October 21, 2010: Seeing my friend Terry tonight -- and I hope you understand that my only friends are the people who've already subscribed to this Blah-ugh!, so don't try and get in my good graces now, you other bastards -- moved me to drum up the energy to do another entry. (Yeah, yeah. Big deal!)
Anyway, I wanted to tell you about my experience last Saturday going to the theater. It was a fair production of the Diary of Anne Frank, and I commend the set designer, director and actors for a good job before what I found to be an embarassing (I never remember how to spell that word!) audience of morons. (I say this because I was amazed at the large number of people who were secretly snacking and drinking from water bottles throughout the show. It was appalling and depressing to see yet another example of thoughtless, self-centered Americans in action.)
But I digress. What I really wanted to comment on was how much I hate the theater. It's taken me some time to realize this, but I finally have decided that the anxiety I experience in watching a live show is simply too much for me to endure, and why I ever put myself in the position of having to sit in a seat for two-and-a-half hours staring at a bunch of people making spectacles of themselves, I just can't tell you.
The main reason for my discontent ties directly to my core issues. You see, I'm literally unable to watch a show without constantly worrying whether the actor is going to blow his line, or whether she's going to lose her character in the middle of a moment, or whether someone in the audience is going to be so disruptive that the actor turns their head, or whether the whole set is just going to fall down, or whether one actor is going to drop a prop, or another step on someone's foot, or snag his shoe on the curtain ...
Can you imagine, it's so absolutely impossible for me to relax and be entertained when I'm perpetually charged with the terrible responsibility of having to keep the whole world together in one piece through my mental and emotional body English.
You can imagine how depressing the Anne Frank play was to begin with -- I mean, who needs to go and sit through that?! It would have been far more enriching to masturbate myself into a coma-like sleep for two hours. But not only was I forced to suffer the sympathetic pains of Nazi Germany, I had to sit there with the further worries of whether or not this play would come off without a hitch.
(And now, as if things aren't bad enough for this poor suffering soul, I think I just inhaled a bug as I was typing furiously. Terrific!)
Now excuse me, as I've got to go and cough for an hour to try and expel this thing ...
Do you know: I have a similar experience if ever I am watching/listening to live political debates with members of the public. I literally curl into a fetal position and cover my ears, as some impassioned member of the public (justifiably) harangues an oily politician. I so desperately want them to make their point eloquently and succinctly, summing up with a devastating put down, and I agonise and recoil at every stammer or verbal tic. It's exhausting. (A not dissimilar situation with flying. If you take your mind off willing the whole contraption to stay airborne - even for a second - the whole enterprise is doomed.) It's a wonder we ever venture outside. The responsibility is overwhelming.
ReplyDeletei never forget how to spell embarrass, because it contains the word 'ass'.
ReplyDeletei quit going to theaters years ago for one reason and one reason only: sticky floors.