Month: February 2016

I’d forgotten about the endorphin rush of flat-out biking — not to get somewhere, not to accomplish something, but just to be out on a bike. I’ve never owned a bike this light either, so it’s fiercely fun to ride. My first bike is/was a big tanky Electra Townie; my favorite bike is an Xtracycle, as in: giant cargo bike. This is a mountain bike over a decade old, owned by someone who loved it, with good old parts, that I bought cheap just yesterday.

So I woke up this morning just thinking about cycling.

Had coffee. Came home and checked the weather radar: maybe an hour until the next clear time? Enough to do dishes, start some laundry, before switching to tights, bike jacket, helmet, gloves.

I’m out of shape, though. Going up even little hills and my legs are yelling at me. But I just shift down again until it’s light enough on the pedals for me not to be whimpering. And downhill: flying! I could do this forever. Knowing, of course, that I’m going to have to go back UPhill again. Through the woods, though, that’s amazing.

And now I’m ready to get back into biking as a “thing”, as my thing.

I’m in like the second or third wave of new Hamilton fans, but I’ve become completely engrossed by it. I tweeted a few things (starting here), and then realized I wanted to expand that out just a smidge.

I have a huge soft spot for older musicals, but I haven’t much listened to them since my teen years. When I say “older”, I also mean ones that were older then. ER got really into Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber, but that just didn’t do it for me, either story-wise or musically. My three favorites are solidly and consistently West Side Story, Sound of Music, and My Fair Lady. In particular, I had an obsession with My Fair Lady; I think we had the Broadway cast album on vinyl, and a local production ended up being my first date.

On the other hand, I was 100% not a musical theater kid. I once played Glenda in a library (!!!) production of the Wizard of Oz, and my junior year of high school I was in choir, but both of those were about the social experience. I’ve always been shy and awkward and not a particularly good singer either.

On the third hand, even now I have a soft spot for movies that have strong musical components. I’ve probably given Matt & Trey more attention than I would otherwise because those guys do comedy musical numbers so well.

So when I finally listened to Hamilton (thanks, library Hoopla!), the catchy tunes just wormed right the hell into my brain. I think I had it stuck in my head before I’d made up my mind whether it was too cheesy.

 

Because, yo: it’s cheesy. Um, battle rap about government debt, anyone? C keeps describing it as “Schoolhouse Rock”, which isn’t wrong exactly.

But it’s cheesy in a way that hits right square on target for me. I’m a HUGE history nerd. History trivia sticks in my head better than pretty much anything else on earth. And the code-switching wide-ranging styles of the music includes lots that I really groove on. For reasons I was not into hip-hop as a teen (see also: long-germinating essay on GTA) but I’ve expanded musically as I get older. Influenced in part by dance-off movies and Fast & Furious? So all in all this musical cuts across such a wide swath of my brain that I can’t help but love it.

Postscript: the genius.com annotation of the album is one of the wonders of the internet.