Monday, June 28, 2004
PIRATE MANIA
In one of those cute life coincidences that can make stoner kids go "whoa!" I happened to watch Pirates of the Caribbean (DVD at home) on Friday night and attend Pirates of Penzance on Saturday (Guthrie Theater).
I started enjoying the Caribbean Pirates as soon as Johnny Depp appeared (up until then it was set-up-the-story scenes; necessary and mercifully quick) but the Penzance Pirates left me scrambling for something to praise (what great costumes! maybe I should start mixing hot pink and orange in my wardrobe) when I ran into a neighbor at intermission. It didn't help that the audience started chortling during the introductory remarks (please turn off your cell phones ha! ha! ha!) leaving me feeling like a space alien missing that essential human humor impulse. It always seems to take me longer than those guffawers to get into a production and the immediate merriment of others simply makes me fume, slowing the process still further. But there was a keystone cops scene 2/3 of the way through won me over and by the time Queen Victoria descended from the clouds in a balloon I was finally enjoying the spectacle.
So today I'm going to wear an orange dress.
UPDATE: Coincidentally (whoa!), Lileks today laments the absence of group guffawers; without them, he says, the last Marx Brothers movie is less funny than it otherwise would have been. But I'm guessing the movie (I haven't ever seen it) just ain't funny today and even group laughter wouldn't save it.
I started enjoying the Caribbean Pirates as soon as Johnny Depp appeared (up until then it was set-up-the-story scenes; necessary and mercifully quick) but the Penzance Pirates left me scrambling for something to praise (what great costumes! maybe I should start mixing hot pink and orange in my wardrobe) when I ran into a neighbor at intermission. It didn't help that the audience started chortling during the introductory remarks (please turn off your cell phones ha! ha! ha!) leaving me feeling like a space alien missing that essential human humor impulse. It always seems to take me longer than those guffawers to get into a production and the immediate merriment of others simply makes me fume, slowing the process still further. But there was a keystone cops scene 2/3 of the way through won me over and by the time Queen Victoria descended from the clouds in a balloon I was finally enjoying the spectacle.
So today I'm going to wear an orange dress.
UPDATE: Coincidentally (whoa!), Lileks today laments the absence of group guffawers; without them, he says, the last Marx Brothers movie is less funny than it otherwise would have been. But I'm guessing the movie (I haven't ever seen it) just ain't funny today and even group laughter wouldn't save it.
