Jackalope of the month club: or what we did this past weekend.

OK, so we spent Sunday doing a photo shoot of a jackalope dressed in different outfits for a 2007 calendar.

WHAT?!!!

Oh, right, like you've never done that.

So, anyway . . . we (by the way, when I say "we" I'm not using the royal "We," I'm not the Queen of England, I'm speaking of myself and the other Eric, who has the Everything Eric site in the sidebar) so we were taking pictures of a jackalope for Eric's friend. Now, before PETA attacks me, let me point out that it was not a real jackalope; it was just a toy.

Now, ostensibly the jackalope is a boy (refered to as "he" and such, though I don't know if he has a name) but we dressed him as a June bride anyway. He didn't seem to have a problem with it. As we were setting up the shoot the friend asked, "now, where could he get married?" I suggested, "Massachusetts?" but it turned out she meant where in our apartment would be a good background for the photographs.

So the photos were cute (Eric has some up on his site), we had a 30-minute meal from my new Rachael Ray cookbook (it took about 40 minutes, but that was my fault; it could have been done in 30), and then we sat down to watch the final episode of Design Star.

I'm not a big reality television fan; in fact, I never watched reality shows until a couple of years ago, other than the ones on PBS like 1900 House. But the other Eric got me hooked on Project Runway and now I watch a few of the similar ones that have a real objective like PR and Top Chef. We missed the first couple of episodes of Design Star but we caught up with the rest of them and we tuned in last night to watch the completely predictable outcome.

It was a choice between a very sweet and cute girl with a southern accent and a hot young guy who takes his shirt off for any reason (and failing that, for no reason at all). Guess which one the viewers picked?

Yes, OK, I voted for him too. We both thought she was probably a little better as a presenter but her final room was terrible. There was really no contest; as sweet and talented and charming as Alice was, David was just the far superior designer. He's actually really good.

Here's the problem: nobody's going to watch a show with either one of them.

Friday we saw Curtains with David Hyde Pierce. It just closed here in Los Angeles but in case it makes it to Broadway (and that doesn't take much) here's a review:

The audience seemed to love it.

That sounds bitchier than I mean it to be. I thought it was perfectly enjoyable and cute. The acting was uniformly excellent, the dialogue was very funny, and the choreography was pretty amazing.

Oh, did I mention it's a musical?

Yeah, that's the problem. The music was instantly forgettable and mostly not funny. It started out well with an Oklahoma-style tribute to Kansas and there were a few cute songs about the theater buisiness but mostly I found the songs too serious. I think it was supposed to be a satire of an old-fashioned musical but the songs in the musical-within-the-musical were often direct imitations of B-rate musicals--not good enough to be good and not bad enough to be funny. They were lively, though, because of the very raunchy choreography that accompanied them. The love songs in the musical-OUTSIDE-the-musical (it's a musical about a musical, if you didn't get that) were mostly dull. Now, if you really love old-fashioned musicals you may enjoy these songs. I prefer either the real thing or very funny parodies. The Drowsy Chaperone is a good example of this done right.

But, as I said, it was mostly enjoyable. There were a lot of in-jokes for the theater crowd and Edward Hibbert (from Frasier) was drop-dead hilarious as the bitchy gay director. OK, so he was playing himself.

The best line in the play is when he comes on stage and says (and you have to say this in your best bitchy English homo voice, as though you don't say everything that way), "I was taking a walk and I went into a service at Saint Mary's and I just have this to say, 'Those fucking Catholics really know how to put on a show!'"