Eat SPAM a lot!

Need something for dinner? How about a tasty quiche? Or stuffed acorn squash?

Sure, you could pick those up pre-made at your local Whole Foods, but why not make it yourself using simple recipes and a main ingredient of everyone’s favorite canned meat product. It isn’t your grandma’s SPAM anymore.

Check out this link to a story in the St. Petersburg Times’ “Taste” section for more info on SPAM.

And don't forget, Monty Python's SPAMALOT is in town only through Sunday. You can still get those $25 tickets (noted in an earlier blog) for tonight and tomorrow night's performance. Just use promo code RABBIT when ordering.

-PB

Need a little economic (and comic) relief?

Get $10 off your ticket to WAISTWATCHERS: The Calorie-Free Musical by using promo code TENOFF. Act fast though, this discount expires on March 20!

Also - don't forget about the offers made this week for SPAMALOT!

SAVE! LAUGH! IT'S THE ONLY WAY NOT TO CRY!

Sweet deals on select Spamalot performances!

Funnier than the plague!

More musical than a wandering band of merry minstrels!

MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT

MARCH 3-8

STARRING RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN AS KING ARTHUR

SPECIAL WEEKDAY OFFER!

$25 tickets are available for all remaining seats for the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening performances. Hurry! Offer ends Monday, March 2.

Promo code: RABBIT

AND

Come early and dine with us at Maestro’s Restaurant or Café for only

$19.95 (plus tax).

MARCH MIDDAY MADNESS

Take a break from the madness and join SPAMALOT, Thursday, March 5, at 2 p.m.!

All seats are just $20!

(plus applicable fees)

All discounts are subject to availability. Not applicable to prior sales. Cannot be combined with any other offer.

Limit 6 discounted tickets per order.

Spamalot's March Midday Madness $20 ticket

Spamalot has a Thursday, 2 p.m., performance on March 5. In honor of March Madness, we're naming this performance March Midday Madness and offering up a $20 ticket (applicable service charges apply)... on ALL seats for that performance. That means you can get fantastic seats for a family of 4 for UNDER $100. So take a long lunch, skip class or find a baby sitter and take advantage of the deal!

Not applicable to prior sales. Subject to availability. Cannot be combined with any other offer.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

Spamalot celebrates the inauguration with $44 tickets!

In honor of the Inauguration of our 44th President, Barack Obama, on Tuesday, Jan. 20, you can buy Monty Python's Spamalot tickets for $44 to the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening performances. Go here and use promo code: PRESIDENT

This is only a one-day only sale on Tuesday, Jan. 20, so don't miss it!

SPAM is a registered trademark of Hormel Foods, LLC, used with permission here. Limit 4 discounted tickets per order. Subject to availability. Not applicable to prior sales. Cannot be combined with any other offer.

Open & close: Magic of the theater

In the annual rite of January closings, more than a dozen Broadway plays and musicals are either dark or getting dimmer this month in NYC.

Rather than mourn their passing (for there are others on the horizon to fill their stages and their seats), let The New York Times celebrate not that they are leaving, but that they were alive in the first place.

"Live theater has a built-in bittersweetness born of its ephemeral nature. The magic is here and now, it's gone forever ... or at least until its next revival. ... That's why being present when a work of achieved art passes into history (or even earlier during its run -- MK) can be inordinately moving, a reminder that beauty itself is mostly an evanescent thing in life."

Here at TBPAC, we just waved good-bye to the last of the energetic cast of "Spring Awakening," who jump-started our 2009. Now we look ahead to "Riverdance," "Spamalot" and "Rent" over the next months, along with a host of smaller, more intimate, productions in our other four theaters.

If your new year's resolution is to have more memories than regrets, consider starting here. -- MichaelK

Broadway on Turkey-day

Some people look forward to Thanksgiving football. I, on the other hand, grab a cup of coffee and turn on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It seriously doesn't feel like Thanksgiving until I've listened to Matt Lauer describe a giant balloon or two. (Is it wrong that I secretly find it thrilling to watch what happens when a gust of wind comes by? ... but I digress.)

Now to the good stuff... Broadway performances during the parade. Depending on what network you watch, there will be different shows highlighted. CBS will feature performances by the cast of Mary Poppins (who will be flying in for the 2009-2010 Tampa season), Grease and Clay Aiken in Monty Python's Spamalot (coming to Tampa in March 09). NBC will show performances by The Little Mermaid, South Pacific, In the Heights and Irving Berlin's White Christmas.

If you happen to miss any of these special performances, keep an eye out for the floats. There will be performances by the cast of the new revival of Hair as well as a songs from Broadway favorites Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel.

From all the bloggers of Culture Shock and the TBPAC... Happy Thanksgiving!

Touring shows are "going green"

If you've been around the TBPAC when a show pulls into town, you've seen the truck lined up to unload set pieces, instruments, costumes, etc. Now tours, including many Broadway shows (The Lion King, The Drowsy Chaperone, Spamalot and Mamma Mia), are working with Clark Transfer, Inc and NativeEnergy, Inc on a new green initiative. It's appropriately called "Touring Green." It's designed to help offset the impact of carbon emissions created by transporting quality entertainment around the country. Check out this article for more information.

Sir Aiken?

