"Why is the rum gone?" "Because we're in a Disney park!"

[arisha]

The Great Luke Ski's "You Don't Know Jack" -- Did you know there was a song about Jack Sparrow? I didn't! And here it is in music video form, complete with ridiculous innuendo and old school Disneyland footage. My favourite part of this song, as anyone who reads my LJ would be able to guess, is "I took one look at Davy Jones and said, 'I'm a believer!'" XD Basically at that part I nearly fell out of my chair. XD XD XD

"Kingdom Hearts Spoof" 1 -- Even watching this now I'm embarrassed that not long ago I spent a whole Saturday watching these things. XD; As I told athena_crikey, this series of videos is a very teenage boy sort of parody of Kingdom Hearts, but even so I find them amusing. ^^; As the series goes on, the episodes move further away from the game and its story, which is too bad because my favourite parts are the ones where they directly make fun of the game (eg. "A mushroom?! Why do you need a mushroom on a raft?!" or "You died already??" -- hahaha, Donald ALWAYS dies first xD ), but they do start adding references to things like Zelda and PotC2, hahaha. XD; I love how they skip the Little Mermaid level. XD And I love the part where Sora starts singing "Simple and Clean," hahahaha. XD And I get a total kick out of that one line in the lost episode: "No WONDER this LAND sucks!" XD XD Hahaha!! Don't ask me how long it took me to get that, it's even more embarrassing perhaps than the fact that I've watched all of these. XD XD XD Anyway, I won't link to each episode, I have faith that if you want to watch them you can find them, hahaha ... xD;;;

So it is now 12:02am and I don't really care for New Year's (I hate the sound of fireworks going off near my house ;_; ), but haha, here is what I was doing at midnight: watching GAM and Morning Musume perform on Kouhaku! This performance is unfortunately less interesting than last year's, when there was DEF Diva and Ayaya and then all past and present MoMusu members (except those who left H!P) sang "Love Machine" together, and the year before's, when they had that big dance break and also W did a cute performance of "RoboKiss." And this year's performance has "Aruiteru" in it, which I guess they had to perform because it got a weekly number one, but at the same time it's one of my least favourite MoMusu songs. It is just so devoid of any sort of creativity. ;_; (And they made not only MoMusu dance to it, but Berryz and C-ute and Country as well!! Hahaha that's terrible!!) But at least they have "Ambitious!" (sung live?!?! could this be true?!?!) and "Thanks!" to show off the better side of 2006 H!P. ^_^ (And did Yossie dye her hair? It looks so good~.)

I would be impressed by the Kouhaku costume changes except that last night I watched the musical MoMusu and v-u-den and two members of Takarazuka did over the summer, Ribbon no Kishi (it's been subtitled and uploaded to Veoh, if you want to watch it too! Act I and Act II), and the costume changes in that blew my mind. Well, I was okay until the very end, at the transition from mini-concert to bows, when all of them managed to change back into their most complicated costumes and were given maybe three minutes to do it in. (I suspect some TV magic going on there, but I don't know for sure.) What I found most impressive was the hairstyles. Like half of the girls went from straight hair to curly hair and then back again and then back again!! You have no idea how much this blows my mind. My brother said they were probably wearing wigs but I don't know enough about wigs to tell. Haha, my brother was watching it with me from the end of "Furara Fura" until Franz is finally left alone and he was reading the subtitles aloud and narrating it all and I thought it was totally hilarious. XD But even the parts when my brother wasn't watching it with me, I found really enjoyable. I think I watched it while I was in the perfect mood for it, hehehe, I've been saying that a lot lately I know, but even so. The only complaint I have is that the parts where they made reference to Morning Musume, for advertising purposes or for in-jokey purposes, were really obvious (if any of you watch this thing, Koharu's first song is about as obvious as advertising gets) and sort of broke my suspension of disbelief, even if only momentarily.

Hahaha, my brother was annoyed that the story was about a girl pretending to be a boy, because it reminded him of Twelfth Night. But when he told me that I thought he said Twelfth Knight and had no idea what he was talking about. XD XD Ribbon Knight? Twelfth Knight?? Hahahaha, awsm.

