Sunday, October 26, 2003
Oh my. What a thoroughly glorious weekend it was. Therefore, this shall be a longish blog. Sorry.
It was Parent's Weekend, which meant that the family (minus cats) came out here. Much joy and happiness and such.
Friday night we ate dinner at the Real Seafood Company, which had good food but a ridiculous wait. Everywhere on campus was packed with parents trying to take their kids out to dinner. I ate steakness because that's something I don't eat in the dining halls, and it's not exactly something I can heat up real quick in the dorm microwave.
After dinner we managed to completely lose the car in the parking garage. It was a rental, so we didn't know it by sight as perfectly as we otherwise might have, but there's still no excuse. My dad was convinced that he knew where it was, but we ended up wandering in circles around three floors of the garage, going over the same ground several times, before we found it in a part of the second floor which we had somehow missed before. It was most unfortunate yet somewhat amusing.
Then my family dropped me off at the State Street Theater, where I met Caroline for the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was absolutely insane. People were wearing... oy. Well. Pretty much what you would expect them to be wearing. Very flamboyant feather boas. Very high black boots, and lots of spike heels, and lots of underwear, and lots of fishnets and garters and the like. Many, er, corsets. And makeup. Lots and lots of makeup. All of this was on both the guys and the girls, of course.
And all of this despite the very biting cold in Ann Arbor at midnight. Most of these people had more bare skin than clothing, and everyone was standing outside for about half an hour before they opened the doors, and this didn't stop anyone from coming, um, dressed up.
I felt somewhat under (or perhaps over, depending on how you look at it) dressed for the event. I was wearing jeans and my Miami Dolphins sweatshirt. I have yet to meet anyone else out here who's a Dolphins fan, so I was pretty counterculture in that sense, but not otherwise. It was a very subtle sort of radical dress which probably only I appreciated.
ah, of course, a tranvestite transsexual from transylvania. most people at the show were attired similarly to this
The show itself was absolutely amazing. Before the movie even started there were two choreographed numbers by the acting troupe in charge of the event. The first involved them acting out that System of a Down song, 'When Angels Deserve to Die', which had nothing at all to do with the Rocky Horror Picture Show and was awesome in it's sheer inexplicable System of a Down-ness. The second one was some sort of zombie remake of a Michael Jackson music video, with steps from the Time Warp incorporated into it.
Then, after doing some rather nasty and amusing things to a few of the 'virgins' in the crowd (those who hadn't seen the show live before), they started the movie. But this was not as other movie viewings are. Some members of the acting troupe acted out the movie on the large stage right in front of the screen. The girl playing Janet was very overweight, which added a great deal to the show. The guy playing Frank put in some graphic details of his own invention during the Seducing Brad scene which got very loud cheers from the crowd.
Others wandered around the aisles of the movie theater yelling things at/in tandem with the screen. For instance, whenever Susan Sarandon appeared, they would shout, "Slut! Slut!" Whenever the sort-of narrator appeared they would make jokes about how he seemed to have no neck. There was a lot more, most of it really quite clever, but of course I can't precisely recall all of it.
And, quite naturally, when the Time Warp came on, everyone in the theater had to get up and dance along. I think that damn song was stuck in my head all night.
Yes, so Friday night was a thoroughly glorious time.
Then on Saturday I woke up early (well, 10ish... but I didn't even get back to the dorm Friday night until around 3 am, so 10 after that is pretty early) and had lunch at Cosi on Central Campus with the family. We wandered around the Michigan shops but they were mobbed with people buying Michigan-themed goodness for their families.
And of course then it was time to head down to the football game. Eli had never been to one before. We walked down past all the frats, as usual, and there were people out drinking, as usual, but they were much more subdued than was usual. Probably because it was Parent's Weekend. We ended up following the band into the stadium. They really are an impressive lot when they're marching down the street.
The game was great. We beat Purdue 31 to 3. By the end of it their quarterback was on the sideline, barely able to stand up. We had hit him a great many times, you see. The crowd was very loud whenever Purdue had the ball, and they had to call a timeout right before a snap more than once because they couldn't hear the play being called. Jess textmessaged me at one point, and since I had no idea how to reply to that, I called her. But then I had to get off the phone because it was really too loud to hear anything.
