I'll go ahead and take a small break from the business of crafting a fine-tuned and pithy review of a pixellated video game from 1987, and make like a lemming and say, like every other Phantom-based website on the internet right now, hey, Webber's second musical is imminent!  The website, with various goodies and whatnot, has officially launched.

My opinions?  I think the logo is fantastic, in the original meaning of the word.  And I love Coney Island.  And I like things set in carnivals and at Coney Island, generally.

"Lloyd Weber [sic] said he wanted to produce a sequel because the original's ending, which sees Christine leave the brooding Phantom for his rival, Raoul, was unsatisfactory.

"Christine goes off with this boring guy, the Phantom disappears," Lloyd Webber said."

...I'm an OPTIMIST, I tell you.  It still might be great.  I refuse to judge until I see and hear it myself.  My only real question is how and why Webber's outlook on the story has apparently changed so much over the past two decades.  And that's really what the project is all about, isn't it--wondering why our outlooks change.  (Perhaps he has been reading the same books I have been reading.)

Thanks to all 14 people who emailed me to tell me, and all seven LiveJournal friends and communities that posted about it, and my real-life friends getting in on the action, too!  I am informed!