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| http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Mummenschanz |
My parents have sharply flagging tastes that can veer between over-the-top gayness to New York City realness, so one has to be careful when accompanying them to a show on-or-off Broadway, by vetting them with a carefully selected series of questions, and because of their savvy as hardcore city kids, we were sometimes only allowed 1-3 questions (per kid or as a group), which was preceded by a well-attended “tête-à-tête” with every child on hand. "Who, how, and where?!" were common kiddie questions for amateurs only, and after a few of their more excruciating choices that lasted for hours and hours on end in the darkness, broken only by badly-rushed bathroom breaks with adult-only drinks and snacks, you did indeed learn how to vet.
Are there masks involved? NO! That sounds gay and scary. Is there any dancing? Mmmm.....sort of. No! Don't do it! It could be one of the worst ballets with men-in-tights dressed as fairies exposing certain body parts you don't want to see. But, on good days (and matinees are good signs for children forced to go along with their parents sing-song delusions), you might score "The Ice Follies" with Snoopy and Woodstock (cute!), or "The Harlem Globetrotters" (totally awesome!), instead of rank-ass shit that's barely above street-level quality.
Because our brave native populace is assaulted every day by something as ordinary as commuting to some boring Monday-through-Friday, 9-5 desk job (something that barely registers a blip elsewhere on the U.S. map), you have to be extremely sharp about your recreational time. If you've ever been seven years old and sat in an opera so loudly screamingly bad (that you wish the fat lady would just shut up and die already), and it's hour three into it, you know what I mean. One bad experience can turn you off from serious tourist fare for good, if not until your own child-bearing years. It hurts that much.
And because we're often beset by a series of obstacles so severe that we call our lives an ongoing "stress test", we're used to the douchiest dirt-bags around. It should be blatantly obvious that we hold mimes in very low regard, because being made fun of by some silently mocking dick does nothing to calm you down from the lunchtime walk you used to stave off punching out that fucking hyped-up dick of a salesmen who thinks he has real balls hiding behind his higher-up at your design meeting. You know the one; you present books that sell, to cover their fucking salaries. Yeah! That'd be the one.
Being mocked by some foreign guy in white face-paint and a black turtleneck with a sneeringly French attitude is like he's begging us to have his beret knocked off his quietly mouthing fucking face, you know? It ain't fun. And they sometimes stand in your way, too! Back in our day, we had the crazy hard time of begging off this particular group of weird Euros who stood on stage pulling pieces of little paper off of the fucking distorted face masks; silently, of course. Oh, G-d no! It's like taking a holiday picture on the lap of a drunk, sweating molester-type of adult at the local mall. It's always "PASS" if you're asked upfront about it, by the way.
There were other crazy-gay acts to come along; some bad and some not-so-bad, but all came with a certain amount of out-of-town gayness that immediately lets you know how they (the artistes on stage) feel about you, the home-crowd. They fucking hate you! That's why their shows suck so bad. Then there's those dudes with more face paint wearing all-black outfits and weird blue paint-can splashes pouring out of steel drums (no thanks), and the gay circus acts from Montréal (actually, that I could see), but all come with a hefty price tag that further puts you in the hole you live in, existing paycheck-to-paycheck as we do.
Me? At the end of my latest stint in the city, I preferred rolling around on some blue BJJ mats to the homegrown sounds of subway bucket drummers (those cats fucking rock the house), the violinist from "The Met" using Grand Central Station for acoustics practice on her day off (really, they do that), and those amazing beat box kids who can swing around a moving pole on a speeding train like they're born to be in the Harlem Dance Theater's best-of-the-best, because they are. They are that good, those native kids. You go! Go, now!
My recommends, plebes. Enjoy the show!
http://www.dancetheatreofharlem.org/
http://www.elinefleury.com/#!Bucket-drumming-in-the-New-York-City-Subway-station/c1zq5/55a41a050cf21636d2fd403a
http://gothamist.com/2015/06/29/two_showtime_dancers_give_us_the_lo.php
http://web.mta.info/mta/aft/gct/keepingtime.html
http://www.harlemglobetrotters.com/
http://www.barclayscenter.com/events/detail/disney-on-ice-presents-frozen
P.S. - I'd like to take this post to also remind you that the real thing is always better than some cheap (and not-so-cheap) imitation. Case in point, my man who walked between The Towers has a phenomenally moving and spiritual documentary about what it really felt like that easily trumps the hammy Hollywood version. Check it out! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire
