Originally published on WordPress until they screwed with me for the last time. Both episodes of the final cut published December 3, 2020. Copyright 2021 Lady in the Blue Box Publishing by Rachel Beth Ahrems, All Rights Reserved. Reader Discretion is Advised, RAYOR (read at your own risk)
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the final chapter of my Hamilton dissertation dossier, FINALLY. Please be advised that the trigger warning is still in effect for children, recommended for 16+, reader discretion is advised.
The YouTube Live video of this “Midnight Mania Edition” episode below is rated 14+ and not intended for children, as some words from the soundtrack of the musical contains strong language and explicit content. Again, rap music can be very vulgar. Hamilton‘s Broadway Cast soundtrack contains a Parental Advisory Warning. But the volume is on low, as it is an ASMR video. The ASMR, ladies and gents, is in the CROCHET!
Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride…
*Static*Static*Static*Static*
DOOOOOOOOOOOO…
PLEASE STAND BY. WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES WITH XFINITY-COMCAST. INTERNET IS DOWN. REPEAT, INTERENT IS DOWN. PLEASE STAND BY.
DOOOOOOOOOOOO…. (pant pant)… DOOOOOOOOOO…
*Static*Static*Static*Brain Static*Static*Static*Static*
Announcer: We interrupt this episode of this dissertation to bring you a very special “MIDNIGHT MANIA” YouTube broadcast to help you listen and watch to peak relaxation. THIS IS ONLY A TEST. REPEAT, THIS IS ONLY A TEST…
*Static*Static*Static*
…
I haven’t slept very much at all tonight, and it’s very late. My secret stash of bubblegum has gone missing. Everything is holed up in boxes. It’s a little too quiet around here, except that I can hear my dad playing M*A*S*H constantly in the background of the living room and the sounds of explosions and chatter is preventing me from turning off the lights and getting 40 winks.
But do you remember my post talking about how ASMR can help you sleep at night? And help with anxiety too?
So did this.
And there is a reason I made a lead in with my ASMR crocheting video I made on YouTube Live, since unfortunately, my trusty cherry red camcorder is now totally broken. It broke weeks ago- the slot for the SD card is now busted.
Looks like I need an early head start on writing my Christmas list already. Or more accurately, since my parents barely have any money for the holidays whatsoever, because Corona Virus has made 2020 a “Hell Year” as my writer friend Allyn Gibson on Twitter likes to call it, I should buy myself presents, mostly.
And as a part of the Black Friday deals on Amazon and Audible.com, I realized that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s book G’morning, G’night would actually be a great addition to my ebook and audiobook collection in my Kindle Fire library. The ebook listed price on Amazon.com said it was only a very cheap $4.95, tax free, as opposed to the $22 plus tax I paid for the hardcover at Barnes and Noble. Even better, Audible gave me a humongous discount on the same book, charging me only $11.95 for the audiobook delivered to my Kindle Fire and on my personal Audible account, even though I don’t pay a monthly subscription to Audible at all, because I’m just too poor to buy ANY month-by-month subscriptions for anything, not even magazines, because I believe subscription services are a waste of money.
And that’s the big reason why I’m not allowed to watch the original musical Hamilton the movie on Disney+, because dad refuses to pay for more than his Netflix-Amazon Prime-Hulu accounts he already has- “Do we really need to buy one more streaming service when you can buy all the Disney movies you want for $5 a piece at the RedBox?” (yes, that’s exactly what my father’d say, in the words of little red Jamaican crab Sebastian) -Because honestly, there IS such a thing as too many streaming services that cost WAY too much money on your cable TV bill every month, it all adds up to be a waste of money.
I’ve seen the Andrew Fried Freestyle Love Supreme documentary on Hulu, and that’s really the only streaming movie I actually wanted to see on Hulu, other than The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel series on Amazon Prime, and only two shows on Netflix: Aggretsuko and Song Exploder, for the sake of Alicia Keys writing the song “3 Hour Drive” with Sampha (I’m a BIG fan of Alicia Keys, since she came out with her biggest hits “Fallin” and “If I Ain’t Got You” -and yes, I KILL at singing both of those songs at karaoke, not to brag, though), Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Wait For It” because of the research for this very same dissertation 7-part blog series, and my dad’s favorite, “Losing My Religion” by R.E.M., because I’m a rocker chick by birth. All the other movies and shows on Netflix and the other few streaming services, I really don’t care.
