An Awkward Business Lunch... and More!

So today, I went on a business lunch to the Red Iguana, a greasy spoon near the Salt Lake Airport that serves really yummy Mexican food, and I order the Red Plate Special, which is tiger prawns in a gooey, spicy brown sauce. The only problem is that the tiger prawns still have their tails on them, so I'm trying to indiscreetly remove the tails with my fingers. I know, I know, I should have just cut the tails off, but there's a lot of good shrimp meat in those tails. 

Anyway, one of my attempts went awry and splattered brown, gooey greasy stuff all over my nice shirt. Luckily it didn't splatter on anyone else, but I had to go through the rest of the meal looking like I'd slept in an oil slick. 

Yessir. I'm a real professional, I am.

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Having watched all three seasons of The Office that are available on DVD, we started to catch up on Season 4 by watching episodes online at NBC.com. The problem, though, is that NBC insists on inserting a minute's worth of ads into every commercial break, which is jarring when you're used to watching the show with no commercials at all. Even worse, it's the same commercials over and over and over - one for Citibank and one for Disney. 

A much better solution is hulu.com, which is owned by NBC, too, apparently. They show The Office: Season 4 with commercials as well, but none of the ads are longer than 30 seconds, and they're different, so you don't want to throw something at the screen when the same stupid ad pops up again. Even better, some of the ads are only 15 seconds long, and that goes by really quickly. 

The show is still great. Jim and Pam are now dating, which is fun. I really hope the writers can keep their relationship interesting without breaking them up over and over again, a la Sam and Diane, Ross and Rachel, and every other long-running TV couple you can think of. 

One thing that's getting increasingly hard to understand, though, is whether or not we, the audience, are supposed to assume there's really a camera crew following all of these people around on a daily basis. I prefer to think of the mockumentary style as just a storytelling device, they way it was used in movies like Waiting for Guffman. That film was loosely modeled after the ultimate mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, which pretended to be a real documentary, and the filmmaker was a part of the action. In Guffman, they talk to the camera to reveal their inner thoughts as a sort of pseudo-narration, not as a solid depiction of what's really happening. 

The Office can't make up its mind which side of this divide it falls into. 

On the one hand, we have cameras following people into places that make no sense - Jim transfers to Stamford in Season 3 and seemingly takes a camera crew with him; a camera crew follow Dwight to his new job at Staples and even interviews his fellow minimum-wage employees. Cameras show up in people's homes and bathrooms and bedrooms. Nobody seems bothered that there's a camera poking their nose into everyone's business, so it's easy to assume that this is just how the story is being told, and we're not supposed to believe that there's a camera following everyone anymore than we would in a show like, say, Bewitched. 

But then characters reference the camera crew every once in awhile, and it throws everything off. Jan gets bugged when she's caught kissing on camera; the cameraman tips Pam off to Dwight and Angela's budding tryst, and, most blatantly, the camera crew captures evidence that forces Jim and Pam to reveal that they're dating. Which is it, guys? Is the camera crew part of the story, or isn't it? Make up your minds. 

If it's any consolation, I have this same problem with Broadway musicals. Are we supposed to believe they live in a world where someone might say "Remember yesterday, when you sang to me 'How do you solve a problem like Maria?'" Or are we supposed to assume that the music is sort of a heightened representation of a more mundane reality, and the people in musicals actually are living in a world much like our own? I vote for the latter, but the rule isn't always consistently applied. 

Now you can see one of the many reasons why chicks didn't dig me in high school.

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Speaking of musicals, I'm having a hard time with the soundtrack for Sweeney Todd. I saw the movie and loved it, despite the gore, so I went and got the soundtrack to it, which has proven to be a disappointment. Divorced from the visual images, the vocals are depressingly thin, especially the wispy, breathless delivery of Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett. Johnny Depp is much better, but that's not saying much given how lousy Bonham Carter is, and while I was pleasantly surprised by Depp's vocal performance on screen, isolated on the soundtrack he's adequate at best. 

So I wanted to get a new copy of the original broadway soundtrack, but I couldn't find it. Instead, I picked up a copy of the 2005 revival with Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone, but I don't like it much either, albeit for different reasons. LuPone is a solid, masterful Mrs. Lovett, but Cerveris is an overwrought, heavily vibrattoed Sweeney, and his performance begins to grate very quickly. Even worse, though, is the "innovative" musical arrangement, which consists of the show's ten actors playing all their own instruments on stage. I suppose some might see that as a clever conceit - seems labored and too clever by half to me, but to each his own - yet it means the show has been re-orchestrated for a ten-piece orchestra, and there are times when only piano is used to accompany the thing. Given a show of Sweeney's scale and fortitude, the "jazz combo" accompaniment seems almost criminal. 

And the movie's Toby is much better than the revival Tony, who sings everything down an octave. And what's with the revival Pirelli, played by - gasp - a woman? Why? Doesn't work. 

If anyone has a bead on the Angela Lansbury/Len Cariou 1979 version, let me know.