically had to do.

Bonus Question!

Movie Grover versus musical Grover!

Each was a divergent take on the character, but musical Grover felt closer to Ned from "Spider-Man: Homecoming" with an undercut, and that did a lot to endear him to me.

Flaws Fake and Factual

I often see people ascribe the attitudes of fictional characters to their creators. Sometimes a figure in a story will say something objectionable and the author will get accused of endorsing it.

I've made the opposite mistake. I remember reading a novel in which a kid was rebuked by some stern older dude for his interest in rock-and-roll guitar. I just assumed that it was just to display the contrast between the kid's impulsiveness and the older man's fixation on order. After I'd finished the book, I learned more about the writer, who apparently does think that guitar music is for savages. And not in that Sebastian Bach kind of way. Which, whatever. But apparently that writer is a bad dude in a lot of gross ways. I still liked the book though. But I was midway through a trilogy his wife wrote when I learned these things, and their shared beliefs about some things started to seem more blatantly expressed there. But that book was partially inspired by one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, which kept it from falling too far. Although there was another novel inspired by the same play that I liked less, and it seemed to be written by a more decent person. So whatever.

Bonus Question!

For a while, I've been vaguely wondering if I ever saw the second Spy Kids movie. I watched it recently and discovered that I hadn't. There we go. On to the next one!

Feeling The Beets

I've been watching "Doug" for the last bunch of weeks. I never really watched it in childhood, but it's basically my current  breakfast cartoon. From the start, I was liking the music of the fictional band that plays a side role in the show. I can get quite fixated on fictional music. It really does tend to be pretty good. As I'm writing this, I'm wondering if it's in part because the writers generally only have to make a few songs instead of composing albums at a time? Easier to be consistent in low amounts? And there's also there's also the idea that the songs can  often be distillations of a style instead of examples of it. Devo even said that Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid" was the best Devo song, and I adored that tune before I'd even heard of Devo. That's not exactly the same thing, but it does do a bit to reinforce my thinking here.

Anyway, the band in "Doug" is The Beets, and they basically seem like what The Beatles would be if they were of the early 90s instead of the 60s. I was vaguely aware of some music videos that had been produced for some of their songs, but I didn't even look for their music on iTunes. I didn't want to be disappointed again by being unable to find the ability to easily add obscure musical ephemera to my library. But something prompted me to search for them on there for the first time yesterday. For their main song at least. And I found it! And others! And now my phone's singing them along to what my mind probably would have sung anyway.

Good stuff.

Also. Does the cast remind anyone else of the Archie gang? Doug's the leading everyman, Skeeter's the eccentric best friend with the weird name like Jughead, and Roger's the annoying Reggie analogue with his dark jacket bully style. He even has a similar name, and he came into a similar level of wealth too.

Mr. Bone and Weatherbee would probably get along fairly well too, though their similarities end with their managerial methods.

Bonus Question!

Best fictional song?

Many good ones! But I've really been listening to a lot of Austin Powers's BBC song in recent months.