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, however, is hilarious, because it’s Jerry Seinfeld in these super cool sports cars and picking up comedic actors, comedians, and talk show hosts, taking them for a drive, and going to eat breakfast. It’s the funniest and coolest thing I’ve ever seen in reality TV. My favorite episodes of that Jerry Seinfeld-hosted Netflix series are the ones with Jimmy Fallon (my all time favorite talk show host), Jim Carrey (because he’s a total nut!), Late Show host Stephen Colbert, SNL’s Tina Fey (30 Rock is the shit!!! Long live Liz Lemon!), Sarah Silverman (she really does talk like her Disney Princess Vanellope Von Schweetz in real life, squeaky voice, but she’s hysterical!), and the legendary Steve Martin, of course, because when Seinfeld goes to pick up Steve Martin in an antique sports car that’s so old and dead there are a tiny few that are still on the road, the car suddenly DIES in the middle of the road, Steve and Jerry have the cute sports car towed, and they resort to driving to breakfast in a rental SUV instead, and the two of them together make it one great big joke!!! It’s the only reality show that’s actually FUN!
And a close second to Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is the Gilmore Girls revival show “A Year in the Life”, which I think is really cute, and it’s gearing me up to get ready for Shore Leave 2021, where I’m going to meet Mrs. Shropshire in person, better known as River Song “The Doctor’s Wife” and Miss “Hello Sweetie” to all of you Doctor Who fans, who is like *THIS* with Jodie Whittaker, buddies since their stints on BBC’s drama series Broadchurch, THE Alex Kingston herself. Kingston says she is not making any changes to her plans for Shore Leave post-COVID19, she WILL come to Shore Leave next year! Even better, for Farpoint 2021, so far it will still be held in person at the same hotel in Hunt Valley, Maryland, and my parents and I are definitely going, because I’m very excited to meet Kraglin of the Ravagers, the second-in-command to Captain Yondu Udonta from Guardians of the Galaxy, including the awesome Vol. 2 in the MCU: director James Gunn’s brother Sean Gunn is going to be our Farpoint guest of honor! But there are rumors that my sexy Doctor Who favorite from the David Tennant years John Barrowman may be coming, in which I will definitely dress as the 13th Doctor, strut up to Captain Jack Harkness, and say, “Hello, Face of Boe, darling sweetie! Miss me?”
Other than that, I don’t think there are any series shows anywhere, not on any channel or streaming service that actually SPARK JOY. TV shows on streaming services such as $chitt’s Creek, The Boys, Umbrella Academy, even the new socially-distanced new romantic comedy series that probably spawned from This is Us, which is airing on Freeform, known as the cliched “Love in the Time of Corona”, are all pathetic and weak, or depressing and degrading, or just scary, morbid and disgusting. Love in the Time of Corona steals the name from my all time favorite South American classic novel Love in the Time of Cholera, which is written by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who died a few years ago of natural causes, and is a much better author than all the lame, stupid college dropout baby screenwriters of the Love in the Time of Corona show.
The difference is, Love in the Time of Cholera is a classic novel rooted in a literary fiction genre that’s timeless, known as “magical realism”, which is remarkably this year’s theme for National Novel Writing Month for November 2020, #StayHomeWriMo. I’ve read Marquez’s incredible works of art in his short stories, including “Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother” and “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, they’re BEAUTIFUL, and they inspired so many authors and writers of the 21st century in writing magical scenes in their writing using poetic devices and colorful descriptions that of “tall tales” quality that Marquez did. I have my own paperback copy of that novel that Marquez wrote shortly after he wrote his most famous work of all time, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which many book critics, and my college professors too, said that book was his biggest masterpiece.
Love in the Time of Corona, the Freeform drama that airs on my dad’s TV, is bland, dry, and melodramatic, and from what I’ve seen of the trailers for each episode, there is NO mention at all of any magic whatsoever. There is no mention about lovers lost at sea after being separated for so long and one is trapped in an unwanted marriage to someone else, so they run away to sea and raise a yellow flag signaling to other ships that somebody has cholera, we’re in quarantine, like in the Marquez novel. Not even a mention of a parrot that was magically taught to speak just like a human being. The dumbass Freeform show instead sounds like a desperate cry for help from all these random neighbors screaming, “Help! I can’t leave my house! I want to touch somebody! I want to kiss my boyfriend! I need a hug, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! But I don’t want to die of the Corona! Nobody can leave! I’m so afraid of my house! Waa waa waa!”
