A Beautiful Noise!

 A Beautiful Noise, a Neil Diamond story, begins with silence. Old Neil sits in a chair across from a therapist, neither are speaking and establishing that Neil is not comfortable talking about his life. The therapist knows nothing about Neil, his songs or his life. To understand this man, she pulls out a book of Diamond's songs, the lyrics and the motivation. Ya see, Neil is a man who has never been comfortable in his own skin. He's depressed, lonely and suffers from imposter syndrome. From there we go on a journey of the life of Neil Diamond, warts and all.

The thing about jukebox musicals authorized by the estates or families is that the controversy is avoided. The MJ musical ends before the allegations of pedophilia thus they are never covered. But this one, A Beautiful Noise, is dark and gritty like Diamond's voice. 

Young Neil, played by an understudy Joe Caskey (who was very good) writes songs for other people, disdaining the spotlight. The Monkees lived off Diamond's natural shyness and desire to stay out of the limelight. But then he meets Ellie Greenwich (Heidi Kettenring) a tough talking record agent who insists he sing his own songs. He starts at coffee houses supporting his wife and two kids, meets Marsha Murphey (a great Mary Page Nance) who becomes his second wife. Old Neil continues to open up about the songs, in effect telling his life story. 

The songs are performed like tribute band adoration. The crowd at times (especially the front rows) was really into it and I'm not sure they realized it really wasn't Neil Diamond on stage. Oh have fun I say.

Act 1 ends with Sweet Caroline and the audience participates as they should. Act 2 opens with, depending on my mood, my favorite Diamond song, Brother Loves Traveling Salvation Show, with a full choir and dancers, It's quite good. 

Old Neil admits to the therapist he cannot perform any longer due to his doctor's orders. Performing is the only time Neil feels not alone. Now the whole therapist patient thing may sound corny, but it really keeps the show on track. Robert Westenburg as old, tortured Neil is fantastic and Lisa Renee Pitts as the therapist are both solid narrators. 

All in all, this is better than any jukebox musical I've seen. The story is real, the reactions are real and the darkness is real.

If you are a Neil Diamond fan, you will love this show.

Now the sound at the Orpheum. It wasn't bad. At first, the band was so loud I worried that they would drown out the story, however, they toned it down and everything was decipherable. 

And finally at the end, after the Holly Holy sing along, you get to do the Sweet Caroline sing along yet again. It wasn't Fenway Park, but it was fun. So Good So Good So Good!

Another Weekend Another Decade!

 Who likes this chaos? This daily batshit crazy behavior that makes you forget yesterday's batshit crazy. This is madness.

Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller. The two most disgusting anti-American people in this regime. Noem is in office for one reason. She kissed enough Trump ass and he think her plastic is hot. Miller is simply put, a white supremacist bordering on Nazi. He may still get there if he hasn't already. Miller is on a mission from Satan to turn America into a white homeland. Miller is somewhat Jewish which makes it even worse that this high school geek has achieved power and will have his revenge on the liberals, gays, Hispanics and blacks who crammed him into locker after locker. Noem is just unqualified, period.

A failed Governor of a flyover state who is ridiculed for her manufactured looks, her lies and her cosplay with giant cowboy hats, tactical gear, and other Halloween costumes. But what really is bad is her complete fealty to Trump. Kissing his ass at Cabinet meetings and lying about murders committed by government goons, Noem is the epitome' of all that is wrong here. Not to mention her bank accounts getting huge because of her boy toy Corey Lewandoski's money laundering and bribe taking. She will take the fall for this, if not soon certainly at the Hague.

Measles is back. Raging through a detention center in Texas (what's up with that creepy color coded pajamas the detainees wear) measles, which had become eradicated for the most part in this country until the biggest nut in this nation, RFK Jr, kissed enough Trump ass to get a job as a health advisor, THE health advisor. Now it's a disease, easily preventable, that is back. Kennedy is even more of a menace than Noem. She only kills dogs and 2 or 3 people; he kills thousands with his anti vax bullshit. Kennedy is a nightmare.

Don Lemon was arrested the other day by Pam Bondi's hooligans. What for? Lemon covered a bunch of protestors invading some MAGA church because they thought the "pastor" was an ICE agent. Taping it and asking questions, like a journalist should, Lemon was busted only because Trump has had a hard on for the black and gay journalist for years. Lemon tells the truth about Trump and is fearless about it. The Donald cannot fathom it when he is called out on his lies and criminal behavior. Whatever judge draws this bogus case will throw it out faster than a Trump casino dies.

Some of the Epstein files dropped on Friday and they were worse than imaginable. Once the DOJ realized what they'd done, releasing info that Trump was accused of child trafficking, holding "slave auctions" for 13-year-old girls, and Trump dropping packages into Lake Michigan, they deleted them from the website saying they were fake. Yeah, like his "tan". This guy cannot go away fast enough.

Finally, we have Tulsi Gabbard. Who knows what this Russian agent is up to? The Director of the DNI was in Atlanta, on the phone with the Rapist, seizing voter machines and ballots from the 2020 Georgia vote, which he fucking lost. The man child, 6 years later, still cannot accept his crushing defeat. Seizing voter data and votes is a pretext to finding some "irregularities" and thus "proving" the 2020 election was "rigged". Which then leads to calling off the midterms until we know "what the hell is going on" leaving the Republicans in charge, declaring martial law and staying in office forever. The motherfucker is so brain diseased he actually thinks this could happen. Gabbard in the meantime, has been accused by a whistleblower of acts so egregious that the allegations are locked away as their release could endanger national security. Well Jesus on a cracker, Gabbard has been a Russian puppet for years. She's another Trump appointee who he thinks is "hot" yet still unqualified, in fact dangerous. Gabbard's Russian handlers must be rubbing hands together on what they already obtained but now that she is compromised, she's of no use to Boris and Natasha.

Tulsi, a word of advice, stay away from high rise windows,