Corn, Soybeans & Windfarms

Corn, Soybeans & Windfarms
Monday, July 23rd

This morning, we boarded a charter bus in Des Moines and a few hours later we emerged in St. Paul. It was an easy trip (4 hours or so). The bus was pleasantly full; there was someone in every row, but nobody had to double up. The scenery was pretty.

We passed, of course, miles upon miles of corn fields broken occasionally by a soybean field. I was happy to notice a couple of windfarms dropped in amongst the crops. The big windmills whooshing around in their slow circles were pretty. I have to think that the windmills make sense for the farmers. Their footprint is relatively small, so they can plant around them. Sheila and I recently changed the electricity for our apartment to 100% wind power. (Con-Edison makes it easy, they gave us the choice of conventional power, "green power" - a combination of hydroelectric and wind power, and wind power. The wind power is going to cost us about about $3 a month more than the conventional. New Yorkers, you can check out your options here.

We also passed several casinos. Am I imagining that this is such a big change in the American landscape just in my lifetime? While I'm certainly not opposed to casinos, I do wonder what this says about us. It seems that nearly everywhere we go, there are casinos near-ish. (Just inside Indiana from Louisville, an hour east just into Louisiana from Houston, just over the state line into Oklahoma from Dallas.) I'm sure that the explosion in interest in poker (which, again, I have to qualms about) is a part of this. Not all of them belong to the Indians, either. The casino just outside of Des Moines is on a state owned horsetrack complex. Anyway, just noticing.

The hotel here in St. Paul is nice. I'm spending the next three weeks as a guest of the Hilton Garden Inn City Center. It's super convenient to the theatre (though, it's hard to beat last week's hotel: I could see the theatre out my hotel room window) and there seems to be some life downtown. While it's no Residence Inn, my room is spacious and came equipped with a fridge and a microwave. I'm being a bit of a homebody this evening. I made a run for groceries and ordered in. I'm in baseball heaven with the Yankees on the radio (the soothing sounds of John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman calling a game made for radio) and the BoSox on the TV (muted). (Check out the wikipedia article on John Sterling if only for the list of his player nicknames - the man is a certified crackpot genius. )

Sunday was Kevin Crewell's last show with Spamalot. He was one of an increasingly small group of original cast members for the tour. There were some classic backstage shenanigans to send him off. Cuz (our sound man) appeared in the back (open) side of the large wooden rabbit dressed only in his kilt. Yikes. Kevin leaves us to touch base in NYC and move into his newly purchased apartment before taking off on the Drowsy Chaperon tour. He will be missed. We'll put in his replacement, Brian O'Brein, on Wednesday afternoon.

JV & Kevin (Fran snapped this one on our opening night in Des Moines - just in time!)

I've stolen a couple more photos:

Nigel snapped this one: There was more spare pyro to be disposed of on Sunday. Ken is impersonating the Statue of Liberty. The loading dock at the Des Moines Civic Center is right near the main entrance for the theatre, so we drew quite a crowd firing off pyro a half hour before the show. In true "carnie folk" tradition, Ken barked: "That's only a taste of what you'll see inside, folks!"

The ad for "Brave Sir Robin's Blonde Ale". In addition to serving the special beer at the opening night party, it was on sale in the lobby of the theatre. Can this explain the wild reception the audience gave us every night?

I post this picture for two reasons: (1) This is Cuz (picture him in just a kilt.) (2) This is life on tour. Cuz is asleep on the floor of the Tulsa airport having just loaded the show out of Tulsa and on his way straight to the theatre in Des Moines to load-in. (Thanks, Fran)

Fran took this next genius set of photos. Harry Potter-fever hit the company this weekend. These are just a few of the folks spotted with copies.

Callie

Darryl & Akilah

Graham

Karl

Nigel

We had a similar run with the I-phone. (There are now 3 in the company.) One could have taken similar photos in Dallas of everyone drooling over the latest bit of must-have technology. (In fact, the pyro photo above was taken on Nigel's I-phone...)

I'm told that my copy of Deathly Hallows is winging it's way across the country toward me right now. Fear not, there will be no spoilers here - I'm working hard not to know what happens and won't ruin it for anyone else.

St. Paul is shaping up to be a lot of fun. We're headed out to the Metrodome a week from today to see the Twins take on the Royals. At the end of next week Sheila will drop in for an extended weekend visit! The two of us are having dinner (two weeks from today) with Kari & Paul who'll be in Minneapolis to work on the Target Industrial. There's also a model railroading museum here! First things first, we'll open the show tomorrow and do a put-in on Wednesday...

JV