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Wednesday, April 30, 2014

In Which I Spend the Rest of My Life Watching Rent


I was about to watch a Sundance-y indie movie on Netflix the other day (the home of all Sundance-y indie movies), but right before I pressed play, I saw Rent next to it in the queue. You know when you're about to watch a movie, and you ask yourself some variation of the question, "can I sit through this for two hours without scrolling through Instagram?" I couldn't imagine doing anything better with my time than sitting on my couch and singing-a-long to Rent for two hours. Or even four. Or the rest of my life.

I really really really most ardently love sing-a-longs. I usually conduct my own to Grease, Hairspray, and Funny Girl. I was just thinking today how much fun I had with myself not too many months ago when I ordered Chinese food from my favorite B-graded establishment, rented Hairspray and danced in front of the TV in between bites of chicken and broccoli. Things I do alone: that.

Of course the first cousin once removed to sing-a-longs is caroling, and its better half, caroling parties. My mom and I once snagged an invite to our neighbor's Christmas caroling party, where we found ourselves standing around a piano with once and future Broadway stars and the cast of an eighties crime show. I can't remember the name of the show but I know it was a hit because my dad had heard of it--a pop culture feat because he thought Beyonce was the name of a Westfield High Class of 09 graduate. The caroling party was uncomfortable for a lot of reasons, one being that tone deafness is evidently hereditary on the maternal side, the other being that my mom planted me in a conversation with a socially awkward nineteen year old boy and I couldn't figure out how to carol my way out. Worth noting we didn't get invited to the next year's caroling party.

I'm writing all of this during Marc, Roger et al's lulls in singing, and I'm dead in amazement at how this movie musical gets me every time.

I saw the movie version of Rent in high school and I remember a) crying out of the theater b) wanting to channel a cracked-out Rosario Dawson. I've decided upon rewatching though that my new style icon is a hybrid of Roger and Collins (who I never realized until five minutes ago was a philosophy professor). Grungy with a beanie but also rocker with a leather jacket and mom jeans. Mmhhmm.

My last note is this: I still resent my mom for not letting me get the "No Day But Today" Rent t-shirt that all the popular girls in chorus had. I try to remember that I didn't have Solows to wear it with and it wouldn't have looked good with the adjustable-waist Gap Kids jeans (#latebloomer) I thought were cutting edge.

Okay, TTFN.

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