Ok, so maybe people are noticing that The Color Purple will soon be closing it’s doors. I guess when you have a producer such as the mighty Oprah, it’s hard not to. But in case you hadn’t, I thought I would mention it. I’ve actually seen this show twice. Once, with LaChanze as Celie, and then again with Fantasia from American Idol playing Celie. Both were good, and I was actually surprised that I liked Fantasia, because I was not a fan of hers on American Idol. But if I had to pick who I liked better, would have to be LaChanze. Sad to see this show go. Not only for the wonderful music, characters, and unlike the movie, true to the book script, but also for the fact that it has exposed musical theater to a whole new audience. Both times I saw this show, you can’t help but notice the large African American audience members getting off of buses from around the country. Church groups, schools, community organizations, men and women, young and old, all have traveled near and far to see this show. You can’t help but wonder if it is their first. If so, let’s hope there will be another that moves people they way this one did, to keep returning to the theater to see a variety of lives and situations performed live on the stage.
Last night I spent almost three hours viewing the clips over at 
While writing the previous entry I saw a quote on CNN that I decided to further investigate and came across the 
I’m a little late on this one. But I still have to mention Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko. I knew that this film would be good, but for some reason I didn’t go see it in the theater when it was out last summer. So last night Jim and I popped in the DVD and watched. After watching, I think I realized part of the reason I probably didn’t want to see it, as silly as it sounds, is that I knew this movie would make me frustrated, and why pay money to be frustrated. But this is an issue that can’t be ignored, and it really does boggle the mind the way this country works sometimes. Now some may say the other systems highlighted in the film have enormous problems, and they probably are right. But the underling message of the film is that, why can’t we look at their system as a different way to approach ours and come up with something that is even more better. Now I’m not saying I think we should be paying an insane amount of taxes for the government to come and do my laundry. But I do think we as a country need to stop thinking of “me, me, me” and “that’s not my problem,” and focus on US as a society. After all, one could argue that US stands for, the United States, can you get more American than that? 
With all the coverage of the death of Heath Ledger Jim reminded me recently that we saw him out in the city one day. We were down in the East Village in a used records store about a year ago. Jim was on one side of the aisle and I on the other. When all the sudden I turned the opposite direction and saw a rather tall person walk in the store and go immediately to the elevator. Time not on my side, I quickly said to Jim, “Jim can you come over here, NOW!” I whispered to him, “Is that Heath Ledger?” He quickly confirmed, as he walked in the elevator and the doors closed behind him. So we quickly took the stairs and saw him again on the upper floor. He quickly looked on the shelf for whatever it was he was looking for, didn’t find it, and left without any buzz in the store. Now Jim and I have been fortunate enough to actually meet some pretty famous people. But there is still something exciting about running into a celebrity when they are just out on the street being “normal.” That might be part of the reason why he is being so missed. The fact that he obviously had a talent, but yet when the day is done, he was just trying to be normal. Love is craft, deal with his misgivings, and love his daughter. 
I thought I would give a quick plug out to my friend Brian who was on an episode of Law & Order last week as a background actor. They don’t have the full episode on-line. But he is in the two minute re-cap, 