Come on over for dinner...
Well yesterday I went to the Asian Art Museum for the first time. I really enjoyed it, especially since it was free (the first Tuesday every month is free, and Thursdays after 5pm are discounted). I think I will blog about it a bit later.

Now, however, I will blog about today. In about an hour I have a typing test for the City and County of SF employment pool, so this morning I decided it would be good to make sure I can type. I played a few rounds of Typer Shark while listening to the original cast recording of Company on Napster (I averaged about 75 wmp @ 95% accuracy. The test only requires 50 wpm).

I've seen 95% of a student production of Company when I was at Berkeley--I think they did a great job given the challenging nature of the material, but I had to leave 10 minutes before the end to get to a meeting on time.

So of course I'm sure you've heard the rumors that originally Bobby was gay but they had to change it. On the sondheim.com website there are actually some "essays" (I'm not sure who wrote these--directors who staged it?) that address the issue. Here is the paragraph that I think gets to the meat of the matter:
One of the central questions in an audience member's mind is "Why won't/can't Bobby commit?" Perhaps in the 90's the answer seems obvious, and he doesn't seem so unusual, but in the 70's, to be anti-marriage and commitment implied that there was something "wrong" with you. Audiences and critics began inventing reasons - that Bobby was a closet homosexual was the most obvious. This would not work, of course, since such a pat reason for Bobby's doubts and fears would negate much of the message of the play. Sondheim and all of the original creators have repeatedly said that this isn't the case, but the rumor continues. Apparently, early drafts of the show had a scene where Bobby mentions past liasons with men to Peter, who promptly propositions him, and is turned down. One can imagine that the scene was originally there to give Bobby the opportunity to examine, and remain unfulfilled by, ALL forms of romantic committment. One can also imagine several dozen reasons why the scenes may have been cut, but the least inflammatory and probably most true would be that to drop a bomb like that without examining it would be too distracting, and that examining it would pull the play off course.

Juicy news about Bobby's tearoom antics aside, I think that's an interesting question: is there something wrong with you if you don't eventually partner up? Is partnering up something cultural or something biological (my two sisters can probably tell you why that's a false dichotomy at least)? Have our cultural views on partnering up really changed that much? A woman has written a book now on "starter marriages." Hmm. Is partnering up really a necessary step in a human's development?

And on a wholly unrelated note, here is my original haiku for Springing Ahead:


- posted by k @ 12:05 PM