Spamalot is fucking excellent. “You Won’t Succeed on Broadyway (If You Don’t Have a Jew)” may be the best song from a musical in history. How can you solve a problem like Maria? With a Jew.
And, since this was the Pittsburgh production, The Knights Who Say Ni eventually became The Knights Who Say “Yinz wanna go watch the Stillers ‘n at?”
About an hour ago, I had this conversation:
[chesh]APELLE APPELLE APPELLE APPELLE APPELLE APPELLEAPPELLEAPPELLEAPPELLEAPPELLEAPPELLEAPPELLE it’s chesh APPELLEAPPELLEAPPELLEAPPELLEAPPELLE
[appelle] WHAT???
[chesh] guess what?
[appelle] What?
[chesh] Guess who won MOST ENTHUSIASTIC FAN at the Buffy sing-along????
[/end convo]
That’s right. My first truly geeky attendance. I have never been to a Star Trek Convention, a Buffy Convention, a Firefly convention. In fact, I have never watched a live episode of said geeky things with another human being. It’s been me, all alone, immersing myself, following up with friends and the internet only after the airing, sharing it with people only after the DVD’s came out, when it was established, when it was safe.
About 6 months ago, I lent Brian all my Buffy and Angel DVD’s. Now he’s hooked. He calls last night and leaves a message on my phone, informing me the Caberet theater downtown is showing “Once More With Feeling,” the Buffy musical episode, on Saturday night.
Clearly, we must attend.
It ends up being me and Brian and John, who has never seen the musical episode. We sit at a table in the back with a lovely couple. They had goody bags. Me want goody bags. The bags were for people who pre-ordered, and finding out about it at 10PM on a Friday night meant no pre-order for us, and hence no goody bag. I coveted our table mates. I loathed them for their goody bags.
Goody bags included: 1 packet of Mustard. 1 small thing of bubbles. 1 kazoo. 1 fire truck lolipop. 1 pair of bunny shaped glasses. 1 parking ticket from the Sunnydale police written out to MARTI NOXON.
I nearly capped a bitch for a goody bag.
Everyone was given fliers with instructions. Like, blow bubbles when Tara sings to Willow. I am sad at lacking bubbles. My favorite — in fact, everyones favorite — instruction? Shout out SHUT UP DAWN everytime she’s on screen. That was great.
Oh! And the whole thing was hosted by Glory. With some awesome Buffy trivia in the beginning.
And then the show starts, and we’re singing and shouting and it’s a BLAST. At the end, there’s two prizes: One for best costume, and then one for most enthusiastic fan. Which I won. Which I was not expecting. I had to get up on stage. I thanked Brian for being a new fan. Everyone cheered for him.
And me! MEEEEE!! Winner!!
You may ask, “How did you win the title of Most Enthusiastc Fan?” Hey, that’s the same question some guy from PopCultMag.com asked me when he interviewed me! My answer? “Well, I know all the words….”
“Is Once More With Feeling the next Rocky Horror Picture Show?” “I think so. God, I hope so.”
And what did I win? The Buffy the Vampire Slayer core rule book for D&D, and two Character Journals. And a light up wand! Do I ply D&D? No. Can I leverge this in to a massive eBay sell? Maybe. Especially if I sign it MOST ENTHUSIASTIC FAN, PITTSBURGH, 2006.
This description, of course, does not do justice to all of the amazing fun we had singing and screaming SHUT UP DAWN and laughing and cavorting as we often do. It also doesn’t do justice to the drunk woman outside who asked the guy interviewing me why he was interviewing me when her daughter does AIDS work with children. Like, way to steal my thunder, bitch.
