The Stellar Reviews of I Miss My MTV

Hey lovley lurkers, sorry I haven’t rapped at ya lately, but you remember why. It’s this amazing show I’m in right now that’s sapping all my creative energy. Well at least I can see from the reviews that have come out from audience members on the Boulder Fringe Fest website that all my neglect here may just be worth it. Here are a few excerpts to get you all psyched and ready to come see the second weekend! (that would be Thursday, Friday and Saturday.)

I’m gonna have to give this show 5 stars just for seeing the band and cast cover an obscure Weird Al tune. That showed real depth was given to the 80′s theme, not just the topical fluff everyone thinks of when they think back to that era (there was certainly some of that too, of course, which was fun). ~former fetus

Wow! Wow! Wow! Let’s suffice it to say that this is an EPIC 80′s throwback with fantastic humor, creativity, hilarity, talent, and energy! I laughed so hard I thought my cheeks were going to cramp permanently into that ridiculous face splitting smile! I cried too, but don’t tell anyone! ~Suki

Very cleverly written, filled with endearing references to the landmark movement in TV that gave us the “music video” at its most raw and daring form. The live band is terrific, the dancers are on fire and the “special effects” are well done. The talented cast is having as good a time as the audience in this delightful send-up of an emerging art form at its nascent beginning. ~Iris Burman

What a musical extravaganza – and the choreography/direction of the whole show is wonderful! You will laugh and you may cry (that you actually DO miss your MTV), but don’t be embarrassed – this show rocks it! Lots of fun, great cast, musicians, the whole dang thing. ~MWH

Really great show. This show goes above and beyond any Fringe show that I have seen. It has interactive video, live band, dancing, singing and multiple costume and set changes. Really took me back, but even if you aren’t familiar with 80′s music there is so much to love here. The Aha moment alone is worth the price of admission. ~Chris T

This was a most amazing experience! I was laughing, clapping, tearing up, and reminiscing the entire way through. So very many memories from that time in my life and the audio, video, live band, actors, and every performance really sunk in to those antique crevices in my brain and I was all in. I brought a friend with. who’s 14 years younger than I, and she had a blast as well…if any cultural reference was lost on her, it didn’t show. WONDERFUL performance you Band of Toughs! ~Carolyn Dailey

Gen Xers! You gotta see this! This was far, far better than my recent Class of ’84 high school reunion! ~Rhianna

BELIEVE all the posted reviews – this was a show well worth you time and attention!!!!! ~Margaret

Latest Book review

Here ’tis, and as always, find the whole shebang at Nerds in Babeland.

This collection is honestly just great. If you have kids who are getting into the franchise, if you’re a fan (or especially collector) yourself, this is a great collection to have. Either collection is a good collection for a coffee table or a bookshelf anyway, if I’m perfectly honest.

More from I Miss My MTV

Yes, lovely lurkers, this is why my posts have been much more sporadic of late–I’ve been working on this wonderfully eclectic, fun show and it and work are all I have time for.
Okay, not much time for work, either… Opening night is this Friday, after all.

Here are two more tastes of our show’s behind the scenes shenanigans:
Part Two: http://youtu.be/kw_940MwGL4

Part Three: http://youtu.be/s-eXC0zTvss

Behind the Scenes at I Miss My MTV

The stellar show I’m in, called I Miss My MTV, is coming up fast and hard like a Pat Benatar video dancer’s knee and shoulder. Here is an inside peek into some of the cast as we enter into tech week for the show. Enjoy, and don’t miss it!

The More You Holmes

From: ep. 1.2

Character: Sebastian Wilkes, of Shad Sanderson bank. He of the “floppy hair that bellows ‘Eton.'”(1) He knew Sherlock in college, noticed how he had his deductive skills already in place, though he used them mainly to know who’d been shagging whom. He hires Sherlock to investigate a bank break in.

Reference: Holmes has taken on jobs from two former fellow students in his early days of detecting. One is Reginald Musgrave, of delightful treasure-hunt story “The Musgrave Ritual”–he remembers Holmes’ skills from their school days and comes to him specifically because of it. He’s an aristocrat, and Seb from the ep does fill that mold in a modern way as a bank director and Eton kid. Here’s Holmes’ description of Musgrave:

“Reginald Musgrave had been in the same college as myself, and I had some slight acquaintance with him. He was not generally popular among the undergraduates, though it always seemed to me that what was set down as pride was really an attempt to cover extreme natural diffidence. In appearance he was a man of an exceedingly aristocratic type, thin, high-nosed, and large-eyed, with languid and yet courtly manners. … Once or twice we drifted into talk, and I can remember that more than once he expressed a keen interest in my methods of observation and inference.”  

The other school buddy Holmes helps is Victor Trevor, during school in fact, before it even occurred to him he could put his deductive gifts to professional use. He is plunged into a mystery as he’s on a visit to his friend’s house (again, an aristo whose father has a lurid past). Here’s Holmes’ description of Trevor (and along with it, we get a little treat of Holmes’ personality and personal life):

“You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?” he asked. “He was the only friend I made during the two years I was at college. I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed much with the men of my year. Bar fencing and boxing I had few athletic tastes, and then my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all. Trevor was the only man I knew, and that only through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.

“It was a prosaic way of forming a friendship, but it was effective. I was laid by the heels for ten days, but Trevor used to come in to inquire after me. At first it was only a minute’s chat, but soon his visits lengthened, and before the end of the term we were close friends. He was a hearty, full-blooded fellow, full of spirits and energy, the very opposite to me in most respects, but we had some subjects in common, and it was a bond of union when I found that he was as friendless as I. Finally, he invited me down to his father’s place at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I accepted his hospitality for a month of the long vacation.” 

Side note: the spray-painted code that’s the central mystery of ep. 1.2 is a reference to two codes Holmes has broken: one is the symbolic dancing men in the story of that name, and the other is the finding of the words on pages of a specific book, one that everyone owns, from novel The Valley of Fear.

(1) This from the stage directions in the screenplay. FYI: you can download the script for The Blind Banker from Sherlockology. I wish they had more…