The Dot and the Whine

I know nobody wants to hear my opinions on Sondheim because I'm not a musical theater lover and you kind of have to be a musical theater lover to like Sondheim, but with friends like Sondheim musical theater's not gonna make many new lovers, if you ask me. But like I said - you didn't. Ask me. So anyway after a mix-up on opening night I got around to see Sunday in the Park with George last night and yeah...

... but that's okay, we can't all love everybody or everything. This show plus an ongoing conversation in my post about Moonlight's Trevante Rhodes in his underwear has this seemingly lost concept situated at the front of my brain -- the internet doesn't seem to get that everywhere and everything doesn't have to be for everybody. The immediate democratization of this vehicle, the World Wide Web, seems to have made people forget that. 

I don't have to appeal to you, or your neighbor. Stephen Sondheim does not have to appeal to me. It's nice to like things, but I don't have to like everything, and I don't have to like everybody. If my sense of humor offends you, or if Stephen Sondheim's musical sense is like nails on a chalkboard to my ears, that doesn't really say anything about me and it doesn't really say anything about you, except we're just folks in a big nutty imperfect world, yo. Life's too short. Find something you do like. And if someone you love like Jake Gyllenhaal forces you to sit through an insufferable musical that's nothing but three hours of privileged whining about success and not-very-deep thoughts about art, so be it. You'll survive.

Anyway I didn't mean to go off on this here - I was also spurred on my my friend Nathaniel's smart words about the Casey Affleck at the Oscars situation in the comments of a recent post he did at The Film Experience -- you should go read that too.