Wednesday Wednesday! Nerds and Musical Theatre; A Potent, Pungent, Mix.

News recently broke that the long-talked about Spider-Man musical was finally getting made. Featuring music and lyrics by U2's Bono and the Edge, it promises to be a big stinking pile of overly spectacularised shite. Presumably the pairs legendary lyrical subtlety will produce such classics as 'I can shoot webs now!' and 'my costume has two colours; red and blue'.

But it's not the only thing that will be drawing the great unwashed into the wonderful world of musical theatre in the near future. A production company is soon to premiere an opera of the story of the very first Klingon emperor, Kahless. The epic tale of Kahless and the woman he loves, Lady Lukara will be told entirely in Klingon.

Yeah, that's right, Klingon. Because what we needed was for the opera to be even harder to understand.

What gets me most about this though is the fact that opera singing is a very specific talent, and requires years of intense training and discipline. Which means that when this thing hits the stage, there's gonna be a bunch of highly trained, dedicated people posturing on stage with shitty melty-chocolate face and rejected 70s disco outfits wondering "is this truly what I've trained for? What the fuck am I doing here?', while a bunch of fat, sweaty nerds take the whole thing entirely too seriously.

Like this, but fatter.

Escape from Huai'an

A group of plucky Chinese teenagers escaped from an oppressive training camp by subduing one of their minders before fleeing to a nearby city. It's the stuff of gritty anti-system movies the world over, apart from, ironically, China, where you're only allowed make movies if your name is Ang Lee or John Woo.

The 14 kids, aged from 15 to 22, were being 'treated' at a “jie-wang” (quit the internet) camp at Huai’an Internet Addiction Treatment Center, and decided they'd had enough. They captured and tied up one of their counselors, and beat him when he tried to raise the alarm. They then escaped to a nearby city, where they were recaptured by the authorities, who recognised them because of their "military style" jumpsuits.

It's like Battle Royale and The Great Escape rolled into one.

Except for, it's not. First off, these were kids being held because of their internet addiction. So they were probably all pasty, overweight and sensitive to bright sunlight.

Secondly, there was no dramatic motorcycle chase, jumping over barbed wire fences. Instead, they got taxis, which they couldn't pay for.

There was no great plans for return to friendly territories. No, not these down-trodden rebels, instead they went to the nearest city, because one of them lives there.

Although I do like to think they got caught when someone wished them good luck, and one of them replied "kthnxbai LOL :)".