Hands On A Hard Body

So Michael Marie took me to see Hands on a Hard Body last week.  The tag line for the show should read “the score is awful, but the lyrics are worse!”  Yes my friend, that is the sad truth about this show that is fortified with many talented Broadway performers yet was possibly one of the worst shows Broadway has belched forth since Lysistrata Jones.  But let’s kiki:

This musical is based on the documentary of the same name, which coincidentally, some late night I happened to have seen.  So I knew all about the storyline WAY before I knew it was made into a “ahem” Broadway Musical.  The general story is that of a car dealership that hosts an annual “Hands on a Hard Body Contest”.  Each contestant is the selected through a lottery.  Then each contestant is given a pair of cotton gloves (so as not to mark up the vehicle with hand prints) and then they have to keep one hand on a pick-up truck until there’s only one man left standing.  That’s the storyline. 

Now I have to be honest and say there were some damn good performances and quite a lot of talent on that stage.  But this show was so bad, that even the talented cast couldn’t save it.  Yes, it really was two hours of my life that I’ll never get back.  I will say, that the truck was pretty cool as it moved all around the stage.  And the director did some awesome blocking of this show.  I really thought the director did a great job.  And there really wasn’t so much choreography, so much as musical staging.  Then again, how can one dance while consistently having to have one hand on a truck?  The musical staging was extremely creative and was unique and never repeated.  Yet, this show sucked so bad I could hear the sucking noise continue as we exited the theater.

Should you see this show?  Oh hell to the no.

The Art of Racing In The Rain

OK, I’ve gone ahead and read another book.  Go me!  This little gem was suggested to me by my mother-in-law.  I have to say, I really did enjoy this book.  It was upsetting at times, but isn’t that what a book that pulls you in should be able to do?  So I was pulled into it.  Let’s dish:

The story is about a dog named Enzo and his owner Denny Swift.  The book starts off with Enzo knowing his days alive are dwindling and he is looking forward to moving on to his next life as a human.  As the book moves on, we discover that Enzo is obsessed with becoming a human.  He longs for opposable thumbs and a life of thinking and speaking.  He knows race car driving because his owner Denny, is a race car driver.  Enzo takes us all the way back to the beginning of his life when Denny picked him up from a farm and took him home.  We move along from there to Denny having a girlfriend, to their marriage and then their having a little girl.  The dog is filled with both accurate observations of humanity as well as some pretty funny misinterpretations of events and situations.

“So much of language is unspoken. So much of language is compromised of looks and gestures and sounds that are not words. People are ignorant of the vast complexity of their own communication.”

I really enjoyed this book.  It deals with several really ugly human topics like cancer, statutory rape and child custody but, therein lies the humanity of the story.  I really, really liked this story.  At times, I was horrified by the series of events.  But then again, humans can be terrible to each other, and in this book the lines of who is your alley and who isn’t is not drawn along family lines.  And not only the bad guys die.  This book was a keen observation of humanity told through the eyes of a dog – a good, faithful & loyal dog.

Do I recommend this book to you?  Yes, by all means – but if you cry a little, keep reading – I promise, you’ll appreciate the end.  Go Enzo!