Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

(I put yesterday's "Friday Five" under an access list lock, because one of the five things was kinda personal. Item 2 of 5, however, was not personal. And as I was drifting off to sleep and waking up this morning, it was still tossing around in my brain...

Because my brain treats any new-to-me story like a cat treats a fresh new catnip mouse.

Anyway, here's what I wrote, yesterday:

So -- I learned, the other day, that “Spongebob: The Musical” is a thing that exists. And I have thoughts.

I’ve never had cable, so although I know of Spongebob through Internet memes (thank you, Internets!), I’ve never actually seen the show. I used to live inside the NYC economic/cultural radius, and see commercials for currently running Broadway productions on the regular. But I have been living over 400 miles away for over 20 years, now.

But I do watch a lot of literary analysis video essays on YouTube. And the other day, the algorithm recommended: What Went Right? The Unexpected Success of Spongebob the Musical. On the strength of that review, I went looking for it online, and found someone had uploaded the telecast adaptation Nickelodeon broadcast. I'm glad I did. It was time well spent. I grew up in a house well stocked with Broadway Musical cast albums, mostly from the classic era of Rogers and Hart, and Irving Berlin, and watching this musical brought back those feels.

My thoughts are:

• This is a perfect parable for capitalism going unquestioned while the scientist is warning that the world is going to be destroyed by natural forces unless we do something.
  
  • But the text of the play pulls back from that potential criticism, and contradicts the narrative's emotional arc.
  
  
• it's one Tony win for set design was well deserved. Even through the flat computer monitor, I was awed by the way a real sense of scale and depth was created on the confined space of the stage.
  
• And the song "I'm not a loser" (by They Might be Giants) is a great example (if you need one) why framing self-'affirmations' with 'not' statements only reinforce the negativity, because the subconscious brain filters out the 'Not's.

My first "more" thought, this morning, was: "If this story weren't attached to a television cartoon franchise, where the convention of "happy ending" means "hit the reset button," then the roles could have been reversed, and it could have been Spongebob urging everyone to evacuate, because the town isn't a place, it's the people. And it still would have been true to the character, and the emotional arc of the story.

(But then, we wouldn't have gotten the incredible stagecraft of showing the climb up Mt.
Humongous, so... yeah.)

My second "more" thought was: This is very much a post 9/11 story -- not only because of all the references to "Code Orange," and "no swim lists," but the underlying assumption that kids, who are the primary audience, would find resonance with an overhanging crisis on every channel on the TV...

And that's just sad.

Audrey's in her room, watching a DVD of Deep Space Nine (just the other end of a very short hallway from this office). I'm kinda half-eavesdropping. I remember liking it a lot, years ago, when I watched it during its first broadcast run (I haven't watched it since, that I remember).

I recognize the voices of the main characters, and the theme (and incidental) music, but ...

Commander Sisko is sounding a lot more authoritarian and quicker to bellow than I remember. As a matter of fact, every character is sounding rather shouty to me, from this end of the hall.

And I can't remember if I even noticed that aspect, back in the day. And if I did, if it grated on my nerves the way it does now...

But it does remind me that the whole Star Trek universe is built around the quasi-military establishment of The Federation.

{sigh}