Happy New Year!

I’ve lived in the Boston area for over a dozen years now…and I have NEVER gone to First Night.  Nor do I really want to.  It’s just too cold!

It snowed all day today, which made it a good day to hunker down and stay home.  It is supposed to be bitterly cold tonight, with wicked wind chills.  No way would I go out in that unless it was 100% necessary!

For those of you who don’t want to brave the cold, visit WBZ-TV’s website, where they have live webcasts of stuff like the Grand Procession and the fireworks.  I think they are also having coverage of other stuff on TV, tune in to check.

If you are at home and want some highbrow entertainment, tune into WGBH, either radio or TV.  On TV is a gala New Year’s show from Lincoln Center.  I forget what’s on the radio, but I think they are having the Pops, and some other concert from First Night.

If you are looking for lowbrow entertainment, tune into channel 38 in Boston, for the annual Three Stooges New Year’s Eve Marathon.  This will run from 8PM ’til 1AM.

We’ll go lowbrow again this year…we love the Stooges!

Before I sign off…I wonder if our home insurance will pay if the stupid snowplow plows into the house and causes damage. I should be grateful that they have been plowing the little side street, but sometimes those plows get dangerously close to the house (no sidewalk on the side street).

Anyhoo…happy New Year to all, be careful out there if you go out, and stay safe!

Sad news

The North Shore Music Theatre, the not-for profit theatre-in-the-round up in Beverly, MA may be forced to close its doors in January.  Why?  You guessed it, it’s due to a lack of money.  Donations and ticket sales are down.

I hate to have to say this, but they shot themselves in the foot by replacing the annual run of “A Christmas Carol” with “High School Musical 2″ this year.  We saw NSMT’s production of the Dickens story a few years ago, and it was wonderful.  What was nice about it was that it was something that the whole family would be interested in.  Adults don’t mind forking over $50-60 per ticket for this.  Kids’ tickets are cheaper, $25, I think.

But they are not getting the same turnout for “High School Musical”.  Yes, the poor economy is partly to blame…but answer me this…how many ADULTS are willing for fork over $60 for their own tickets, to take their kids to this?  MOST ADULTS DO NOT WANT TO SEE “HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL”.  I strongly suspect that most parents of kids who are into this are sick of hearing it, ad nauseum, day after day.  Like anything Disney, it is heavily marketed and merchandised…there are scads of music CDs, DVDs and tons of other stuff.  So these parents have to watch the movies and listen to the CDs at home all the time, no way would they want to fork over that much for adult tickets.

I don’t mind paying $60 or even a bit more, for quality concerts and Broadway musicals.  Mike and I have gone to the NSMT many times, and have always enjoyed it.  In addition to “A Christmas Carol”, we’ve seen top musicals such as “Cats” and “Mame” there, as well as two B.B. King concerts, the most recent being last month.  We would have gone to see George Carlin perform there, I was getting ready to go and buy the tickets, when it was announced that he had died.  That will always be one of the biggest regrets of my life, never having seen George perform live on stage.   When I finally thought I had the chance, it was too late.

Over on the NSMT website, they are urging patrons to help support the theatre by purchasing tickets to “High School Musical”.  Well, as much as I’d like to help, I would sooner gouge my eyes out with a rusty tire iron, than fork over $60 per ticket so we can sit in a theatre full of screaming teenyboppers.  Or maybe it’s only half full, due to not so many people buying the tickets, but still. Pomegranate trees will grow in Boston, in the dead of winter, before I would even think about wasting my money on such a crappy musical.  I honestly don’t think that seeing this live on stage is much different from Netflixing the movie version.  I plan to do neither.

NSMT really dropped the ball on this one.  The money is NOT with families with kids, they have enough other expenses so that they can’t afford to take the family to shows like this.  If they are lucky, they can take the kids to “Disney On Ice” over at the Gahden.  But they’d have to sit in the nosebleed section, where the seats are only twenty bucks a pop.  I checked, and almost pooped myself when I saw that front row seats for this, a kiddie show, are $75 a pop.  And that is for ANY age, from what I gathered.  So I suspect that Disney On Ice isn’t doing so well, either.  If parents are taking their kids out to do anything during school vacation week, it’s probably to a discount matinee of a movie like “Marley & Me” or “Despereaux”.

(I’d actually love to see those movies myself.  But not in the theatre…see the part above about rusty tire irons and pomegranate trees.  I know what threatres are like during family movies, we’ll just wait for the DVDs.)