OK, so, first, watch this clip from the Daily Show:
Then, read this blurb from IMDB:Even Fox News Channel itself is not likely to boast that its coverage of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speech to the U.N. last week was entirely “fair and balanced.” The TVNewser website today (Friday) cited a number of questions posed by the cable news network on the lower-third of its screen following the address. They included:
7:16pm: “Pres Chavez: Narcissistic personality disorder?”;
10:54am: “How dare Hugo Chavez blast the United States?”;
11:02am: “Should we stop buying Chavez’s gas from [Venezuela-owned] Citgo stations?”;
11:59am: “Chavez insults U.S.: Where is the outrage?”;
12:29pm: “Should U.S. continue to fund U.N. after applause for Chavez?”;
12:54pm: “Will leaders pay the price for supporting Chavez?”;
1:26pm: “Is President Chavez becoming a threat to U.S. national security?”;
4:06pm: “Taking cheap oil from Hugo Chavez: Act of treason?”;
5:34pm: “NY audience gives Chavez standing ovation… Why?”
Also, the comment: “U.S. giving U.N. $5 mil a day to get insulted.”
Well, at least that last one was a statement.
I am watching 24 season 4 on DVD. Something occurs to me.
First, this show fucks with you. Like, you’re all GO JACK BAUER when he’s shouting and shooting some terrorist in the knee. But when they start torturing innocent Americans, you’re all BOOOOO. Of course, Bauer shouts and shoots a guy when he needs information 8 minutes ago, not when he’s trying to stop something 8 months from now.
And then, actually, when you think about it, CTU is incredibly inept. They don’t catch anything before the terrorists have the bomb, or the guy, or they’ve blown up a plane or derailed a train.
CTU fucking sucks. Sure, they win out in the end, because Jack Bauer is scripted that way.
24 is really a treatise on how fucking bad our intelligence community is.
When you move in to a new place, you will sometimes get mail for the previous tenant. An errant catalogue, some piece of spam…
This is the story of Gabrielle, Alyssa, and Al.
We get errant catalogues for Gabrielle. Apparently, she liked Lane Bryant. This is not a big deal, and is a part of moving.
We also get mail for Alyssa, who we assume to be Gabrielle’s daughter, since they share the same last name. We get letters from the school district, addressed to “The Parents of Alyssa ____.”
This strikes me as odd, since, while you might forget to update the address on a magazine you didn’t really want anyway, you would certainly alert the school district to your child’s new address.
Sometimes we get tax forms from the township for Gabrielle. This, too, is puzzling.
Let me interject with Al — Mail from bill collectors and lawyers comes for Al. He does not share Gabrielle’s surname. And then there were the guys.
See, shortly after we moved in, and spanning the course of several months, men — large men, men with broken noses, men of a certain stereotype — came knocking. Always one at a time. Always in very nice cars and leather jackets.
They demanded to speak with Al.
Well, demanded may not be correct. They were polite, if firm. And it’s always unnerving to open your door to a large stranger asking for someone you’ve never met. So maybe I’ll stick with “demanded.”
Regardless, they want Al. We informed them on each of their visits that Al does not live here, we know no Al, and we’re sorry, but you have the wrong house.
Once, this was odd. Twice, this was pretty weird. Three times, and it became downright scary.
Eventually, the police came, looking for Al. This is perhaps even more bizarre than our friends with the “I could kill you with a baseball bat” look.
After the cops came a-knocking, the visits to our door stopped. We still get mail for him, though.
I used to send the mail back, you know, “Return to Sender — Addressee Unknown.” But I’ve been here two years, and that shit got old really fast. Now it goes in the trash.
Tonight I come home from work to find a package on my doorstep. “Prezzies!” I think to myself. But no. It’s a box, sent via U-P-freakin-S, addressed to Gabrielle. It’s from a company, so it means she ordered something, and sent it to the wrong address.
This is utterly baffling.
And then I started to think… maybe it’s not. Maybe… Gabrielle still lives here, in a parallel universe. She’s there with her parallel daughter in a parallel school district. Maybe she’s getting my magazines. And my socks that are missing from the dryer.
Maybe Al’s there, too, in another universe. Maybe his mobster friends somehow ended up in the wrong one. Maybe where he is, my friends come knocking on his door.
Maybe where they are, I’m a tall black man.