Hakuna Matata, y'all

Which I think in some language means "put on a skirt and get fancy."

My mom decided that for her birthday (which is tomorrow) she wanted to see The Lion King. So, since my dad and I want to make my mom's every wish come true, today he brought her over to my house, we dusted off the Disney VHS, I fixed some ice cold waters with crushed ice from my new fridge, and we settled in to my couch for a white trash birthday party.

Nothing's too good for my mom.

Ok, that's not what we really did. What we really did is get fancy (I put on a skirt, y'all), and we took my mom to see the on-the-stage musical version of The Lion King.

She loved it.

The production of it is pretty amazing. So amazing, in fact, that I was so distracted by the production that I paid very little attention to the story. Good thing I've seen that Disney VHS or I would have had no idea what was going on.

Seriously, I sat there the whole time watching the animals and the actors IN the animals, trying to figure out how all of it works.

And also trying to figure out why there was naked, dancing grass.

For those of you who don't know, I obsess about figuring things out. I love trying to understand how things work or why things happen. Mostly because when I can't figure it out, I don't like that.

Like, "Ok, that guy's arm is hooked to that leopard's front leg, but how does the leopard's head move when both of the actor's arms are controlling the leopard's legs . . .

And the hyena's were completely baffling. Sometime's the actors were controlling the heads, but other times it's like the heads moved as though independent from the actor or his body. It was awesome.

So, while all of the kids in the audience are ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the silly voices and funny puppets/actors/costumes and the whole spectacle of the thing, and while the grownups are laughing at the jokes that only the grownups understand, I'm ooh-ing and aah-ing when I finally figured out that the leopard's head is somehow connected to the actor's head because when the actor moves his head, the leopard also moves his head.

Brilliant!

And so, my friends and fans, that is the circle of life.

C.T.