There were a couple of altercations with Purdue fans which involved a lot of yelling and pointing and throwing of small projectiles. No one in the student section got into any fistfights, though. My parents and brother were sitting in a section across the stadium from me, and I hear tell that there were fightfights over yonder. Hmph. Damn parents. The students are much better behaved.
The one thing I will give Purdue is that they had a very good band. Their marching was most impressive. They spelled out 'Purdue' and then floated it across the field. During the halftime show they made a trumpet, and then a number of band members ran out of the end of it and formed musical notes. Much coolness. They also had a giant drum which was a bit silly and looked like it belonged in a circus, but the rest of their band was quite skilled.
The Michigan band pulled out a few new tricks for this game, probably because they knew that Purdue had a really good band and they didn't want to look bad. The best one was when then all went to the center of the field and sat down or knelt or stood in concentric rows so that they formed this utterly bizarre looking hemisphere of band, with all the instruments sticking out. It looked like a spiny hedgehog with the head and limbs tucked in. Then someone in the middle stuck up a Michigan flag and waved it around. Quite cool.
Since my family was sitting no where near me, I walked back with Caroline like I always do. They were to meet me back at my dorm. When I was in the diag (most of the way back to my dorm from the stadium), my mother called. It turns out that they had managed to get lost on the way out of the stadium and were wandering around in some sort of suburbian netherland. How they did this, I do not really know. All you ever have to do is follow the huge stream of people coming out of the stadium back up to Central Campus. And even if you somehow failed to do that, well, both my parents went to Michigan. My dad apparently thought that he knew where he was going, but clearly did not.
By this time it was raining, and cold, and very, very dark out. And I was almost back at my dorm, while they were wandering around without a clue as to where they were. I laughed.
By the time they got back to my dorm, it seemed like we weren't going to be able to get in anywhere to eat, since no one had any reservations open before 10 pm. But then we managed to call this one rather fancy French restaurant and in we got. We went there and were seated right away, but the food took forever to come. It was good when it did, but it took about an hour. The dessert was extra glorious, though... a chocolate cakelette filled with chocolate ganache. I couldn't finish it, since I am not used to eating proper meals anymore. But it was quite delish.
After dinner I went back to the dorm and collapsed in exhaustion. Only to be awakened around 3:15 in the am by dear roommate coming in and crunching cereal. She's out right now at her sorority, and I sincerely hope this does not mean she's coming back late, since I have a little something known as 'Morning Class' tomorrow and I cannot afford to be sleeping during it.
Yup. So this morning I woke up early again and went to the hotel to eat breakfast with the family. Then they drove me back here and said goodbye and all. Then I did homework and watched the Lions lose to the freaking impaired Bears.
The thing of it is, the Lions actually had a chance there at the end. They played abysmally for the first half of the game, it is true, but then late in it they got two touchdowns and two 2 point conversions, making the score 24-16. So they needed to recover an onside kick and get another touchdown and 2 point conversion to send it into overtime. This was quite possible, since they had just gotten themselves into a streak of goodplayingness.
They kick the onside kick. They recover it! Hurrah, there is hope! But then the officials call it back for review and end up saying that it looks like the Lion who recovered the ball did so before it had gone 10 yards, which you can't do on an onside kick. The announcers play the tape a few times from a few more angles, and they all decide that it looks very much like the Lions made a clean catch of it and ought to have gotten the ball. But the officials gave it to the Bears who then sat on it to run out the clock and win the game.
In other words, AAAAARRRRRRGH. Even if the Lions do start playing well, fate intervenes to make sure that they don't win. Last week Harrington couldn't throw the damn ball. This week he made some good throws, and the receivers dropped them all. WHY CAN'T WE HAVE A GAME WHERE EVERYBODY DOES WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DO?
Such agony. But I love them anyways.
Yes, so, I probably should go do some homework right about now. Yes. Homework sounds like a good idea.
*There is a commercial for the DVD of The Lion King where a Detroit Lions coach goes everywhere in the lockerroom asking people "Where's Harrington? Where's Harrington?" until someone tells him that Harrington's watching films. So the coach goes in and Harrington's with a couple other players with headphones on, watching The Lion King. 'Cause they're the Detroit Lions. And it's The Lion King.
Upon viewing this commercial, my brother: "Bet they have a back-up version of this with Mike McMahon."
I found that grimly hilarious.
5:58 PM
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