T minus 12 days / Why I don’t like the LA Rocky Horror Picture Show

Still waiting to go to OTS.

I think from here on out I’ll be spending less time in LA on non-holiday season leave. Like the next time I take a random leave like this one I’ll be on a cruise or try going to Europe or something. Home has been kinda boring, with just random outings on the weekends with whoever had something going on. Except for the maybe two times a week I’ve been visiting with friends, I kinda wish I were still back in my apartment in Colorado… at least it wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass to get everywhere.

Yeah, traffic is bad if not worse than I remember. At least a few years ago I could go down the freeway in the dead of night and not expect a traffic jam somewhere, but now… it’s like there are a whole hell of alot more cars on the road. I ran into a traffic jam at 10PM last week… where is everyone going at 10PM??? I think it was the Dodger game letting out, though, so maybe it was just a fluke. That was last last Saturday, now that I think about it. I was actually going home to shower and meet Kyuu Hee and her friends to watch Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Yeah… I’ve been curious about this every time I’ve seen it, I didn’t know what it was. If you’re in LA and want to see this show… I don’t recommend it. Not because the show was bad… I actually don’t know. What ended up happening was we were standing outside in line for about an hour, since Kyuu Hee suggested that the line gets long to see this thing. (I love her, but sometimes either she wildly exaggerates, or her words simply conjure up pictures in my head that are vastly different from what she’s attempting to describe. When she described the line, I was thinking a line for Best Buy Black Friday in Silicone Valley, or a highly anticipated movie premeire in Los Angeles, where the shit goes around the building… maybe I just didn’t notice how far back the line went but from the people arriving after us walking from the front to the back after purchasing their ticket, it didn’t seem like alot of people went to the line after we got there. Again, probably just a difference in perspective.) The damn thing started a few minutes late, which we realized as my Cali-acclimated group started complaining about the cold, and of course I’m there in my T-Shirt trying to figure out what their cold tolerance is. Fall and Winter in CO is cold. LA winter is like a slightly chilly dining room in Carl’s Jr. I can even ride around on my bike some nights without any sweater… I’d die of hypothermia if I did that in CO. So once they started letting people in we all got frisked as we went inside, as I guess the theater has had problems with bringing weapons into the venue previously… I’m fine with that. Managed to chat a bit with a Navy reservist working as part of the security detail there, that was cool. When we finally got seats inside, and the thing started, we ended up watching various people explain the rules of the theater and plug various other… I guess indie arts or shows or something… for AN HOUR AND A HALF. WHAT THE FUCK? I mean, as a guy that’s easily amused I wasn’t like “Can we please get to the actual show?”, as it was nice to see that this group of people apparently was enjoying a modest amount of success at… whatever it is they do. I think. But really, I paid $10.50 to see Rocky Horror Picture Show, not to hear about a delivery of the theater rules rife with lame humor and inside-jokes that I didn’t understand, followed by an hour of plugs for various other shows in town, plugs for special guests, plugs for voting No on Cali Prop 8, and then some kind of de-virgining ritual for people who went the first time. I didn’t go up, of course… not that hardcore about seeing some show, but it seemed kinda juvenile. Anyway, after ALL of that the movie/show started. For those who haven’t been to one of these shows, the movie is supposed to play in the background, and people in front do some kind of stage performance of the movie… probably you’ve heard if you look it up on the internet. So, going in, I was expecting that the movie and the live show would kinda play off each other somehow… like the movie would provide some backdrop for actors to play parts, or the actors would talk to the movie, or something. The reality is way dumber than what I made it up to be, however… it was just actors acting out what was going on in the movie! It’s like watching a lame B-Movie at home with people who are playing a drinking game while acting out what’s happening on the TV in your living room. Even worse, I couldn’t understand what was going on in the movie because the sound wasn’t as high as most movies go, probably because they need people to hear the actors. But then I couldn’t even hear the actors because none of them had microphones. We all ended up leaving after the movie started, because some of us were tired, and the rest of us couldn’t hear/figure out what the fuck was going on. Also, the venue was filled with LOTS of underage folks. Alot of folks there were turning 16, 17, and 18… not really my kind of crowd. They were actually doing some Rated R stuff in the theater… I remember being 16 and wanting to go see the Rated R movies coming out on the weekends, so I don’t blame them for being here. I guess if I were younger I would have been into the show, but now as a 28 year old guy I really didn’t have an inclination to stick around.

I don’t fault these guys for delivering a bad performance. The cast and crew obviously were huge fans of Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I think the trouble lies with the whole cult culture surrounding this performance. It’s as if they don’t really expect people to come see the show for the first time. The acting was sloppy, as if they were doing it for the 100th time, and everyone else in the theater has seen it 100 times, so who cares if we screw it up because the people in the theater know what we’re supposed to be doing, right? It was like saying “Oh it doesn’t go like that? Well you know what I mean!” throughout the performance, to which I reply “No, I don’t know what you mean” and just left. The people doing the show were great people, but it just feels like they were all personally rejected from something in life, and that they somehow found each other and share that bond of all having been rejected from a social group or something. I don’t say that to demean, but that’s just the impression that I got. A group of people sharing that sentiment and then building their own social group, I can imagine that group becoming exclusive by itself, and like I said, that’s just the impression I got.

Kyuu Hee was apologizing to everyone afterwards… not profusely, but I guess she felt pretty bad about calling us all to see this show only for us to leave 10 minutes after the actual show started. She kept saying how it was different when she saw it years ago, and that the crowd was older and the show was better, but I think it’s just that we’re too old for this kind of thing, or our tastes are different from what they were years ago. Going to this thing as a 16 or 17 year old would have been sweet… I might have chatted up the girls, or at least had opportunities to get rid of my inhibitions in a setting where others seemed to be doing the same thing. But personally I’m at an age where I don’t want to even hang out with girls under 23. Once you’re past the binge drinking days/months/years of “turning 21″, it pretty much all blurs together. Like I stopped caring how old I was after 22… it all just feels the same year after year.

Anyway, for Kyuu Hee’s sake, and I’m sure she’s over this by now, but I still have to say I had a good time. I got to chat with her and EF from high school who I didn’t really know back then but is actually quite nice (a good catch for a lucky guy, hell I’d ask her out if circumstances were different). I think I enjoy just hanging out with people more than I like doing stuff with them.

(abrupt end… I saved the post, stepped away from my PC for a bit, then forgot I was writing a blog note. It happens.)