I got home a little after midnight yesterday, and I was a little too tired to actually post anything here. Of course, I wasn’t so tired that I didn’t get in a little late-night capping or watch half of this week’s episode of Doctor Who. (I fell asleep somewhere in the middle, but that was much more exhaustion than any kind of boredom. It was another good episode, which I finished watching this afternoon. I’m particularly looking forward to next week’s, which looks like Stephen Moffat Crossover Overload.)
Why was I out so late, you may ask? Well, I was in Manhattan, at the Cinematic Titanic show in Times Square. And it was a whole heck of a lot of fun.
Not quite sure what I was going to do about dinner, or if I was going to get a chance to meet up with the friends/fellow cappers I knew were attending, I got an early-ish train into the city, arriving a little before five o’clock. The doors of the Nokia theater weren’t scheduled to open until seven, so I had a little time to kill. I decided to kill some of it by revisiting the High Line, which I first saw back in September. It’s a really nice way to see Manhattan — and will probably be even more so once they finally finish extending it to 34th Street — and I definitely recommend it if you’re visiting the city and the weather’s nice. It was a little overcast and windy last night, but I still had a nice time walking the length of it that’s open, something like eight or nine city blocks.
I walked around a little more, finally ending up a little further uptown in the neighborhood where I work. I skipped the chance to actually walk past my office building, where they were no doubt even then testing the fire alarm. (I kid, although they do seem to do that all the time.) I grabbed a sandwich for dinner near Bryant Park, then walked over to the theater in Times Square, hoping to meet up with the rest of the group. And I did, very briefly, although no sooner had we been ushered into the building than we were separated into our assigned sections. It was a big theater, and eventually became very crowded — they were sold out, Joel Hodgson later said — so I didn’t really get to see anybody I knew for any length of time. I didn’t see them at all on my way out after the show, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The show started a little late, and by 8:30 I’ll admit I was getting a little restless. They finally took to the stage, with some very funny warm-up material that seemed to play into the fact that they’d kept us waiting — “just ten more minutes,” they said about half a dozen times — and then with the movie itself. They were riffing on Danger on Tiki Island (aka Brides of Blood), which for a terrible movie was surprisingly not so bad. I mean, it was genuinely awful, don’t get me wrong, and easily lent itself to the mockery, but…well, maybe it’s just that, as a fan of Mystery Science Theater and its offshoots (like Cinematic Titanic), I’ve seen much worse. Hodgson called the film “actually one of the better Filipino monster movies” and despite its awfulness at almost every level, it was hard not to kind of admire it. The movie was no Plan 9 from Outer Space — which is ineptly made but an absolute delight — and not by a long shot, but…well, it was also no Manos: The Hands of Fate.
The show itself was great fun, and though I didn’t see any of the group I’d come in with on my way out, I was right behind MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. I later confirmed that he was there via Twitter, as was John Hodgman, who I glimpsed across the aisle before the show. (Him I’d seen once before, years ago, at a reading/interview he did with Neil Gaiman. I still remember how Hodgman had trouble proving to security who he was so they would let him in.) I don’t know if any other New York semi-celebrities were in the crowd last night, though, since I opted to head back home rather than stick around to try and get my poster signed.
By comparison, today was pretty boring, though pleasantly so. I worked on the New York Times crossword — not quite finished, though this week’s theme seems a little halfhearted, I have to say — and a little on a short story. I also watched the rest of that Doctor Who episode, and another episode of Slings & Arrows, which is probably my favorite series set at a fictional Canadian Shakespeare festival. I also went for a short walk, then a shorter one with the dog, and wrote this. It’s no live shows on Broadway levels of excitement, but it was a good weekend overall.
Of course, it’s back to the office tomorrow. This three-day weekend was nice, but it was much too short.
Sounds like a good time…I’m envious of your city adventures. The High Line sounds incredible.
When I saw the show here in SF in February (January? One or the other), they used the same “ten more minutes” joke in the pre-show warm up. Was it Gruber and J. Elvis doing the jokes before the movie? That’s what we got. One of my favorite — that I can remember — was making a reference to Lincoln getting assassinated, then, in mock horror, “What? Too soon?” Also the “I prefer the original doctor” knock knock joke, which I unembarrassedly stole and used in the HCC chat later that week.
Oh, same movie, too. Funny as hell, but certainly no Plan 9 or Manos, as you said.
Mary Jo introduced Gruber, who was then joined by J. Elvis and then Frank. I don’t remember the Lincoln joke, though the Doctor Who one definitely got trotted out. Gruber and J. Elvis did some songs — the latter is a pretty great vocal mimic, at least of the acts he did — and then Frank did his “Convoluted Man” theme song.
Ah, yes, I forgot about Frank. Sounds like we saw pretty much the same show.
And now that I think about it, it might have been an audience member down front who yelled out “Too soon!”, which cracked up Gruber and J. Elvis.