You people with way too much entitlement and narcissism need to get over yourselves. Done.
*whispers in Rachel’s ear*
Wait a minute, what?! Aaron Burr is one of the main cast members in the Freeform series? Leslie. Leslie Odom, Jr., who was in Hamilton– plays WHO in Love in the Time of Corona?
Oh, you sonofa beech.
Sometimes I wish my life was more like a history period movie, like Austen, Henry James, or even Scott Fitzgerald- I’d actually like to live during the time of the Roaring Twenties’ Jazz Age of 1920-1929. But without the Great Depression after. Or WWII.
In fact, shortly after President Trump was elected, he started attacking educators with how important history is to us. For example, earlier in 2020, Trump started criticizing the Smithsonian and attacking museums and our very fabric of what we know of American and world history, thinking it would be a good idea to ban the Holocaust from being taught in schools. Someone on my Twitter responded to one of my tweets, saying that there were 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust because of Hitler’s hate crime, and for Trump to destroy the teachings about how racism and discrimination is hateful and disgusting makes Trump the biggest bigot and evil white supremacist this nation has seen. Trump is an abomination to his own people. The Holocaust actually happened because a sicko psycho crazy asshole tried to rule the world from Germany with his WWII propaganda. Trump wanted to do the same thing, and on November 3rd, 2020, we Americans counted our votes and we voted the bastard out.
President Biden, our dream come true.
As my father would say, “GO JOE!” Yeah, my dad also fully supports Joe Biden, we are the bluest of a blue collar family, proud U.S. Democrat voters, all three of us.
Or as the crazy nut fool Jim Carrey said on Saturday Night Live, perfectly emulating himself with the thing he used to do in Ace Ventura: “LOOO-HOOO-SAH-HEEERRRRRRR!”
This is why for the past five years, from 2015-2020, I’ve had five computers suddenly break and die on me, practically since Trump was nominated the Republican candidate for president in Election 2016. Four of those computers were broken out of rage, although the very last computer I owned was already glitchy when I bought it, and I accidentally dropped it on the hardwood floor in the hotel I lived in, while said computer was plugged in and charging in the wall. More accurately, the computer Vanellope fell off the bed and bonked her skull wide open where the battery power cord was. I hoped it was just to cord I busted, until I took it to Micro Center and they said there was something worse and internally wrong with the system, period, and they wanted to charge me hundreds of dollars in diagnostics and repairs, when I just bought that computer less than eight months ago, to which the stupid idiot at the Knowledge Bar didn’t care because “Oh, you didn’t pay $50 for the one year insurance, you’re fucked.” Grrrrrrr.
But yeah, basically, the four computers I had during the whole of the tiny four year Trump presidency, I managed to break every single computer I’ve ever bought, all four of them, out of rage and anguish.
Maybe I’d be better off with a… typewriter? Maybe just be better off living in the 1980s forever, perhaps???
But I actually wasn’t alone. I found this tweet from Lin-Manuel Miranda dating back to a year after Trump was sworn in as the president, I think sometime after he learned about the devastation of Hurricane Maria on his father’s homeland Puerto Rico.
That’s not even the half of Miranda’s hatred of President Trump. His father Luis Miranda violently hates the president, and I thought his son Lin would be a little more gentle. And then I saw this right next to it in the Google Images.
This tweet above this sentence I’m writing here was dated five days before the first tweet mentioned about Lin-Manuel Miranda, Twitter darling, King of Broadway, music genius, rapper gymnast, and best buddy to all of his fans, calling Donald Trump of the dead reality show The Apprentice a future Denizen of HELL, that people would point Trump in the right direction to meet the Devil and be tortured forever. Because Trump didn’t do a GODDAMN THING about the poor people who lost their homes (like the retweeted post by the embedded person he tweeted who lost power and her elderly parents are dying without gas and oxygen) in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria.
GASP!
Ok, remind me again to never make any of the Miranda family members angry… Because his tone in the former tweet towards @realDonaldTrump was exceedingly vicious.
But honestly, after talking to my boyfriend Alexander (again, not Hamilton, his last name begins with the letter M and it’s somewhere in between a Polish or German name, my man has 90% German ancestry with a little bit of distant Polish relatives, he thinks), who I now resort to calling him “Alex the GREAT” because he is such a valiant knight and almost heroic prince in my life (a stranger on Able2Know.com called him a saint), is now convincing me to believe that maybe someday, if he and I ever met to exchange autographs….
