{"id":1306,"date":"2005-01-02T21:45:28","date_gmt":"2005-01-02T21:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/02\/brush_with_star\/"},"modified":"2024-11-27T21:01:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T02:01:21","slug":"brush_with_star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/02\/brush_with_star\/","title":{"rendered":"Brush With Stardom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/img\/mcintyre.jpg\" alt=\"Joey\" width=\"200\" height=\"320\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"5\" \/><strong>I brushed a <a title=\"Joey\" href=\"http:\/\/www.joeymcintyre.com\">New Kid<\/a>\u2019s butt today.<\/strong> Well, not really, but I at least had an arm around his waist while posing for a picture, with a bit of a quick brush of the fingertips across the rump. When all was said and done, who knew little Joey would turn out to be the handsome and talented one?<\/p>\n<p>My old pal <a href=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/archives\/2000\/10\/weddings_on_and.html\">Matt<\/a> breezed into town today with his sisters, 4 tickets to <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wickedthemusical.com\">Wicked<\/a>,<\/i> and a chance to get a backstage tour and a quick introduction to Joey and anyone else who might be around. As it turns out, the young Mr. McIntyre is awfully pleasant (and pretty hot) in person, and I honestly didn\u2019t realize he could carry a tune that well. I always feel a little awkward in those meet-and-greet moments: obviously he was just being friendly to another random group of strangers, so I didn\u2019t know whether it would actually be intrusive or not to make polite chatter while hanging around. To everyone\u2019s credit, they were good show people who handle the public gracefully. When the schmoozinng was done, we sent out the stage door and into the midst of a crowd of adoring fans. For a moment, I entertained the fantasy that I was the cutest, most popular blogger on earth and they were all screaming for me, not the glimpse of the actors behind me.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/img\/yellow_brick_sparky.jpg\" alt=\"Sparky on the Yellow Brick Road\" width=\"200\" height=\"320\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"5\" \/>Joey led us on a quick tour of the stage, which was pretty groovy. The sets and such for <i>Wicked<\/i> are&#8230;well&#8230;pretty wicked awesome, and I always get a kick out of seeing how all the props and set pieces get tucked away when not in use. I\u2019ve been backstage at plenty of theaters of one size or another over the years, and I always love that look at everything when the lights are off and the scuffs and the illusions are exposed. If anything, it makes me appreciate the final effect of the shows that much more.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll admit, I was pretty skeptical about <i>Wicked<\/i> after the snippets I\u2019d seen and heard, but I was pretty charmed by the whole thing. The music isn\u2019t <i>great<\/i> but it has a bunch of really nice pieces. I actually think I\u2019d like more of it if the whole scale of a Broadway show didn&#8217;t require so many microphones on everyone: so much of the sound levels flatten out that a big moment is often as loud as a soft one, and in big group numbers you don\u2019t have enough natual acoustic cues to help you decipher what sound is coming from where. It drives me pretty damn crazy, actually, and makes me appreciate good, unamplified performance that much more. But the whole show doesn\u2019t suffer just because of a pet peeve or two of ime: it\u2019s a smart story, told with some excellent performances and stagecraft.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/img\/after_wicked.jpg\" alt=\"Joey\" width=\"100%\" height=\"202\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I brushed a New Kid\u2019s butt today. Well, not really, but I at least had an arm around his waist while posing for a picture, with a bit of a quick brush of the fingertips across the rump. When all was said and done, who knew little Joey would turn out to be the handsome &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/02\/brush_with_star\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Brush With Stardom&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultrapersonal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1306"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71438,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions\/71438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}