mer: youtube

This afternoon, I saw The Music Man at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. My sister and I drove to Cedar City last night to stay with my friend, Valerie, a costume design major who made several of the most beautiful costumes in The Music Man.

I loved the show: talented performers, great voices, great dancing. It was executed expertly by the cast and crew. I particularly liked the performers who played Harold Hill and Marian. You should go see it.

I wish we'd had time to see more plays, particularly some of the Shakespearean plays, but we ended up leaving immediately after the performance (as soons as the lights went down and before the bows, actually), so I could get back to Provo in time to go to the Stadium of Fire, featuring David Archuleta and Brad Paisley. Don't be jealous.

I might have driven 80-85 mph all the way home so as not to be late for David Archuleta. Truth be told, I'm kind of a big David Archuletta fan even though I'm about a decade outside of his target demographic, and I really only know one of his songs: "Crush." And I don't really like that song much.

Let me tell you why.

Last fall, I entered my name into a pool to get tickets to the annual Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. Tens of thousands put their names in every year and only a few receive tickets to the concert. To my surprise, sometime in October, I was mailed four tickets. I was ecstatic. Granted, I didn't really know anything about David Archuleta, but I had actually gotten four of the coveted tickets to MOTAB! I anxiously anticipated the concert night for two solid months.

Sadly, however, due to a series of unfortunate events, my group didn't make it into the concert. Like hundreds of others arriving too late and waiting in the obscenely long lines, we were turned away and invited to watch the concert elsewhere on Temple Square. We found some seats in the Tabernacle, but couldn't really hear anything. Although two months before, I hadn't cared for/had barely heard of David Archuleta, that night I felt a little cheated not be hearing him live in the Conference Center singing with the famed choir.

Flash forward six months. In June, I went to a book festival on campus. While perusing the program, I noticed that David Archuleta was set to appear at a particular stage at 1:30pm. I dutifully arrived at the spot at that time with my friends and thought happily about how I'd finally be able to hear him perform live and how the sound here in this smaller venue would beat what I missed out on in the Conference Center.

David Archuleta greeted the crowd and then sat down with an interviewer who, for half an hour, asked David question after question about books and authorship.

He didn't sing a note.

(His favorite book, though, is Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, in case you were wondering.)

Again, I was foiled.

So, come the evening of Stadium of Fire, I was pretty excited to watch David Archuletta perform. I was even tempted to wave my arms in synch to his music like the hundreds of teenage girls in attendance were doing. Okay, maybe not really, but I did enjoy the experience. This kid is a good performer and has a great voice, even if his music is really pop-y. He also strikes me as a really decent person who I think tries to stay true to his values despite his fame. I admire that.

Oh, yeah, and Brad Paisley was there too. He wasn't too bad himself.

As a parting note, here is a David Archuleta music video for you to enjoy, in case you weren't at Stadium of Fire tonight. Yeah, you're welcome.