it's not masochism, exactly

So this Tuesday there's a thing in college, a musical evening -- a talent show, is what it is.  Okay.  Last year I didn't go, and I didn't have plans to this year, but I'm more known to the people organizing it than I was last year, and also I'm the student president so it'd probably be bad form not to, etc., etc.  Fine, so I'm going.

Early this week an e-mail came to a bunch of us from The Boy Who Etc. (who's going to need a new epithet, I suppose), asking if anyone knew someone who might be able to play the accompaniment for the song he planned to do, which is "Being Alive" from Sondheim's Company (and I can see jgesteve rolling his eyes from all the way over here!).  I said I didn't think I played well enough to accompany anybody; but a day or so later he still didn't have anyone.  We do know some really very good pianists, but I guess they don't feel they accompany well? -- it's a whole different thing than being a soloist.  So I said well, but, the trouble is, Sondheim.  What key is it in?  Key of C, he said; that's the one with no sharps or flats, right?  (Musicians may take a moment to facepalm.)  He thinks it's easy Sondheim.  I said I'd take a look.

It's pretty easy.  There are a couple of tricky bits having to do with jumping around the page, because he wants to do the whole number and not just the last verse, which is all that was printed in the book he got it from, but nothing I can't handle if I remember.  And I can't play a ninth with stuff in the middle -- a fourth and a sixth at the same time, I mean to say -- because my hands are too small, but that's okay, because I can play the fourth and let him sing the top note.  We practiced it for about half an hour yesterday and a little more than that today, and it sounds better every time.  (The purpose of practicing, after all.)

Also, three fellows, a woman and two men, needed a fourth for a quartet -- so I'm singing, which in the circumstances pleases me greatly.

okay, i love this kid.

The older and more wise-assed he gets, the more I adore Dan Radcliffe.  In the "Preparing for the Yule Ball" stuff he's really very funny with his chatter about it just being a rehearsal, and how important he thought it was to play it down because Harry was supposed to be a bad dancer.  (And he says Emma Watson is quite beautiful, which, given everything I've learned about the difference between US and British "quite", is also pretty amusing.)  And I dig "heh, Ralph Fiennes with orange dots all over his face."  AND.  The look he gives this interviewer when he says "Do you look forward to the days when you know you'll be able to just, as it were, potter along?"  Go, boy.  :-D

GAH!  Cutie pies!

Interviewer:  Who would you most like to meet?
Rupert Grint:  I've got quite into golf, lately, playing that a lot.  So, Tiger Woods, maybe?
Interviewer:  You know he'd probably beat you.
Dan Radcliffe:  No, Rupert's quite good, actually.

Hee!  And, talking about differences between themselves and the characters:

Interviewer:  And what about you, are you presumably extremely clever?
Emma Watson:  No.

ha!

[Mike Newell] is very English.  He wears a waistcoat every day.  Which I quite like, because -- you don't see enough waistcoats anymore!

guh.

Ralph Fiennes?  In this behind-the-scenes stuff, he has this purple shirt that makes his eyes look absolutely violet.

YES.  YES.  YES.

It's a very disturbing scene.  I mean, if you sort of strip away the fairy-tale fantasy package of it, what you get is:  a little boy, tied up, while an older man humiliates him.  And that, translated to the real world, is not children's fare at all.

[adoration]