Larry, I'm playing the audio right now for the commercial. It's very funny! There is no video to go along is there? I don't need any video just wondering if I'm missing more.
No, DR Ben! Only the audio.
DRvixmom, to answer your Babes In Toyland question: I first got involved with the show when the Houston Grand Opera hired me in 1989 to do a new musical adaptation for a holiday piece they hoped (and later abandoned faith in) would become an opera house equivalent of NUTCRACKER. At that point I went to the Library of Congress and looked at everything in the Victor Herbert Collection, which is enormous.
After a dismal experience in Houston, which opened, and never performed the piece again after 1991, Babes amidst too much infighting and too little faith in the piece. Losing a Great Performances broadcast because PBS waffled too long before saying yes was the coup de grace.
Several years later, I proposed the piece to John McGlinn, who looked into it, became interested in Herbert's music, and conducted a nearly complete concert performance with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra.
In 2001, the Packard Humanities Institute began an Americn Music Theatre project, which employed me and the very first thing we recorded was every piece of extant music (at that time) for ther show. We're still waiting to release the discs. The project was to include new editions of the Kern and Herbert shows we recorded, and I'm finishing up the work to publish a new edition of the show. I love what I do, and I believe I do it quite well.
I'm back from TRISTRAM SHANDY, which is quite wonderful, bawdy, and outrageously funny and intelligent. In the Sterne novel (?), which is the most unique book I've ever encountered, Uncle toby's favorite song is "Luliburlero." In one of the film's scenes, Uncle Toby is whistling the song, which was a nice throwaway bit. Lots of other funny bits are blithely tossed off, like the discussion of Al Pacino's MERCHANT OF VENICE. The cast is wonderful: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Gillian Anderson, Roger Allam, Kieran O'Brien, Stephen Fry, and Jeremy Northam as the film's director Michael. I recommend it highly.
