Last night, I got to see the final dress rehearsal of The Who’s TOMMY at the Village Theater in Issaquah. My mother-in-law got a couple of free passes because she’s working with the director on a separate project. There was no way to get a babysitter on such short notice, so that meant either Jules or I got to go. She’s not as big a Who fan as I am plus the theater is five minutes from my office, so I got to go.

Most people who know the show have either heard the album, seen the movie or both. Pete Townsend adapted it for Broadway in the early 90′s and I got to see it as it came through Washington DC on it’s way to New York. Suffice to say that the movie is very different from the stage show. It’s so different that the Village Theater specifically “does not recommend the film for previewing to gain an understanding of the stage version.”

If I had to pick, I like movie version more than the stage version. The stage arrangement of the music is orchestral, which I feels waters down the power of the music. This is most obvious on Eyesight to the Blind which was performed in the movie by Eric Clapton. The orchestral arrangement is barely recognizable as the same song in my opinion. The stage version also adds a new song – I Believe My Own Eyes – which I don’t very much.

However, if you look at it on it’s own, The Who’s TOMMY is a good show. It’s over the top, but for this show that works. Tommy’s journey from “deaf, dumb and blind kid” to “new Messiah” is even more appropriate today than it was in 1993 when the Broadway version premiered. At the time, Townsend got a lot of flak for the changes the show, but as he said “what’s actually changed is the times”.

While the show itself is over the top, this production is even more so. To quote from the flyer (which I can’t find online) everything is in nearly constant motion. Actors, set pieces and a huge video screen that dominates the stage. Again, given the show, it works. The cast was good – Michael Lee (pictured above) as Tommy was a particular stand out. There were a few rough spots in the large chorus numbers, but that’s to be expected in a dress rehearsal, right?

Bottom line, it’s a good show so if you live within driving distance of Issaquah, you should check it out. If you’re already Who fan, just be aware that it’s not supposed to be just like the movie…

• 3D Printing is going to be huge. According to the NYT, we’ll be looking at around $1,000 for one within four years. For the impatient, check out Fab@Home and build one right now.
• It’s been a while since I experimented with the P2P stack in Windows, but it looks like it’s getting the managed treatment in VS “Orcas”.
• The managed Ruby hits keep on coming. Last week was DLR and IronRuby. This week it’s a new drop of Ruby.NET which includes VS integration.
• Looks like Sun is trying to get back into the Ajax/Flash/Silverlight fray with JavaFX Script. I wrote over a year ago that “In platform portability, Flash has succeeded where Java failed.” I can’t help but believe JavaFX is too little too late. Also, it’s yet another Java technology name that sounds like it’s been blatantly copied from MSFT. JDBC, JSP, JDO … What’s next? JINQ? (via TechMeme)
• Steve Maine has a great series of posts on the new Web Programming Model that’s coming in .NET 3.5 and is currently being previewed as part of the BizTalk Services SDK. But it was his Balancing reach and rich post that I found most illuminating. The first version of WCF feels hopelessly bound to the WS-* view of the world, which makes it difficult to incorporate alternative messaging models into the same programming model. I’ve run into this trying to use SSB with WCF. In the next version, that WCF / WS-* marriage looks like it’s getting a little more open. In my current role, I’m not so interested in the web programming model, but I am very interested in how they are integrating these alternative models.

Light on the geek factor this morning:

• My daughter Rileyanne turned two Saturday so we had a little pool party. One of the major selling points when we bought the house was the double sized hot tub in the back deck. So even though it was only in the mid 60s, we could still get in and swim.
• Saw Spiderman 3 yesterday. I liked the first two very much, but this one is iffy at best. The problem with these blockbuster movie series is the perceived need to be “bigger” than the previous installments. So we get more effects, more action, more villains. But that usually means less drama and less story. Spiderman 3 is no exception. Here’s hoping that Christopher Nolan’s Batman series doesn’t suffer the same fate.
• Lost announces an end date. There will be three more shortened seasons for a grand total of 48 episodes (plus the three remaining this season). While I love Lost, I’m glad they’re going this route.
• Politics 2.0 Watch: according to their blog, QubeTV.tv is “the conservatives’ answer to YouTube”. Two thoughts on this: First, Having a site of conservative videos for conservatives seems like preaching to the choir. Second, to quote Andrew Sullivan: “It’s not a good sign when a movement cannot engage the mainstream.”
• John Shewchuk as more details of the BizTalk.net connectivity service. Hybrid mode and Direct connect are nice optimizations, but don’t change the messaging semantics at all. But pub/sub eventing does, so I’m primarily interested in that capability.

• The MSDN folks have a utility for creating custom help files from the online MSDN library. I didn’t realize MSDN even had a content service. This is tres useful.
• Jeff Atwood explains how error-filled the web is and how error-tolerant modern web browsers are. I’ve often argued that one of the keys to the rise of Visual Basic was because it was tolerant of sloppiness. It’s hard to argue with Jeff’s conclusion that “forgiveness by default is what works”.
• BizTalk Labs shipped an update to the Connectivity Service. It “now supports simple publish and subscribe eventing. This allows multiple clients to subscribe to a service and receive notifications.” Steve Maine has some details and a link to the MIX session he did with Don.
• Larry O’Brein is happy about IronRuby, but was hoping to see a new Ruby/C# hybrid language. Even though it’s his “#1 administrative programming language”, he specifically hopes for a new language so would “have the flexibility to evolve the language.” But Larry, MSFT already had an dynamic administrative language that it can evolve! It’s called PowerShell…
• The XNA folks have shipped a bunch of new content, including the Racing Game Starter Kit.
• Machinima is growing up fast. I just discovered iClone, a real-time 3D animation filmmaking tool. You know, my birthday is coming up later this month…

Dare Obasanjo had an insightful post on copyright and how it works a few days ago. Typically, I would simply dump this into my del.icio.us favorites and FeedBurner would dutifully insert it into my RSS feed. However, I’m calling it out on my blog proper because I loved this analogy:

Pointing out that copyright infringement doesn’t meet some 17th century definition of the verb “steal” because the original property isn’t changing hands is like arguing that calling your ex-girlfriend a slut isn’t libel because you only said it to people over IM.