No... Clay Aiken is not getting knighted. Um, well not like you think. He's actually signed on to play "Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot" in Broadway's Spamalot. He'll appear in the show Jan. 18-May 4.

Lost track of how many American Idol winners & finalist have made their way to Broadway? Check out this article on E!.

SPAM has never been so good!

Not the food (though I'm sure it's a tasty, cholesterol-infused treat) but the Broadway hit SPAMALOT. The show opened on Tuesday and the reviews are SPAM-tastic (yes, that's a word)! Check them out for yourself ...

St. Petersburg Times
The Tampa Tribune
Sarasota Herald-Tribune

-Angela L.

Gasparilla weekend: Life does go on, you know?

I suppose in a way it's unavoidable. The arts coverage in Tampa is light enough without any help from political cycles, natural disasters or pirate invasions. Yet it seems every year by the middle of January all eyes start to focus on Bayshore and the Gasparilla parade. Well, all the parades. Isn't there one like every week from New Year's to St. Patrick's Day now? I can't keep up.

One of the greatest misconceptions I've noted though is that people think Downtown is horribly overrun with drunk fruitloops all night long after the big parade and that's simply not true. Downtown's actually a little dead (I mean like, more dead than it normal) that night.

The best theory is that all the amateurs that pour out to get their drink on all day are passed out somewhere from the combination of alcohol and the sun. Those that are still out lighting it up - those people are professionals and by and large you don't need to worry about them.

Ok, so there are bound to be places full of yuck after a hard day of bead tossing and retrieving, but unless you're hanging out on Howard, at The Hub, in Channelside or Ybor - you're not going to have a problem.

We at TBPAC actually have a very full calendar this year for Gasparilla weekend, and if you're itching for something to do that doesn't involve driving around for an hour to find a $40 parking spot and counting how many times you get stepped on or run over by a pram, you should really give us a look. Follow the links for show times and more info:

Monty Python's Spamalot - Carol Morsani Hall
Marc Salem's Mind Games - Jaeb Theater
This is How it Goes - Shimberg Playhouse
All the Great Books (abridged) - Shimberg Playhouse

I promise you there will be plenty of places to park, and traffic shouldn't be too bad. Take 275 if you're coming from S. Tampa - those side streets down there may be a little congested still - and even if not you're better off driving someplace else. Tampa St. from Tampa/Seminole Heights and even further north than that straight into Downtown will be a breeze.

And if you simply can't agree to do anything else than hunker down in your house all weekend, or if you're dead set and determined to party like the proverbial piratical rock star - why not try drying out here Monday night as the Club Jaeb series presents LeRoy Bell and His Only Friends.

We've got a lot going on, take advantage!

-dj

Meet the cast of Spamalot!

Several of the cast members of Spamalot will be participating in Discover Broadway at the Carrollwood Barnes & Noble this Wednesday, Jan. 24, from 5-5:45 p.m. It's a completely FREE opportunity to meet some of the show's cast members and ask them all sorts of questions about their experiences as an actor and touring with the national tour of Monty Python's Spamalot.

Coming soon … Discover Broadway for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Doubt and the return of The Producers.

-Angela L.

How Monty Python gave SPAM a new meaning...

As I was reading through some of the supporting materials for the upcoming production of Spamalot, I came across an insane amount of information about SPAM. Truly, this is information you might only find useful if you like to annoy your friends w/ random facts or plan to become a contestant on Jeopardy. But I thought, what the hey, I'd share it with you fine folks...

SPAM was on of the few meat products excluded from the British food rationing that began in World War II (and continued for a number of years after the war), and the British grew tired of it. The British comedy troupe Monty Python used this as the context for their Spam sketch, which gave rise to the term spam.

In the Python sketch, a restaurant serves all its food with lots of SPAM, and the waitress repeats the word several times in describing how much SPAM is in the items.

When she does this, a group of Vikings (do you really need to ask?) in the corner start a song: "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM,SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, lovely SPAM! Wonderful SPAM!" Until told to keep quiet!

http://www.spamterminator.it/orig_en.asp

Thus the word SPAM became a term to describe something that keeps repeating and repeating to great annoyance. Today, the term "spam" also means network abuse on the Internet particularly junk e-mails and massive junk postings.

Hormel, the maker of SPAM, does not object to the term, but insists that it be spelled in lower case so as to distinguish it from the capitalized SPAM trademark.

And now you know!

- Angela L.

Spamalot Thanksgiving

Spamalot will perform "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" with a cast of 16 on NBC's Macy's Thanksgiving Parade on Thursday November 23. They are the fourth musical, and are scheduled to appear between 9:30-9:45 AM. That line-up and timing is subject to change. The other shows are A Chorus Line, The Color Purple and Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas. This airs live on the east coast and is held in other parts of the country. Check News Channel 8 here locally (7 on Bright House cable) to see the show!

Spamalot will also be featured on NBC's Today Show in a taped segment in which Natalie Morales, one of their hosts, appears in the show briefly in the French Taunter scene. The segment will also capture her fitting, rehearsal, pre-show prep and curtain call. This is one in a series in which the various hosts "face their fears." This is scheduled for Tuesday November 28 in the 9-10 AM hour. If they get more specific with timing next week, we will let you know.

Enjoy and have a Happy Thanksgiving!