I Used To Be Cute

Last October I was in Toronto to support my daughter and her half marathon. She set her goal and trained to accomplish it, so I thought it would be nice for me to be there to cheer her on. In reality I was more than likely a royal pain in the ass. That’s what dads are for. It was also a nice vacation for me, because it is so hard being retired and doing nothing. It is always nice to do nothing in a different local.

While there we tried to see the play “Wicked” but unfortunately the timing didn’t work out for us. When I heard that “Wicked” would be in Calgary at the same time as my daughter, it didn’t take too long to get my wife to order tickets. So, we have been looking forward to it for a few months now. I should mention that aside from knowing it would be based on L. Frank Baum’s classic book, the story line was unknown to me. I read in the paper yesterday morning that it is more or less a prequel to the Wizard of OZ. Okay that is kind of a neat idea.

It is based on a best selling book of the same name by Gregory Maguire. I realized that I have another book by the same author and when I dug it out I found that I haven’t finished it. That’s odd; it isn’t often that I do not finish books. I have waded through some of the world’s shittiest literature just because if I am going to hate a book then I want to be able to say “I read that piece of crap and the author should be castrated and then fed his testicles.” Now, as I held this book (A Lion Among Men) I remembered that although it was well written it is the opposite of a page turner. I just didn’t buy into the basic premise of the book. Oh-oh!

We drive to the Jubilee and at the last minute I decide that we will park in the mall parking lot because it is free and ...uhh...well...I am cheap. Sure there is a good chance that the car will be towed away but I live life on the edge. Our seats were in the second balcony and on the way up I am pretty sure we passed a door guarded by Saint Peter and Jesus. We found our seats and they were really pretty good. We were there about a half hour early and I looked at just what kind of people were interested in this play. There were a lot of women, men, some kids and me. I love to watch people, so I was vastly amused until close to the curtain rising.

The show is to start at 8:00PM and the curtain didn’t go up until 8:05. Normally I wouldn’t care about five minutes, but WTF, didn’t they know what time it was? Were they catching the last few minutes of Matlock? Does the lead have diarrhoea or is there no TP in the stall? So anyway, the curtain goes up and this dragon head hovering over the stage tells us to turn off our cell phones. Let me tell you, when a dragon head 100 or so feet long tells you something you do it. Nobody’s phone rang for the entire performance, so I guess it was effective, but strangely that was all that the dragon did during the play. Kind of expensive public service announcer don’t you think?

I don’t want to ruin the show for you, but suffice to say we got our money’s worth time wise; and although I did nod off once or twice it was three hours or so of entertainment. If you have a XY chromosome you might not like it as much as someone with XX. Kind of like a chick flick with real people. I am pretty sure that the woman sitting next to me, the one that spilled the whole bottle of perfume all over her body, pissed herself. She could have had an orgasm, but I tried to avoid looking in her direction after she perched herself on the edge of her seat and brought out the binoculars. She was bouncing up and down like she was in training to ride “Midnight Killer” during the stampede this year.

The show ended and we clapped until my hands hurt, I have pretty sensitive hands so I stopped after 30 seconds, but everyone else kept on going. If I thought that they would come back out and do their “hit” then I would have given it another thirty seconds.

The three women with me loved the show. I am pretty sure everyone else did too. I liked it but didn’t buy into the basic premise of the play so it was a nice experience but not one that I would do a second time. I guess I am pretty much a drag. I used to be cute, does that count for anything?