Music and Masquerade

I am not a big fan of the American musical. Yes I have been known to go to the occasional Broadway Show, yes I have actually performed in four separate productions myself, and yes I know all the words to Rent, West Side Story AND Beauty and the Beast. And I especially love that part of Les Miserables when...what was I saying? Oh yes! I don't like musicals at all.

But I have to ignore this opinion for the time being because my beautiful wife is in a production of Urinetown. And I must say, for someone with as much contempt for musical theater as I seem to have, I enjoyed the show very much. The premise behind this opera is that thanks to mass consumption, there has been a steadily worsening drought. In order to both conserve resources and turn a profit, a large corporation has set up public amenities and charges people to do their business. With the police in their pocket, they've also made it illegal to do it anywhere else. If this sounds like a familiar idea, rest assured that they hail Malthus at the end of the show. If you have no idea what that means...go read a book. If this sounds far fetched, read this!

Scary!

The musical itself was very self-aware of how derivative it was. This is a good thing. With the exception of some works of Stephen Sondheim, musicals have not brought anything new to the table for thirty years. The only way for a musical to get away with this is by giving a large wink and a nod to its predecesors. For instance, rather than a climactic Russian-Jewish bottle dance, four destitutes with toilet paper tied to their head start a lined Kossak dance in the middle of the second act. To further prevent you from taking it seriously, the narrator makes sure you are well aware at all times that this is a musical and reminds you of the various rules that musicals must follow. That added to the numerous hilarious songs make this a wonderfully irreverent show. I recommend it!



To follow up Saturday's performance, two of the castmates had decided to throw a 1980's themed costume party. But why wait until the party to dress up? I decided to show up to Urinetown as Louis Skolnick from Revenge of the Nerds. I confused many audience members who thought I was part of the show and I'm almost certain that I humiliated at least 4 out of the 7 people I showed up with. Totally worth it.

The party itself was about 40 minutes north of the theater so none of us really arrived until 11:45pm. Fortunately we were young, it was Saturday, and we had a whole extra hour to party thanks to daylight savings. Let me just say that even with fake glasses, fake teeth, and a well stocked pocket protector, I felt very underdressed. There were hundreds of people there who were dressed to the tee. I tried to keep a running tally of the various eighties icons but I only managed the following list:
6 Smurfs (two of whom were Smurfette and one of whom was Papa Smurf)
4 Ghostbusters and a Staypuff marshmallow man (none of whom planned ahead).
3 Strawberry Shortcakes
3 Richard Simmons (always fun at parties)
2 Indiana Jones
2 Magnum P.I.'s
2 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
2 Marios and 1 Luigi
2 Tom Cruises in underwear a la "Risky Business" (one of whom had a large pink dildo sticking out of his BVD's towards the end of the evening...I hope)
2 Marty McFly's
Milli Vanilli, Miami Vice, Kermit & Miss Piggy, Freddy Kruegger, She-Ra, Pee-Wee Herman, and many random wrestlers and porn stars. There was also, of course, the full line-up from the Misfits. No, not the Glenn Danzig horror punk band of the eighties, that's too obvious. This was the rival band of Jem and the Holograms Misfits. That is the second time my wife has donned this costume and it's still freaking obscure.

Other highlights of the party include Karaoke(always top notch with theater folk), a fully fuctional Jagermeister machine, and a couple beer pong tables next to the three kegs of beer. But perhaps the greatest spectacles were the two ice sculptures they had ordered. One of course was a topless woman who was gracious enough to let us do icy shots out of both of her nipsicles. The other one, in an effort to even things out, was the bent over posterior of a man who was gracious enough to let us do icy shots out of his poop-shootsicle. This was the best, not just for the embarassing pictures (yes that word has the phrase "bare ass" in it) but also for the icy square balls and pointy penisicle that were poking through the butt cheeksicles. Made for some great Kodak moments.



All in all, I think I will die happy just having seen Smurfs dominate a beer pong tournament. That night ended around 5:00am which was really 4:00am thanks to our government. And as I awoke at 6:15am the next morning for church, I was very glad to have that extra hour.

Time for entertainment. I'm sure everyone has seen this music video by now, but I like it...so there.


And now another version: