At least we got to go for pancakes....

Saturday night Tristan and I went to see "The Black Rider," a musical written by William S. Burroughs and scored by Tom Waits, at the Ahmanson Theater dowtown. Tristan is a huge Tom Waits fan and bought the tickets months ago, as soon as he heard that a Tom Waits play was coming to LA. I had no idea what it was about when we got there--and neither did Tristan. I figured it would be a bit "out-there" because, come on, the man wrote songs called "Chocolate Jesus" and about pianos that have been drinking...Well, this was even more out there than I anticipated. It was so far out there that I think it may have been in Orange County. The story line itself is sort of Faustus-like, a man sells his soul to the devil for magic bullets so he can shoot some game and win the approval of his sweetheart's father so that they can get married. The songs were good--they are off of the album with the same name but the rest of the play was pretty otrocious.

First of all, the tickets were $60 a piece and for that price we were way up in the balcony, so high up that I had a few moments of vertigo when we first sat down. We were also getting a bird's eye view of the top of the actor's heads for part of the performance. This was opening night and at the beginning of the play it was announced that this was the first run through of the play, that in fact the last 4 scenes had only been practiced "ONCE" on the stage. Hmm, didn't inspire confidence in me, let me tell you. The play itself is a lot of stilted dialog punctuated by a motley of various sound effects--ticks, pops, clangs etc. Except, that since they hadn't done a dress rehearsal, the sounds didn't match up to the actions and there was about a 2 or 3 second delay. Then there were the shooting scenes when deer fell over before the gun went off... Little things, people, but very key. I worked the sound board at a Children's Theatre when I was about 13 and we managed to get this kind of stuff down before opening night...

Also, the dialog is hard to follow and there are foreshadowing scenes except it's really hard to figure out if what's going on is a dream or if it's really happening or what. During intermission I was standing in the lobby trying to figure it all out and wondering if I was the only one who didn't get it when two guys walked out the theatre exclaiming "WTF?" So I guess I wasn't the only one. Perhaps I'm not artsy enough to get it. It felt sort of like a Tim Burton animated movie with real people and hokey sound effects. There was also a soliloquy near the end by some character, who's name/part in the story I did not understand, who uses three different voices and talks about a contract and movies and other stuff. A few people in the audience laughed but I HAD NO IDEA WHAT THE GUY WAS REFERRING TO! Everywhere I looked in the theatre there were sets of two head together--one person who thought they got it explaining it to the person next to them who was shaking their head in agreement but whose frowning face clearly indicated they had absolutely no idea what was going on.

Afterwards we walked out into the misting rain and got back on the Red Line. We got off at Sunset and Vermont and walked up the street to Fred 62. I got a Cherry Coke and some apple pancakes. Tristan had fried mac n' cheese balls (which were pretty good--doesn't get more American than frying cheesy pasta!) and a fish sandwich. We then thought we'd catch the 217 Bus home, since it was raining, but after about 30 minutes of waiting we decided to walk home in the mist---for about 2 miles--so glad I went for the sensible and not the cute shoes! We got home around 1:30am and crashed.

I spent all day yesterday working on projects for school and then doing a little quilting during Sopranos and Big Love (east coast feed so it doesn't conflict with Desperate Housewives and Gray's Anatomy--gotta love satellite). I was a bit bummed that Desperate Housewives and Gray's Anatomy were little catch up thingys for people who couldn't be bothered to watch this season. So ABC forced me to do some more schoolwork before going to bed.

I'm so happy that today is finally here--I get to knit again! But only for one hour. Medium had better not be a re-run or heads will roll!