So Many Have Paid To See

We finished up the show this weekend with a Sunday matinee, which is really the way you want to close out a show that has broken your heart a little bit in a big celebratory explosion of joy and booze fueled nudity.

It’s not by the way, Sunday afternoon just does not lend itself to the sort of debauchery I’ve come to expect from myself. We tried to jump in and F some shiznit up Saturday night, but it turned out to be far too sedate, a little melancholy. There was a moment of excitement when I got dragged into a conversation with crazy alcoholic stream-of-consciousness guy on the back porch. Example of conversation:

“Speaking of sports cars {no one was by the by}, on my last day of real estate school, I’m coming across the 520 and I see this guy pulled over in a Viper. Why do I pull over? It’s a freaking Viper! The guy’s test driving it and I take him to a shop. This gray daddy drops in with a rocket on his hip, and a leather NASCAR coat. I’m down in Daytona in a rental with this hotty who’s like I can’t drive on the sand, and I’m like, Yankee fucking blue, you can drive on the sand…”

Let those 3 little dots carry the burden of near twenty minutes of rambling, almost poetic, monologue. But aside from this, our show ended with a whimper, not the bang this cast is accustomed to. Which seems fine in a way, being it felt like it never fully belonged to us. I think we certainly did justice by this show, that we went out there and made some magic, but ultimately this is a tight and talented cast led by a talented director waiting for a show we love. It was like a dry run of sorts.

Almost as if it weren’t ready to completely let go, the show came back to haunt me today, a mere two days after the close.

One of the actors in the boy’s dressing room brought his laptop in nightly. Some nights we would entertain ourselves by watching heinous videos from the 80’s. Some of these included 3 different Hall & Oates videos. “She’s Gone” is disturbing in ways I was unprepared for, like vicodin mixing really poorly with pot brownies, watch it and share in the suffering. “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” was disturbing in that “shit I lived through the 80’s and all this seemed like a good idea” plus the added benefit of choreographed head turns to each call and response of “no no – no can do.” “Maneater?” all kinds of scary – again mostly for the 80’s pop video trappings but there was also the wandering panther to contend with.

How does that go step more scary? I was informed today that during a Vashon Island crafts fair sort of thingy, a coworker was accosted by a man selling his CD full of pan pipe renditions of pop songs – including, but not limited to, a pan pipe version of “Maneater” by Hall and Oates.

Fuck yes I want a piece of that.