Lin-Manuel Miranda and I could eventually become friends????????
Better yet, Alexander compelled himself to make a bet with me, revolving around the second year of the New 20s, and the dreaded Corona Virus, depending on whether or not a vaccine existed. Today, there are now THREE working vaccines from three pharmaceuticals- Pfizer, Mederna, and according to what he told me the week of Thanksgiving, Astra Zeneca now has the vaccine drug to kill the superbug viral plague.
The bet stands thus:
Rachel: $10 says more people will die of Corona Virus than ever before and we will never reach prosperity again in two years. By 2022, there will be the Second Great Depression of the Twenty First Century, post 1929, almost a hundred years later. If I am right, I get ten bucks, and I can use ten bucks to go get some yummy cupcakes at my favorite small business spot, Meringue Cake Studio, or maybe some new shiny yarn at JoAnn Fabrics.
Alexander M.: Nope. I say things WILL get better in two years. If by 2021, things go back to normal, people get vaccines, and the virus is dead before New Year’s Eve, and the two of us FINALLY get to live together in peace and away from your parents and that toxic apartment you hate… you’re coming with me to Broadway for your first Broadway musical show!
(I smile at him like a cute sexy dork.)
Rachel: That’s not so bad…
Alexander: Not so fast, honey. If you lose and I’m right, you go watch… HAMILTON!!! Broadway! Or even on Disney+! With ME!
Me. Smacking. Face. Palm.
In the voice of Lily Aldrin from How I Met Your Mother, once again: Youuuuuuuu sonofa beetch!
But I totally caved on that agreement, and I made a “digital handshake” through my computer monitor and webcam, since we were not on a date when we did this and we were kind of still social distancing at the time. I had no choice but to agree with him. For this reason alone:
Alexander is the love of my life.
And…
I blame the late Hollywood chef and travel TV show personality Anthony Bourdain of No Reservations and Parts Unknown. Because I was heartbroken to hear the news that he died two years ago, from suicide of all things, and it was mental illness related. The chef superstar had a major case of clinical depression. I was just starting to like his newest travel show on PBS.
And ok, when I mentioned Stephen Colbert somewhere in this mess of a long winded essay about the Jerry Seinfeld comedian show? It was actually this exact tweet that was mentioned in Colbert’s Late Show, which is somewhere in the first 20 pages of Lin-Manuel’s relatively new book, G’morning, G’night.
When he read those words directly from his hardcover book he brought onto The Late Show, that’s how Miranda got to me. Hearing his voice say this message about suicide, depression, and mental illness tugged at my heart immediately, just as his g’night tweet on the day of the news of Bourdain’s death said: “Gnight. YOU ARE SO LOVED AND WE LIKE HAVING YOU AROUND. Ties one end of this sentence to your heart, the other end to everyone who loves you in this life, even if clouds obscure your view. Checks knots. THERE. STAY PUT, YOU. TUG IF YOU NEED ANYTHING.”
And I’ve already memorized this tweet verbatim, I don’t need to look around my teeny tiny cramped claustrophobic bedroom for my own hardcover copy to read it to you.
And on Small Business Saturday, I bought the Kindle Fire ebook version, and the Audible audiobook version, for the combined price of $17 total, as a Black Friday deal. The list price for both of those is actually a lot more expensive than they appear after Christmas is over. Unless you pay a subscription service.
I’ve listened to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s voice over and over when I got to that exact tweet in the Audible digital download I have in my computer, since it didn’t make the transition to my Fire, as my Kindle Fire is still not hooked up to the internet, and worse, Audible is kind of a bitch when I try transferring the audio file manually to my Fire anyway, and it’s not compatible with iTunes either.
And when I heard the words “You are so loved and we like having you…” I bookmarked that segment of the audio immediately, at the precise moment of the said good morning. I played it twice more to get it to stick. And before I knew it, I was hooked. The autonomic sensory meridian response, ASMR for short, was working right there. That quote is now engraved in my brain.
Even his music has qualities of ASMR. When I watched the documentary We Are Freestyle Love Supreme on my dad’s TV that was the only TV in the apartment that had the Hulu service, and I’m so poor I can’t replace my old TV or replace my old kiddie twin bed I’ve owned since I was nine and I still sleep in that same twin bed in my 30s (just with a relatively new mattress from Ikea on top and using my two very old and broken mattresses as a box spring)- I found Lin-Manuel Miranda and “Two Touch” Anthony’s segment called “True” in their Broadway show to have lots of ASMR qualities.
