astros (oh stros) and puppet play review
Today’s feelings: a little sick and oogie
I won’t go into the Astros, because by now everyone knows who’s going to the World Series. I would like to describe a little of my game 7 night, as I actually went out to a sports bar with my sister, thinking it would be fun to celebrate in a crowd. (And it would have been.)
We went to Little Woodrows on West Alabama. Frat boy city, complete with girl dolls dressed up in low-cut jeans, tight little shirts, and, as Sarah said, “a lot of bleach and silicone.” In a word, the crowd was kinda “gross.” To me, at least. The highlight of the night was when this blond, ice blond, skinny princess was standing too close to the big screen TV and a couple of the ex-frat boys yelled at her to sit down. She heard the request, and watched her two male companions start squatting. A look came over her face that said, “Why should I have to move?” and she didn’t. A few minutes later, the deep-voiced requests came again, louder and more demanding. She tried to ignore them, but after a while threw up her hands and walked toward the back of the patio exclaiming “Fine then! I’ll just leave!” in an exasperated voice.
“Good,” was the general response. As pretty as she thought she was—and she was pretty, in a plastic Barbie kind of way—she couldn’t compete with an Astros game 7. Well, there are limits to everything.
Another interesting note for the evening: During the network-sponsored political commercials, which presented a question and then in two separate commercials showed close-ups of the two candidates answering that question, the crowd had a very vocal response. The interesting part of it was that it really seemed equally divided between the two candidates, if not slightly more tilted toward Kerry. And this was a crowd that I would have pegged for Bush in a second’s glance and not looked back. It gives one hope, if only a little.
I really don’t know what to expect from this election. Total chaos, perhaps. I get the sense that whoever loses is going to contest election and charge fraud upon the other side. Maybe our electoral process will be forever marred—what good will it be if we will always doubt the results? And then, all of our future presidents will always be ruling under a cloud of uncertainty. That’s good for a country….
Last night I saw Bobbindoctrin’s new play “The Puppet Liberation Front,” which was way funnier than the Astros game. It was a dark and bloody, Tarantino-esque portrait of a demented puppet theatre troupe drawn into chaos by the lack of funding. Set during the Republican convention in 2000 (or whatever), the puppet theatre is spinning their wheels performing for kids in schools. The first scene, perhaps the funniest, has two of the troupe’s members performing an “old Iraqi tale” called “Don’t Beat Your Kids Before They Are Born.” It’s not really suitable for children, and descends into further inappropriateness as the troupe members get more and more irritated by the overly PC schoolmarm. It ends violently, as the main performer, a particularly hot-headed ball of frustration (Mike Switzer), physically explodes at the school marm (who is very Emily Latilla-like). She is beaten to a pulp to the plaintive sound of children crying.
And it basically degenerates from there. The puppet troupe allows a group of ELF activists (Earth Liberation Front) to buy the use of their loading dock to paint banners, which draws the suspicion of the authorities who send a mole in to pose as a volunteer and find damaging stuff about them. They, of course, can no longer get work in schools so they decide to shift directions and become an adult puppet theater troupe, a decision much maligned by the Board of Directors, who end up all kicking the head puppeteer in the balls (Joel swears in the program that this has never happened to him). The hot-headed puppeteer gets arrested, kills a few (14) cops with a pen and a box-cutter, and next thing you know the whole troupe descends into murder and mayhem, planning to really disrupt the convention with deadly puppets. Suffice to say, at the end, everybody dies and everything blows up. Okay, nothing really blows up, except metaphorically. But everyone dies.
The most interesting element of this play is the scene where Rich, the slow, oafish dope with a head injury, is alone in the puppet troupe’s warehouse. Several of the various puppets come alive in his presence and talk to him, giving him deep philosophical ideas about “the one big brain,” and telling Rich that he needs to be a “crisis.” This is where Joel is really in his element, exploring the world of psychosis, and how it can be truly enlightening and crazy at the same time.
Most of all, though, the play is just absurdly funny. The performances are really pretty good. I should note that it was a “mask play,” using live actors wearing masks (except for when the puppets came to “life”). Bill Savoie played a number of roles and I thought he did a great job.