But other than the silly advertising, I was super impressed. Yossie was really good, as I knew she would be. Her acting wasn't amazing or anything but her singing was always on pitch and her voice broke less than the other girls', and also I loved the faces she would make in reaction to things. XD Like, the "ew, this is totally not cool" face she made when the king was stumbling to his death? That face was AWESOME. And speaking of the king, I thought I would be bored by the Takarazuka actresses (though I didn't have a particular reason for thinking this), but wow, I really liked the king! Wasn't so impressed with God, though. There she always looked like she was afraid if she moved too much, her fake beard would fall off. :X I hope Rika lets her hair grow out again, but besides that, her performance was impressive, too. The first time I heard "Anata ni Aitai" I couldn't even believe it was her singing. I like the way her voice sounds but I had never expected it to improve so much, wow. And Ai was really good, of course. I am so impressed by all the girls who were able to cry on cue like that! Hahaha. Ai is infamous for being boring on talk shows, but she is definitely one of the most talented in H!P. Although that voice she did when she was a boy pretending to be a girl? That was the weirdest voice I've ever heard!! Hahahaha. I'm glad she only had to say three lines like that. XD;; And Reina and Sayu sang harmony together!! Hahaha, I am way too impressed whenever these girls pull off an actual harmony, but wow, that was good. <3

Hahaha, the_wykydtron, perhaps you would be interested to see this musical because of all the gender issues in it, hahaha. Right now I feel more like praising this musical than analysing it, so I'll just say two things.

1) Just like in early animated Disney films, the hero and heroine fall in love without even having a real conversation. Well, they do have a conversation, but I don't know if it even counts, because the whole time Franz doesn't know who she really is and keeps unintentionally insulting her, hahaha. It's DRAMATIC.

2) When the queen spills the secret (I love that scene, so much love, even when I had only seen a preview of the bystanders shouting "Onna! Onna! Onna!" I loved that scene), she makes a big deal about how it was the country's laws who made her keep the secret, because by law a woman is not allowed to inherit the throne. And then that issue is left alone for a while, until the very end, when someoneIforgetwho declares that men and women are equal. WHAT! RANDOM. And it's not like the law has now declared that men and women are equal; Sapphire is still only getting to rule because she's marrying Franz. I guess the point they were maybe trying to make is that Sapphire's abilities weren't affected when her sex changed. (This sounds so bizarre but it's really a very G-rated musical.) She swordfought as a woman just as well as she did as a man, her disguises in either form were equally believable, stuff like that. But it's kind of weird because all the other female characters are very girly and and all the male characters are very manly and Sapphire is the only one who ever displays both stereotypically female and stereotypically male traits. So it's not like men and women are equal, it's like they're totally different, and Sapphire is some unusual amalgamation. And we don't get to see any of her life after the end of the musical, of course, so how she acts now that she no longer has to pretend to be a man is left a mystery.

Or I could be wrong, of course. X)

So. Ribbon no Kishi is not the most amazing most wonderful musical I've ever seen in my life, but it's still really good, and I think it might even be good enough to interest those who aren't fans of MoMusu. The music isn't at all like your typical MoMusu song, which disappointed me when I first heard it, but now that I've seen it in context I like it a lot better, even though none of it's really great enough to stand on its own. Maybe if I have time sometime this week I'll watch it all again, hahaha. XD And because every LJ entry I write has to include an embarrassing confession: both the end of Act I and the end of Act II (not so much the very end, but rather the part where Erika and Yui step forward singing "come back, come back~" ;_; ) had me totally tearing up. XD XD XD;;;

Oh!! And how could I forget? The stage was AWESOME!! We are the famous idol group Morning Musume, we do not merely walk onstage! We SLIIIIIIDE! XD! XD! XD! XD!

Man, I used to never care at all about what icons I had uploaded. But since December started I have been changing them like every day. And it's such a pointless waste of effort, hahaha, oh gosh ... Someday I'll find the perfect combination of icons, though. I must. :d Today's balance: one H!P, two Aladdin, one Esca, one PotC, and one Neverending Story mostly because I couldn't think of what else to put in that spot but also because I apparently have yet to realize that I am way too old to still have a crush on Atreyu. As the_wykydtron likes to say: alas/earwax.