ERP, recollected.

Back in the day, we had a theater company called Emerald Rain Productions (ERP), with the elegantly simple purpose of putting on rock musicals written by me and my songwriter buddy Gaby Alter, whose every cough is some sort of catchy pop hook. It was the best of times. Here is a mock-rock-doc about our adventures, captured in completely antiquated Standard Definition video, painstakingly Final Cutted by me.

Spider-Man the Musical by Dommah

My version of the Spiderman musical, as directed by Julie Taymor, with music by U2:

SPIDER-MAN: RATTLE & THWIP

SCENE 1
Spider-Man hangs upside-down over a city skyline comprised of gargoyle shadow puppets and people in Noh masks.

SPIDER-MAN: I'm WIIIIIDE AWAAAKE. I'm WIIIIIIDE AWAAAAAKE. I'm not SLEEPING.

Bono enters, wearing a yellow and green jumpsuit. He portrays the Fly, one of Spider-Man's all-time lamest foes.

THE FLY: A man will rise! / A man will fall! / From the sheer face of evil villainry! / Like a fly on the wall!

Spidey and the Fly fight using capoeira. Spidey dispatches the Fly quickly. Harry Osborn / The Hobgoblin enters. Spidey spins a web, ensnaring him. Mary Jane Watson enters in traditional Chinese Opera costume. Both Spidey and Harry moon over her.

HARRY OSBORN: My hands are webbed / My body bruised, she's got me with / Nothing to win, and nothing left to lose....

Gwen Stacy enters, wearing traditional African head-dress.

SPIDER-MAN: I have run / I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls with my amazing ability to cling to vertical surfaces
Theeeeese vertical surfaces / Only to be with you....

Arachne, a mythological reference that has been cutely added to this production, enters:

ARACHNE: What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can sense it somehow with your weird tingly spider-sense power....

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I know everything! EVERYTHING! It's a beautiful day!

HARRY / HOBGOBLIN: You've got to get yourself together... Nnrgggh....now you got stuck in a giant web created by a mutated human gland and you can't get out of it!

Doc Ock enters.

DOCTOR OCTOPUS: On your knees, boy!

Spider-Man unmasks so as to protect his loved ones. Peter Parker has a reflective moment:

PETER PARKER: So J. Jonah Jameson comes up to me
His face red like a rose on a thorn bush
Like all the colours of a royal flush
And he's peeling off those dollar bills
Slapping them down
One hundred, two hundred!
And I can see those fighter planes....

Aunt May enters and offers him a bowl of tapioca.

PETER PARKER: A spider-boy tries hard to be a spider-man / His aunt takes him by his hand
If he stops to think he starts to cry / Oh why?

AUNT MAY: If you web-swing away, web-swing away, web-swing away, web-swing away.....I will follow!

Peter puts the mask back on so as to escape his pestering loved ones.

SPIDER-MAN: You got to cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Fight evil clones of yourself without raising your voice
You know I took the radiation
From the bite of a radioactive spider
Then I wall-crawled....out of here....

HARRY OSBORN / HOBGOBLIN: THE EDGE!

MARY JANE: I say....I want.... / diamonds on a ring of gold / your origin story to remain untold / a pimped-out black Lexus / and not to be killed by some crazy lizard-looking freak....

SPIDER-MAN: ....when all I want is YOU-HOOOOOO! All I want is YOU-OOOOOH!

The Venom / Black Alien Suit Symbiote Thing enters.

VENOM / SYMBIOTE: One life / But we're not the same / We get to carry each other, carry each other!

Spider-Man fights Venom, and Hobgoblin, and Doctor Octopus, and African poverty. Gwen Stacy paints herself blue and dances around.

VILLAINS: Spider-Man throws me just like a rubber ball / Oh oh oh, the Spider-Man!
He won't catch me or break my fall / Oh oh oh, the Spider-Man!

SPIDER-MAN: One man bombarded by cosmic rays
One man is Iron Fist
One man changed by a Gamma Bomb
One man betrayed with a kiss

BONO: For Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch and the Thing....sing!

ALL: In the naaaaame! Of Love! What more! In the name of Love!!!!!

SPIDER-MAN: Definitely could use a mouth-hole for the singing. Note to self: Mouth-hole.

CURTAIN.


orig. post 4/17/07

talking about the Beatles is like talking about love

The Beatles came up in conversation twice on Valentine's Day, in two separate bars in two different non-datey social situations... I think because for better or for worse, the Beatles have sort of branded "Love" via the Cirque show and their million unmatchably excellent songs on the topic...so talking about their music is a kind of tangential way of talking about the uncomfortable subject itself with people with whom you aren't necessarily comfortable dropping the "L-bomb."

And then, OK, I've seen Yellow Submarine a thousand times, watched it today, it's one of my favorite movies, but I'd never seen this until twenty-six minutes ago:

Happy Lunar New Year, Mardi Gras, Valentine's Day, etc....