White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge: Bring order to the whole.

Well, dear readers, I am staring at a blank page and I am finding it difficult to bring order to the whole. I'm even finding it difficult to bring order to the half. I'm sitting in my kitchen like so much fish, and there is simply no order. Oh, I'm filling up the blank page or canvas with words, but there is no order to the whole and that is unseemly. There is even no order to the hole. Did you know that I write these here notes in the kitchen, on my handy-dandy laptop computer? Well, you do now. Now you can have a mental picture in your heads of me in the kitchen writing these here notes. I hope the picture you have of me in the kitchen on a Thursday writing these here notes has Design, Composition, Balance, Light and Harmony, or DCBLT as we like to call it. Of course, DCBLT could also stand for Definitely Crave Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato. Have I brought order to the whole yet? Or am I still scrambling around trying to find the fershluganah order?

It is important to bring order out of chaos. We simply cannot have chaos because chaos is one of the stupidest-looking words I've ever seen. I think the word "chaos" looks chaotic, frankly, all those letters laying there like so much fish, like someone threw them up in the air and they landed and suddenly made a word. What the hell am I talking about? I feel we need some order to the whole here, and I feel we need it in a thrice. Perhaps if we all click on that Unseemly Button below we will finally bring order to the whole.

Apparently not. Apparently, we have not brought order to the whole. The whole is still sans order. Perhaps we should have a What If? Perhaps a What If will bring order to the whole. So, since Craig Brockman did this very same thing yesterday, I thought I'd share my version with you today. What if Stephen Sondheim, at the time of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, had written Sweeney Todd instead? And it goes something like this (to the tune of Comedy Tonight):

Something with razors,
Something with meat pies,
Something for everyone
In Sweeney Todd tonight!

We've got Johanna,
We've got Judge Turpin,
Watch out! The blood will flow
In Sweeney Todd tonight!

Nothing that's cute,
Nothing that's sweet.
You'll see it's true
You are what you eat!

You'll find the story,
Gets pretty gory,
You'll find that nothing turns out right...
Company tomorrow
Sweeney Todd tonight!

People get shaved here,
No one gets saved here,
No one finds happiness
In Sweeney Todd tonight!

Old Mrs. Lovett,
Thinks nothing of it,
To bake a little priest
In Sweeney Todd tonight!

Todd gets revenge,
Turpin's the prize,
One thing's for certain,
Everyone dies...

No pretty sets here,
No safety nets here,
Nothing that's breezy and/or light...
Merrily tomorrow,
Sweeney Todd, Sweeney Todd, Sweeney Todd,
Sweeney Todd, Sweeney Todd...
Tonight!

Do check out Craig's version by using the handy-dandy Unseemly Archive button and checking out yesterday's notes. Also, please feel free to post your very own What Ifs, if you're of a mind to.

I feel we are getting closer to bringing order to the whole. Your response to the songs of Hinky Meltz and Ernest Ernest has been, if not overwhelming, at the very least, whelming. We've had a whelming response to the songs of Hinky Meltz and Ernest Ernest. Tomorrow, I may talk about their one and only musical comedy, their ill-fated musical version of Robert Bloch's novel, Psycho. It was, in its way, a quite brilliant attempt for Meltz and Ernest to legitimize themselves and for them to write "serious" songs. There are some wondeful numbers in the show, including "Mother's Feeling Stuffed Up Tonight", "Showering My Troubles Away", "Here At The Bates Motel", "Who's That Woman Sitting in the Window in her Rocking Chair", and the amazing finale, "Nobody Here But Mother". Perhaps I'll even share a few of those rarities with you. I'm a bit surprised to find that Mr. Ken Mandelbaum totally ignored Psycho, The Musical in his book about failed musicals, Not Since Carrie.

White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge: Bring order to the whole. I feel we have now brought order to the whole. I feel we have filled the blank page or canvas with hundreds of words. And even though those words fall together in a happenstance way, they somehow have brought order to the whole. Well, dear readers, it is now ten-thirty a.m. and to insure that we bring order to the whole, it is time we put these here notes up for all to read.

Don't forget our Unseemly Donation button, because your Unseemly Donations a) enable us to bring you the Broadway Radio Show and to make improvements to the site, and b) bring order to the whole.