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Whatchamacallit 77: This Frog Will Change Your Life.

This Frog Will Change Your Life.

The above frog will change your life.

Yes, it is a souvenir from seeing “Book of Mormon,” the musical. This is not from the first time I saw the show in February 2012. Nor is it from my second viewing, in March 2013. Rather it is probably from November 2013 – my third viewing – in London.

My first trip to see Book of Mormon was to New York City – and everything about it was perfect. I was in NYC with my German travel companion – this was actually our first trip together – specifically to see the musical.

Here’s the thing about it: The songs were incredibly sticky. For the subsequent two months, I would wake up to the lyrics running through my head.

This is what I wrote about it back on February 28, 2012:

I might note that the ticket prices were shockingly high – we were looking on the Stubhub secondary market and in order to get two seats next to each other, we were looking at $368 per seat in the balcony. I realized that if we didn’t sit next to each other, we could reduce the ticket prices to $199 and $250 for two nearby, but separate, seats in the balcony.

Let me say that Book of Mormon is fantastic – and I want to see it again. The show is upbeat, hopeful, and charming, even as it skewers Mormonism to some extent. The musical numbers are immensely charming and sticky. Before I went to see the show I bought the original Broadway cast recording and listened to it twice – then I couldn’t stop hearing the lyrics in my head for the following two weeks, as well as waking up to having they lyrics running through my head. Now that I’ve seen the musical, the lyrics are again infecting my mind.

I’m not a professional musical reviewer, and I certainly do not want to ruin the show for anybody, so I am going to keep this short: Trey Parker and Matt Stone are two of my generation’s greatest satirists and this work maintains tradition. To me it is a more modern and mature version of Orgazmo, which was an obscure, yet brilliant, film satirizing both Mormonism and the porno industry. Where Orgazmo is blunt and in your face, Book of Mormon is more nuanced and careful.

That’s not to say that Book of Mormon doesn’t have its blunt moments: Hasa Diga Eebowai, once translated into English, mortifies the Mormon missionaries, and the rest of the show uses a lot of, as the euphemism puts it, “strong language.”


During the Covid-19 crisis, I am going to try and make a point of writing a blog post about an object in my home.

We’ll see how long this lasts.

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