New Jersey is cold and I'm enjoying it, not having to live in it. I complain about how cold San Francisco is, but that's because there's a possibility of being cold at any time during the year. As I recall, I often under-dressed when I lived here and in Ohio. Frigid cold weather was a test for me to see how much I could stand, wearing as little as possible, and although I never liked cold (ie, I preferred turning up the heat over putting on more clothes), I never complained about it. And reliably hot and humid summers was the trade-off for this. My winter dress was a hoodie sweatshirt and a denim jacket. When it got really cold, I wore a long coat over the hoodie sweatshirt, which wasn't much warmer than the denim jacket, but provided more coverage. When I was in grade school, I used to go to school without a jacket and I didn't understand it back then, but apparently there was concern among the teachers whether I was being abused, with my parents not providing sufficient winter clothing. They totally did, it was just my choice. Otherwise I was a pretty normal kid. Did I just write that?

Last night my brother and I braved the cold and went to New York to catch the musical "Thoroughly Modern Millie" on Broadway. I already have the CD and now I understand what's going on song to song, and I thorougly enjoyed it. Just from the CD, I wasn't sure what the take would be with the Asian characters and I was a little scared, but it was totally on the level dealing with any race/immigrant portrayal (*whew*). The only curious part is that the Chinese dialogue is in Cantonese, but the Chinese singing parts are in Mandarin. But having any Chinese dialogue suggests that the discrepancy wasn't a matter of ignorance, so I'm thinking it was a decision that Mandarin sounded better or fit better for those melodies. Or maybe the songs were initially written in Mandarin and then they realized that those characters in that context would only have been speaking Cantonese, but it was too late to change the songs.

I don't mean to be PC-policing, but with decades of negative portrayals of Asians in the entertainment industry, I think it's only fair to applaud a single instance of a positive (ie, human) image of not only Asians, but Asian immigrants. And not only Asian immigrants, but Asian immigrant men! One of them steals the white girl away from the white male CEO! I was stunned, unrealistic as that may have been. Really. Even more unrealistic was that the white guy just civily stormed off with a hurumph, not engaging in violence or a string of racial epithets to salve his wounded pride.

Having said all that, the female lead, Sutton Foster, who originated the role, was adorable! I adored her. She carried the show and was incredibly dynamic and charismatic and funny. The show wasn't astoundingly fresh or original, at least three of the songs sounded vaguely the same and there were ideas that were reminiscent from other musicals, "Annie" is one that comes to mind, but for purely entertainment purposes, I loved it.