Rising Stars: World’s Worst Musical

It’s been a few months since I added to this particular series, but the wait has been worth it. If you’ve been following this blog at all in the last few weeks, you’ll have learned all about my Starkid obsession. I promised I’d go about a week without talking about them, and I’ve held up my end of the bargain. Now it’s no holds barred.

Sort of.

See, I’m not exactly talking about Starkid this time around. I’m talking about something else: The World’s Worst Musical. It’s actually a web-series created by Molly Scanlon, Marty Scanlon, and Corey Lubowich. (Corey has been working with Starkid for a while, mostly as a set and costume designer, but also as other things. He wears a lot of hats.)

The premise of this 10-episode web series is this:

World’s Worst Musical is an original musical webseries that follows one writer struggling through his terrible ideas to write an amazing musical. As his ideas come to life he reaches the same conclusion again and again… this is the worst!

The idea is kind of cool, but the execution is even better. I’m always wary of webseries because I’m afraid I’ll waste my time watching something filmed on a cell phone and acted out by twelve year olds with no thespian bones in their body.

Not to worry! These videos are in “glorious HD” and are full of really funny and wondrous moments, all brought to you by people who can act, but can also dance and sing as well.

Here’s the first episode, in case you’re interested:

 
Some of the episodes are a little hit or miss for me. That’s not to say that they aren’t good and weren’t put together with love and attention, but I just didn’t connect with all of them. Hey, it happens.

But, here’s the redeeming episode. Episode 2 is by far the best (in my opinion of course). Every other day I have to watch it again because it’s just so good. And it helps that one of the newest Starkids, Jeff Blim, knocked this role out of the park just as well as he did playing Sweet Tooth in Holy Musical B@tman!.

 
I really do need to download this song.

If you want to watch the rest of the videos, simply go here. Half of them are out and more are coming soon! I can’t wait to see the rest of them, as I’m sure there are some more gems in store. I’m particularly fond of episode 4, because I wish I had a singing driving instructor when I was trying to get my license (especially if he was Dylan Saunders in disguise!).

But, honestly, coolest thing about this is the fact that these people are just regular Joe Schmoes. They’re pretty popular on the web, but they don’t have international stardom or anything. They’re normal people. They’re artists who make art simply because they want to. They even had a Kickstarter campaign to help them raise money in order to film. They’re connected with their audience, who in turn is incredibly loyal to them.

Hey, doesn’t that sound like something that we as writers get told to do all the time? This is just one more example of how it works. (And if you’ve never heard of Kickstarter before, Google it! It might just become your new best friend.)

Check them out all across the internet, if you’re interested:

Website

Twitter

YouTube

Facebook

How I Survived the End of the World with Starkid

It started out with sheer disappointment. It was October 2011 and Team Starkid was going to be going on tour. They had never done this before. Who knows if they would do it again? It was an experiment to see if it would work out. I wanted tickets so bad. But I’d have to find a way to New York City. Find a place to stay. Find a way for my BFF (and fellow Starkid) to get a couple days off work (which was pretty much impossible at her last job). And actually scrape together a couple hundred dollars to do it.

No chance.

The date to buy tickets came and went, and I was surprised by how sad I felt. I mean, I was really, really sad. It was the kind of disappointment where you shake your head and say, “What was I thinking? That could’ve been a once in a life time opportunity.”

So, I sat by and watched YouTube videos of the concert. I bought the DVD. I think I was unbearable for at least a couple of weeks, wishing that I could’ve been there. Talking about it every day. Playing their music over and over and over again.

Not that those things aren’t daily occurrences for me anyway.

Enter Spring of 2012. They had another tour planned. This time it was going to be for the West Coast. Great. There goes any hope. As much as I’d love to hop a plane to go see them in California, there’s no way that’s happening.

But wait! What do you mean they’re coming back to a few cities on the East Coast? They’re going to be in New York City again!? But…but it’s so expensive. I don’t know if I can do that. Wait – what was that? Silver Spring? They were there last time too. Hang on a second – isn’t that near Baltimore? I have a friend in Baltimore who happens to have a very, very comfortable couch.

To make a long story only slightly shorter, I threw caution to the wind and ordered tickets. And not just any tickets – Golden Idol VIP tickets. Now we’re talking!

So I planned the trip. We’d arrive in Silver Spring in time for the concert, then we’d crash on our friend’s couch and spend the rest of the weekend with her, touring Baltimore and catching up (it’d been six months since we last saw her).

Perfect!

And you know what? It was perfect!

Here are some pictures from the concert. I know that most of you have no idea who these people are, but just revel in my bliss with me, ‘kay?

Golden Idol VIP tickets meant we got to get their autographs!

Charlene Kaye was their opening act and she was seriously amazing.

The premise behind the show was that the Starkids accidentally woke up/angered a Mayan god and brought about the beginning of the Apocalypse. Oops.

Here’s the Mayan god.

Even though it is very, VERY hard for me to choose my favorites, there are two Starkids that really jump out at me. This is Dylan Saunders (who you may recognize from the Watsky post I did a while back) and his voice makes my head go fuzzy because he’s so amazing.

And this is Lauren Lopez, whose Draco Malfoy character is literally the funniest thing I’ve seen in my entire life. I laugh EVERY TIME I see it.

“What do you mean I missed the end of the world?”

Our night ended with seeing this little beauty – a batmobile limousine!

I have some videos, but I figured most of you just wouldn’t understand the context or the songs. Plus the crowd was LOUD and you couldn’t really hear them sing. Plus it was going to take 20+ minutes to upload and, well, I’m just not that patient…

Part deux will be coming up on Wednesday, where I’ll show you guys the rest of my weekend. Here are a few hints of things to come: jellyfish, Picasso, Greek pizza, and beehive hairdos.