Wicked Show in San Fransisco

wicked

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, we went to see Wicked on Saturday night at the Orpheum Theatre.  The Safeway Employees’ Association (SEA) was one of the group sponsors that night, so there were a bunch of people from Safeway.  Before the show, we went to Osha Thai for dinner, which was really nice.  We sat in the balcony, which ended up being great.  I never once thought we were sitting too far away, or it was too difficult to see what was going on.  Even though I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in the theater, I was able to go to the Orpheum website and get a virtual view of our seat location which is shown below.  The theater was spectacular, but I am easy to impress, being that I don’t go into buildings like that every day.

orpheumBalcony

I expected to not like it as I was fully expecting another rendition of The Nutcracker (sorry, hate it) but was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually loved it.  It wasn’t boring at all, the singing and dancing was good and most importantly I was engaged, which isn’t always easy being that I have the attention span of a two-year-old sometimes.  We got there a few minutes early and talked to the usher for a few minutes about the show.  She told us Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) was being played by Vicki Noon who is an understudy but was better than the person who normally plays her, so as she put it: “we were in for a treat”.  Elphaba (Vicki Noon) rocked it, I loved her singing.  The show was funny in parts, the costumes were great, the stage was all decked out (awesome dragon hanging above it), the acting was great, the sound was awesome, and if you ever get the chance you have to see it.  Who would have thought I would ever say that!

Chris Langan: The World’s Smartest Man?

chris langan (part 1)

I found this video on YouTube and have to say it is very interesting.  Langan has one of the highest IQ’s of anyone ever measured, one which even exceeds Einstein’s.  Ironically he worked as a bouncer in Long Island and when you see the video you can understand why he may have chosen that as his career.  His story very much reminds me of Good Will Hunting, a movie about a genious who decides to be a janitor and cosntruction worker despite his intelligence.  You can watch part two and part three of the video but for some reason I found those videos to be a bit disturbing because he starts to compare himself to God and discusses people’s right to breed (woah you are taking things a little too far in my opinion).  I mean yeah I have heard people joke that some couples in the world shouldn’t have children but where do you draw the line and who are we to say they can’t?  I understand his theories about keeping “mutations” out of the gene pool but it got a little Hitlerish for me and lost interest and frankly some respect for him.  If you watch all three videos let me know what you think, maybe I am missing the point (I’m no genius).  Interesting stuff, hope you enjoy the video.