Miscellaneous Stuff

1. Last night we saw the an 'enhanced reading' of the opera The Tree, by Peter Wing Healey. Peter's desription of the show is:
   
   a tree spirit falls in love with an architect
   a developer expands his empire of sprawl
   a new city rises from the agony of death
   
   It was a mix of tongue in cheek with great characters, well-sung music. The story was nice, but I felt that it wavered a bit too much. That's all I really want to say. It's a good thing that I have such a wide breadth of opera experience which consists entirely of: an english-language version of The Barber of Seville for Kids, Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera, and Death of a Tree. Oh, and Tommy, if you count that.
   
   The cast was largely character actors and opera singers. The narrator was David Brisbin, whose wife, ER's Laura Innes, was in the audience. She is really quite beautiful in person.
   
   
2. This afternoon, while walking through the Farmer's Market, I saw J. K. Simmons, from the Spider Man movies and The Ladykillers eating lunch with his family. It's starting to sink in that movie actors are very much like regular people.
   
   
3. Today was the LA Marathon. The 30K mark passes the entire south entrance of our apartment complex, so I took many pictures. I will post some before too long.