Quick hits

Just a few little things I wanted to catch up on here:

• On the Canadian edition of How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, Tamara (the one who butchered "Over the Rainbow") finally ran out of second chances and was eliminated. Janna (the one who nailed "Defying Gravity"), however, made it all the way to the final pair, and did an encore of "Defying Gravity" (nailed it again!) for that show. However, she lost out to Elicia, who I will admit may make a slightly better Maria anyway. So that means someone needs to start up a Canadian tour of Wicked and snatch up Janna to play Elphaba!
  
• An odd cartoon in the paper the other day, and unfortunately I can't find it online anywhere, so I'll have to describe it. Mike Peters, besides writing and drawing Mother Goose and Grimm, is also a political cartoonist for the Dayton Daily News. Part of his duties there include an "Open Mike" feature, where he supplies the art and lets readers supply the punchline. Then the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reprints some of those in their share of the Sunday newspaper (a combination of both the P-I and the Seattle Times—long story, I won't explain). This past Sunday, the P-I's reprint has the Wicked Witch of the West, with a Winged Monkey by her side, gazing into her crystal ball. But instead of Dorothy, the crystal ball is displaying the words "Fox News." I'll let you know what the winning caption is when it gets printed.
  
• Land of Oz: The Manga by David Hutchison came out last week, and he's off to a great start. It's going at a pretty fast clip, however—the first issue ends with Tip meeting Jinjur (who is adorable, I might add) and Jack and the Sawhorse arriving at the Emerald City—so I wonder what's going to be expanded later on to get it to all come out to eight issues. I also picked up the wraparound cover variant, but then, I'm a geeky completist fanboy.