I won’t go into the Astros, because by now everyone knows who’s going to the World Series. I would like to describe a little of my game 7 night, as I actually went out to a sports bar with my sister, thinking it would be fun to celebrate in a crowd. (And it would have been.)
We went to Little Woodrows on West Alabama. Frat boy city, complete with girl dolls dressed up in low-cut jeans, tight little shirts, and, as Sarah said, “a lot of bleach and silicone.” In a word, the crowd was kinda “gross.” To me, at least. The highlight of the night was when this blond, ice blond, skinny princess was standing too close to the big screen TV and a couple of the ex-frat boys yelled at her to sit down. She heard the request, and watched her two male companions start squatting. A look came over her face that said, “Why should I have to move?” and she didn’t. A few minutes later, the deep-voiced requests came again, louder and more demanding. She tried to ignore them, but after a while threw up her hands and walked toward the back of the patio exclaiming “Fine then! I’ll just leave!” in an exasperated voice.
“Good,” was the general response. As pretty as she thought she was—and she was pretty, in a plastic Barbie kind of way—she couldn’t compete with an Astros game 7. Well, there are limits to everything.
Another interesting note for the evening: During the network-sponsored political commercials, which presented a question and then in two separate commercials showed close-ups of the two candidates answering that question, the crowd had a very vocal response. The interesting part of it was that it really seemed equally divided between the two candidates, if not slightly more tilted toward Kerry. And this was a crowd that I would have pegged for Bush in a second’s glance and not looked back. It gives one hope, if only a little.
I really don’t know what to expect from this election. Total chaos, perhaps. I get the sense that whoever loses is going to contest election and charge fraud upon the other side. Maybe our electoral process will be forever marred—what good will it be if we will always doubt the results? And then, all of our future presidents will always be ruling under a cloud of uncertainty. That’s good for a country….
Last night I saw Bobbindoctrin’s new play “The Puppet Liberation Front,” which was way funnier than the Astros game. It was a dark and bloody, Tarantino-esque portrait of a demented puppet theatre troupe drawn into chaos by the lack of funding. Set during the Republican convention in 2000 (or whatever), the puppet theatre is spinning their wheels performing for kids in schools. The first scene, perhaps the funniest, has two of the troupe’s members performing an “old Iraqi tale” called “Don’t Beat Your Kids Before They Are Born.” It’s not really suitable for children, and descends into further inappropriateness as the troupe members get more and more irritated by the overly PC schoolmarm. It ends violently, as the main performer, a particularly hot-headed ball of frustration (Mike Switzer), physically explodes at the school marm (who is very Emily Latilla-like). She is beaten to a pulp to the plaintive sound of children crying.
And it basically degenerates from there. The puppet troupe allows a group of ELF activists (Earth Liberation Front) to buy the use of their loading dock to paint banners, which draws the suspicion of the authorities who send a mole in to pose as a volunteer and find damaging stuff about them. They, of course, can no longer get work in schools so they decide to shift directions and become an adult puppet theater troupe, a decision much maligned by the Board of Directors, who end up all kicking the head puppeteer in the balls (Joel swears in the program that this has never happened to him). The hot-headed puppeteer gets arrested, kills a few (14) cops with a pen and a box-cutter, and next thing you know the whole troupe descends into murder and mayhem, planning to really disrupt the convention with deadly puppets. Suffice to say, at the end, everybody dies and everything blows up. Okay, nothing really blows up, except metaphorically. But everyone dies.
The most interesting element of this play is the scene where Rich, the slow, oafish dope with a head injury, is alone in the puppet troupe’s warehouse. Several of the various puppets come alive in his presence and talk to him, giving him deep philosophical ideas about “the one big brain,” and telling Rich that he needs to be a “crisis.” This is where Joel is really in his element, exploring the world of psychosis, and how it can be truly enlightening and crazy at the same time.
Most of all, though, the play is just absurdly funny. The performances are really pretty good. I should note that it was a “mask play,” using live actors wearing masks (except for when the puppets came to “life”). Bill Savoie played a number of roles and I thought he did a great job.
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