Case in point: This is from an old FLS episode they did in 2014, a year before Hamilton was even performed anywhere in New York, not even Off Broadway yet, where they did their “True” segment in the video below. Anthony Veniziale, under the emcee name “Two Touch”, is the main announcer of the entire show, and he leads the audience to shout out words to control the show, which is how it works. Freestyle Love Supreme is an improv theatre troupe where their Broadway show is totally made up on the fly, based on what audiences suggest. From what I’ve seen on Miranda’s Twitter, the actors, who also fill as the rappers onstage, pretend that they can be cows, zombies, vibrators (shocking! gasp!), while rapping about everything. And in the Hulu documentary, they all perform these improvised roles, unscripted, in all freestyle rap and rhyming poetry through the entire show.
Best of all, it’s GOOD. It’s about as feel-good and as warm and fluffy as your favorite home cooked meal, your favorite soul food, or like a hot cup of handcrafted Godiva hot chocolate at Starbucks.
So far, this video clip from their very early shows pre-Hamilton, where Lin was still in the process of growing out his hair nice and long to prepare for the role of Alexander Hamilton anyway, is my favorite, and is perfect proof that Lin Miranda’s style of rap improv and his singing possesses therapeutic ASMR qualities to relieve anxiety and depression. His friend known as “UTK the INC” sitting next to him, and by the way he’s Indian-South Asian descent and he’s from MY HOMETOWN in Baltimore- Utkarsh “UTK the INC” says that he grew up in Maryland in the first 30 seconds of this song, yes this guy was once my neighbor before he moved to New York for college at the prestigious NYU- rips this rap a new one, by taking the word “Sunrise” and taking it apart by its syllables and flipping it to inspire millions of people in a BIG way: “Son, you gonna rise, son, RISE!”
And then Lin, under his emcee name “Lin Man”, talks about his cute fluffy furry baby Tobillo, Tobi for short, a cute female furry mutt puppy he found on the beach in the Dominican Republic on vacation with his wife, and he adopted her because she was a stray and had no owners. Dawwwww, he’s a dog lover, all the more to love this guy. Also, little side note- the reason why he named his fur baby Tobillo is in the rap song he sings at the end of the “True” segment on “sunrise”- tobillo, in Spanish, means ‘ankle’, but he still calls her Tobi for short. It’s because when he met the furry puppy, she bit his wife’s ankle, and to quote the Disney cartoon movie Bolt, she looked at Lin and Vanessa with the “dog face”- “I’m cute, feed me and scratch my bewy!”
Just as sweet and poignant as “son rise”. I have the softest spot for dogs. Dog lovers unite. Puppies are the best animals ever, other than bunnies, dragons, and ok unicorns too.
Anyway, here’s “Sunrise” from their segment “True”:
And if you combine this style of improv rap comedy with Shockwave, Chris Sullivan, who is the group’s beatboxer, this really does give you a sense of ASMR. The clicking and popping noises Sullivan is making with his lips and tongue in dropping his personal beat for Miranda to start rapping on it based on a word gives you that tingling sensation when he starts that…
And Miranda rapping about ramen noodles sounds like positivity and a boost of serotonin in your brain. And I’ve had real ramen noodles at real Asian ramen restaurants that are just now popping up in Baltimore County and Bel Air, Akira Ramen at The Avenue White Marsh and Rainbow King Bel Air. Ramen is DELICIOUS. Lin-Manuel is definitely describing what ramen tastes like perfectly. Yum.
It can also be as uplifting as a movie that you love. My dad always falls asleep to movies that put him to sleep, turning up the volume loud. But sadly, for my end of it because even with the door closed I can still hear the noises on my dad’s TV from my bedroom, dad likes to play movies like Die Hard and Time Cop, the other night, he played Armageddon. Dad plays a lot of sci fi and action movies to fall asleep. Which is bad news for me because it gives me a headache in the morning and it’s even harder for me to fall asleep at night, making me stay awake until 5 or 6 in the morning. Enya’s soft new age music is better at putting me to sleep than that. But I prefer total silence and no noise whatsoever.
