working from home is a pain in the neck

Once again, I don't really mean to fall off the edge of the world, but I so often do.

Currently, I am taking a sick day because yesterday morning I tweaked something in my back and neck and could not stand without pain. I took a sick day yesterday - I couldn't turn over without pain! I took a sick day again this morning, and have spent most of the day reclined but rising to do physical therapy exercises to gently stretch things out.

The last time my back decided to do this,  I was visiting my in-laws and it was a major hassle.  Then, a trip to a chiropractor helped me figure out that it was all really related to freezing my trapezius muscle up  - being stuck in a stressful, forward-leaning posture on the plane trip to them to start with, and then a similar posture on a rocking and bouncing boat had made it worse (my in-laws have purchased a retirement boat, and by god, they will get the good of it when the weather permits.) Since the trapezius runs from base of the skull to the bottom of the ribs, all the leaning forward from the neck manifested in pain at the base of my right ribs. 

I am dead certain that my work-from-home set up has cause this flair up. I work from the dining room table more often than not, and the chairs set me up in a very forward leaning posture where I am squinting at my small laptop screen from a kitchen chair.  I have at least a mouse and a keyboard, but there's just no good way to make the dining room table function as anything but a dining table.  Tho we have a home office with a proper office chair and an adjustable stand-sit desk, the reality it that my husbeast uses it much more than me. On the level of pragmatics, that makes perfect sense - he's in video meetings all day so if he were out in the public space, he'd effectively make it impossible to move around the real living space without tiptoeing, and he's not quiet.  

As a solution, I probably will need to figure out some kind of compromise - either getting another smaller desk that I can adjust to work for me, or some kind of situation where I use the office more.

Easter and Holy Week in Review - or Jesus Christ was kind of a Superstar

Holy Week was not my most pious. 

Maundy Thurday, by far the most social event of the week, was a video conferenced dinner with the junior pastor delivering a sermon. It was very clearly a sermon adapted from a past year, when she was at a Methodist parish, and it was neither interesting nor well-delivered nor well-researched. She's a nice person and extremely skilled at her actual job in the parish, but man, she cannot fucking preach. 

My favorite service, the Great Vigil of Easter, wasn't offered by my church this year, and I got to Easter Eve with so little energy left that I just took the night to watch old Poirot films and rest. 

Easter services streaming with the Cathedral were actually lovely, and I got to let a friend know that her program had gotten a shout out in the sermon from the actual factual bishop that she'd had no idea was there.

I video chatted with friends and family and had lots of chances to check in with everyone. 

Jesus Christ, Superstar, or how I spent my Good Friday


What was a surprisingly successful addition to Good Friday was to watch the filmed adaptation of Jesus Christ, Superstar (1973), and then to watch the 2012 stage adaptation (which was made available on Youtube due to the whole covid19 situation) - my dear friend and I had a book club like discussion of the adaptations and what worked and what didn't.

The 1973 film adaptation is very, very solid.  Carl Anderson's Judas is tortured and compelling and bold, and so clearly absolute adores Jesus that it's honestly hard to not read it as romance. Also, the film production has the luxury of giving space and heft to some elements of the musical that are left sort of blank. The moment of decision where Judas decided to give Jesus to the council, for one, has a truly stunning sequence with Carl Anderson fleeing form a line of advancing tanks -an excellent cinematic addition with no song behind it. It solidifies the fears that he sings about earlier, that their movement's increasing radical turn will expose them to institutional violence. And while I do *not* love the image of a Black man playing Judas committing suicide by hanging himself, there's a heft to the fears of institutional violence when voiced by a Black actor that lends me a lot more sympathy to Judas's perspective than those same lines sung by Tim Minchin. 

The 2012 stage adaptation was not a proper musical, really, it was an arena show, and it suffered from stunt casting and a general feeling of being rushed. Tim Minchin is not a strong enough singer for musical theater, and he's not a strong enough actor to pull off the emotional struggles of the lead role of Judas. The same moment of decision, where Judas chooses to betray Jesus, was portrayed with Tim Minchin being harassed by a street electric guitarist - his pleas to be saved from damnation for his actions afterwards felt super, super fake. He also had no chemistry with that Jesus. 

As well not giving the actors room to emotionally hit their emotional highs and lows, the 2012 adaptation had some poorly thought out stuff. Since everyone in the cast was English, the distinctions of the 1973 show, that followers of Jesus speak with American accents while Pilate spoke with a clear English RP accent, was lost. That mattered. 

Also, weirdly, the cast of the 2012 production were nearly uniformly white? I can't figure out why - they were talking about throwing over society and were clearly based on the Occupy movement and the setting was, as far as I could tell, an city that was vaguely London, so there's no reason why they should have been any less multiracial than the 1973 American adaptation. And yet, they chose a nearly completely white cast for some reason - the statement behind it wasn't clear?

I am probably going to have some more thoughts about this whole thing, but watching the 2012 version has really solidified the feelings I had that the 1973 version was a complete piece and it's the best way to introduce people to a show that is only questionably good. 

ETA: I was reminded that a friend sent me this great little summary of the Judases in various JCS productions - https://ghostcat3000.tumblr.com/post/615220304413900800/h0lyhandgrenade-in-case-you-didnt-know-im-a