Males needed for Theater @ First's Pride and Prejudice

The auditions are not until late November 28-29, and the show not until late March, but signups are now open.

We need men to audition. I'll admit, I'm one of those guys who has never read P&P (though it's been bumped to the top of my To Read list now), but the play will be an original adaptation by the founding artistic director of T@F, and I know she knows her stuff.

The signup form, as well as sample audition sides, are here.

Character descriptions and other audition infos are here.

Women are also welcome to sign up, but as is sadly often the case in theater, there will be a lot more competition for those roles, from what I hear.

The most influential band you've probably never heard of

So, there's this band called Sparks. They probably have the craziest ratio of influence, originality and output to likeliness that you've ever heard of them out there. This is a real shame, though I guess not unsurprising as they are, to put it plainly, very weird. Gloriously, creative-inferiority-complex-inducingly weird in my opinion, but definitely weird. For exhibit A, I present one of my favorite songs of theirs:

The really exceptional thing about this song, and about them? It came out in 2006. They've been around since 1968.

We are talking about a group (really a duo at its core) that has not only been putting out amazing music, and constantly re-inventing its self, for 30 years, but has even produced some of its best stuff in the last five. How many groups can claim that?

I've been a fan of, and evangelizing, Sparks for a few years now, and the other day, juldea pointed me to a great article wherein a music critic who had just discovered them, amazed that he'd managed to be unaware of the group's significance and longevity all this time, listened to, ranked and reviewed every one of their twenty two albums released between 1971 and 2009 in one big post.

It serves as a really nice overview of their career, and a good way to zoom in on each of their many sounds. He also does a great job of picking apart their lyrics, and I learned a lot of neat things I hadn't noticed about just how very, very messed up creative some of their song premises are. So, in the interest of my continued evangelization, do yourself a favor and take a look. Each review even has song samples!