And this movie definitely hits all the right notes with me as probably the Broadway musical now movie that would turn me back into loving Broadway theatre again. I used to hate Broadway shows because of how much I hated those horrible high school memories where I went to school with a failed system that never taught me how to use my brain and said that I should be locked up in a mental asylum or be lumped with the “bad kids” in juvie. Pregnant teens everywhere, kids smoking lots of pot in the bathrooms, and the theatre kids hated me. I was always the extra, smiling and waving from the back row with no lines, never the lead role, or any important role at all. In high school, I felt like I was the extra, the naughty choir girl in the back of the crowd, the backseat wallflower, or in Dungeons and Dragons terms, the NPC.
And yet, I still got the senior superlative “Most Dramatic” in my Class of 2006 yearbook. Because all the bullies used me as a button to play, “Let’s torture the Pippi Longstocking redhead and make her life a living hell! She’s FUN to TORTURE like a slave!” and I’d always scream at them, “LEAVE ME ALONE!” “GO AWAY!” “STOP IT!” “I’M NOT A CRAZY BITCH!” “STOP BULLYING ME OR I’LL BEAT YOU UP!” “YOU SEXUALLY HARASS ME, I’LL TELL THE PRINCIPAL! WHAT’S YOUR NAME SO I CAN HAVE YOU EXPELLED FOR BULLYING!”
And I was always the one getting in trouble with the assistant principal Mr. Arnold, because my voice is too loud, I’m too flighty, I’m threatening other bullies, getting into fights with the boys who stick gum in my hair and shove me against the walls, and screamed in the middle of cooking class family studies that I wanted to kill myself.
How’s that for a high school memory? That’s why I was voted Most Dramatic senior year in Perry Hall High School 15 years ago. I was dubbed the School Slave and the Bullies’ Dream Rag Doll. All you have to do is scream at me, and I do as you command and I obey your every taunt, every name calling, every harassment, sexually and verbally, and if I stand up against you, the authorities will beat me and punch me in the face with after school detention, suspension, and parent-teacher conferences with “Rachel is going to cause another Columbine, let’s throw her in a hospital loony bin for crazy people like Bellevue Mental Hospital psycho ward.”
And as I’m on the ground bleeding from the wounds on my heart, licking my bruises of anguish and despair, I start crying, “What the hell did I do wrong? How do I turn myself into a better person? Why do you hate me? Am I the worst person in the world? Does everybody hate me? All I want is for somebody to give me undying love. Help me, help me please. I’m on my knees, rescue me, save me…. Help…”
Lin-Manuel Miranda, however, had different memories of high school, and he actually loved high school. In many interviews, the theatre kids he hung out with were actually like family to him, like the nerds playing D&D with my dad at Glen Burnie High and UMBC, which the same nerds at dad’s high school and college actually WERE the high school’s Thespian Society. My dad’s best friend Lance Woods is responsible for writing his first-ever parody of the Superman films, called Senior Man, where the class jock, Paul Revere (yes, that was his REAL name, take that, U.S. history teachers- well, laugh), played the role of Kal-El, the superhero himself. Miranda remembers a lot of his theatre friends and their rehearsals’ memories very fondly. Some of them are even famous now, in the news or in filmmaking.
Now I feel kind of jealous. I want a do over of high school, for I never found my tribe when I was a teenager, not my whole life.
Many years later, I eventually saw this trailer in 2019, and it gave me hope where I had none. It was supposed to be released in summer 2020, but then Corona Virus murdered that dream. It’s coming to theatres in June 2021. And it’s the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard, with the most amazing costumes, cinematography, the colors and the lights, all swirling together like a kaleidoscope, reminding me of how ethnically beautiful Crazy Rich Asians was… and that’s all because the director of the movie adaptation of In the Heights IS the director of Crazy Rich Asians, Jon M. Chu. I’m excited, because this movie is going to bring back the Hispanic-Latino-Black communities of New York back to their radiant glory. And Anthony Ramos is leading them as Usnavi, the owner of the corner bodega. He’s going to be a super cute Usnavi in this show, I can picture it now. He has the sweetest singing voice for it. And I’ve always loved Christopher Jackson’s Benny from afar.
Also, one thing I have to mention. College- in Baltimore and Towson- sounds a LOT like Washington Heights. Baltimore City, CCBC Essex, Towson, everywhere you go in Baltimore County, is everything Washington Heights is described by Lin Miranda’s first musical he ever wrote.
LOVE IT.
Here’s In the Heights, due in theatres summer 2021. Ignore the 2020 date.
Now I realize that this post is now 5,000 words long. This may be a two-fer. Or a half step.
“Or just a baby step there,” as Lin says in his book.
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