Friday night Meghan & I went on a little dinner-and-a-show date. My friend T-Rav was playing the bass in the Burnsville production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. Before the show we went to the Applewood Rustic Grille for dinner. The food was really good, although the atmosphere seemed kind of weird to me. The restaurant is in a mini-mall and it seemed like they were trying to stuff a nice restaurant into a TJ Maxx. Still we had some of the best loaded french fries* ever, and I really enjoyed my mostaciolli.
Sweeney Todd was really good. Last year we had gone to see Urinetown put on by the same company in the Burnsville high school theater. This year for Sweeney Todd, they were in the brand new Burnsville Performing Arts Center. It was quite a change in venue. The Burnsville PAC is a really nice facility. I had never seen Sweeney Todd before (I haven’t watched the movie yet), but I knew the basic plot. It’s a dark and twisted show, and I, obviously, enjoyed the hell out of it (way WAY more than Phantom Of The Opera).
I was surprised at the audience at the show a bit. They seemed to be laughing at extremely inappropriate moments. That might be because they were all there to seem someone they know in the show, though. I couldn’t really see the person I knew in the show, since he was in the pit.
My one negative comment about the show is that it was a bit too long. It started at 7:30 and even with a relatively short intermission, it didn’t get out until after 10:30.
After the show, we went out to West St Paul** to the West St Paul Commercial Club for karaoke. It was easily the weirdest karaoke I’ve ever witnessed. There was a steady rotation of 5 or 6 different people singing, and they all chose sappy adult contemporary songs. And, of course, they were all phenomenally bad singers. Well, except for Melissa’s boyfriend Mark. He was just offensive.
Since we didn’t get home Friday night until after 1am, it’s not terribly surprising that we slept in a bit yesterday. After running a couple errands and getting some breakfast, I spent the afternoon setting up my new computer*** while Meghan worked on some of her sorority alumni stuff.
Before we knew it, it was after 4 and time to go to the birthday party of one of Meghan’s coworkers’ spouses, who was turning 50, where we ate good food, drank good beer, and watched the birthday boy’s band play****.
* – French fries covered in cheese, bacon and scallions.
** – totally crossed Stryker Ave
*** – which rules! It’s an 2.26GHz 8-core Mac Pro… may blog more about that later.
**** – apparently, they don’t play very often and only at Buddhist events, but they weren’t bad. They covered Radiohead, Badfinger, Angels & Airwaves, Guided By Voices…