NSMT should have continued to cater to the older, childless/empty nesters who actually have the money to buy tickets.  People just like us.  I’m sure that replacing “A Christmas Carol” with “High School Musical” pissed off this demographic.  I know it pissed me off, as I was hoping we’d be able to go and see Scrooge and company there this year.

I am saddened by the prospect of the theatre closing, but there’s not much I can do about it. We’ve supported it as much as we could, by buying tickets and attending shows.  I am even hesistant to make a donation now, because it might be too little, too late, and good money being thrown after bad.

It sucks.  One of the musicals that was scheduled for the 2009 season was “Little Shop of Horrors”.  Oh, how I would have loved to see that live on stage!

Maybe somewhere else…

I wanna go to Maine!

And maybe we will this week!  Mike is off all of next week, and I told him I wanted to go up to Kittery to eat at Robert’s Maine Grill.  It’s been awhile since we’ve been there.

So we’ll probably go up there on Tuesday.  I also want to hit the kitchen stores at the Kittery Outlets.  Also, about a mile past the outlets is a nice little rubber stamp store that I haven’t visited in a while. I hope they will have better offerings than the local chain craft store I went to today! They usually do.

And maybe we’ll go up to York Beach and look at the Nubble Lighthouse, as well.  Not too far north of Kittery, and always worth a visit!

Free ski lift tickets, anyone?

I have these very tickies up for grabs.  I got them for free as part of the free schwag package that comes with season tickets and mini-plans for the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.  The only thing is…we don’t ski, and have no desire to start now.  I’m just not in good enough shape to be falling down mountains on purpose!

As you can see, they are for Pats Peak up in New Hampshire.   You can’t use them on a Saturday, or during school vacation break…but if you can take the time off to go up there, cool!

If you’re interested, please leave a comment (with a valid email addy) or send an email, and I will get back to you.  First come, first served, and you must be willing to provide a mailing address so I can send you the tickets.  But please don’t put personal info  such as your address into the comments, you don’t want the world to see it!  If you are the one who is chosen to get the tickets, I will contact you via email for mailing info.

Pats Peak is open until 9PM, so if you like night skiing, this is a great place to go.  Although the lighting is surely good enough and safe…still, no skiing for us!

Want the tickies? Please let me know ASAP and they can be yours!

Some people need to lighten up!

Something I read in the current (January 2009) issue of Down East magazine – there is a restaurant up in Greenville, Maine, right on Moosehead Lake, called The Black Frog.  That’s it in the picture above, I took it when we vacationed there in the summer of 2006.  It’s a great place, a lot of fun.  Check out the menu page on their website, you’ll crack up.  “Mooseballs”, for $1,495.00, 24 hour notice and 25% deposit required.  Definitely the “tenderest cut of the moose”…LOL!  No, that menu item is NOT real!

Anyhoo, if you look at that menu, you will see a “Skinny Dip” sammich.  It says that if you run down the dock and jump in the lake naked, you get the $10.95 prime rib sammich for free.

Well, some people went and did it, and were arrested and fined.  I found the Bangor Daily News article that the Down East guy mentioned.  The two guys were found guilty, the woman, who was just as naked as the guys were, was not.

However, this was NOT the first time someone took the Black Frog up on the free sammich deal.  When Mike and I were there in 2006, we saw some people doing it…if I recall correctly, it was two girls and a guy.  NO, I did NOT take pics of that!  We were sitting at the bar, and turned around when we heard some commotion about naked people out on the dock.  We could see everything through the window of the atrium dining area.  They got naked, jumped into the lake, swam a little, and then came out, dried themselves, got dressed, and came back into the place to claim their free sammiches.  Yes, they got them.

Nobody seemed offended or anything, and we didn’t see any cops coming to arrest these people.  Everyone in the restaurant, us included, found the whole thing to be very amusing.

Surely the cops in this very small town all knew about this offer on the Black Frog’s menu.  There aren’t that many eating/drinking places in town…other than the Black Frog, there’s the Stress-Free Moose and two or three other places that we never went to because they closed way too early.  Anyway, if the cops had a problem with any potential public nudity, they should have asked the restaurant to remove this from the menu.

Maybe they thought no one would take them up on it.  Well, we witnessed one such event personally, and now we know about this other one.

I wonder what would happen if someone came up with the $1,495.00 and placed an order, 24 hours in advance and with the 25% deposit, for an order of mooseballs?

The Black Frog is a fun place.  I really hope they can get their liquor license back.  Otherwise, the Stress-Free Moose is gonna get VERY crowded when Happy Hour rolls around!