no home run is worth it if you can't run home to a home you love
i've been rewatching the original cast recording and play it by ear NONSTOP for the past couple of days and i gotta tell you. i am absolutely, completely, utterly smitten with jess mckenna. please accept this tribute as a monument of my love
whenever you say hi to someone next door, make sure you’ve never ever seen them before, because we don't say hi to people that we know. to the people we've alrеady met, we say hi-ho
the tuna fish here is beyond belief; we catch those tuna from the place right there, it's a private little reef. they taste real good but don't eat too much; it'll make you throw right up: when it comes to tuna, a touch is enough.
don't climb up that big old tall tree: a woman lives in there and she is not okay! I know you gonna wanna climb it, but don't you do it, don't you try it: again, the woman is not okay! (and not like “not okay” like there’s something wrong with her, she’s totally fine, she's just mean. maybe evil!)
In the climactic confrontation between Alexa and Tina Johnson in The Official Cast Recording of Welcome to Mountport, Alexa sings "hi-ho!" to the Tina, the woman who threatened to destroy her dreams by casting a big shadow on the town's baseball field. Folks who have seen the show will recall what the Newsie taught Alexa in the first act: people in Mountport only greet strangers with a simple hi, and familiar faces are greeted with a hi-ho.
Furthermore, while there are few truly adversarial relationships in the play, no character ever greets a perceived enemy with a hi-ho. The dueling buskers use hey once, and Tina never gives a proper salutation to Alexa. By greeting Tina with hi-ho, Alexa says "i recognize you," which could perhaps be perceived as a threat; but she also implies "i know you," "we aren't so different," "as your friend i want good things for you," which foreshadows her exchanging Tina's "ticket to nowhere" for a dream vocation in overland travel. In this essay i will--
love how Tina Johnson and Alexa just had a whole musical number about how they’ve got tickets to nowhere for each other and did a week of spring training, then they presumably rode the the train back. How awkward is that? You(a mean old lady who used to live in a tree) just sang a musical number to your arch nemesis(a baseball playing girl) and then you ride the train back a week later. And no, Tina didn’t use a different train, it is explicitly stated that the same train stayed in the same place for a week.