On the night of the first and only time I saw Avenue Q, over three years ago in the summer of 2006, I looked down at the floor during my train ride home to Jersey and found a penny from the year I was born. I thought it was a sign that I was going to find my purpose, so naturally I burst into song because everything was of course going to be okay.
Well, it wasn't. But that's not to discredit the sheer awesomeness of Avenue Q. This musical will sadly be closing this Sunday, September 13, after running for over six years. Though unconventional in its staging and style of music, Avenue Q taught us all some valuable life lessons like coping with wanting to go back to college, being as loud as the hell we want when we're having sex, and learning to not be prejudice against monsters. Okay, there's also several life lessons that actually are important, and I believe that we've each experienced and internalized different versions of these in our own way. It's just that kind of show.
A few things I'd like to share in memorandum: My dad found it fascinating that there was a Broadway show that starred puppets and had been claiming that he wants to see Avenue Q for years. Of course he had no clue what the show is actually about. Capitalizing on his enthusiasm, I burned him a CD of the songs from Q that didn't contain references to sex, porn, racism, homosexuality, or drugs...which of course left about three songs, one of which sadly being the 30-second "I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today". Finally my mom broke down and told him that his beloved puppets have sex on stage. That put an end to my hopes of that family outing.
In terms of my own sex life, Princeton and Kate's duet and the melody of "Fantasies Come True" became my own internal soundtrack for one particular college hookup. Isn't it the greatest feeling when you've totally been crushing on someone for awhile, and then one night after eight or so drinks the things in your head are really happening in your bed? Then you wake up beside the person the next morning and there's music playing and it's this magical moment and then...yah it pretty much ends there for everyone but Princeton and Kate.
In case you need further proof that Avenue Q truly is a credible Broadway sensation, I must bring up a fact which many people tend to forget. In 2004, Avenue Q beat Wicked for the Best Musical Tony Award. Something actually beat Wicked! Avenue Q kicked their ass! Now tell me that's not legit. Oh, and that penny? Resting safely in a corner of my jewelry box. Hey, I haven't totally given up hope.
Unfortunately Michael K at dlistedbeat me to the Rachel Zoe joke, but I wouldn't have made one anyway because I LOVES her.
The Chupacabra is fondly known as the "Mexican Goat Sucker" and believed to be a mythical creature who preys on farm animals. Well mythical no more, bitches, I always knew homeboy was real! The Chupa(s) are described in real-life sightings as large dog-rodents with fangs, leathery skin, and sometimes spikes on their backs. I was first introduced to the Chupa in 12th grade AP Physics class, and it has since become a running joke amongst many groups of my friends. In junior year of college (circa 2006) I spent a glorious afternoon with an ex-friend watching el Chupa star in a great movie on the Sci-Fi Channel, Chupacabra: Dark Seas. In this MASTERPIECE, our goat-sucking friend (who is portrayed in a much larger, more monstrous form) somehow gets aboard a cruise ship and starts attacking all the passengers. We nicknamed it Chupacabra: Semester at Sea. Finally during a 2008 camping trip in P-Town, my friend Kelly and I were pretty sure it was going to attack us even though we were thousands of miles away from its home.
So this week el Chupa made a dumb move and decided to get himself poisoned, but this does not mean the end of him. Clearly there are more than one of these lil guys running around Texas and Mexico and probably even your backyard. It's 11am, do you know where your goats are?
Since this week MTV ended their 10+ year run of TRL (that's "Total Request Live", mom), took 3 hours to play snippets of 10 videos, and will spend the next few weeks reminding us of how awesome it was, I decided to take a moment to share some of my own reflections.
I remember when TRL was on at NIGHT (not after school? gasp!). The year was 1997. Carson Daly's ego wasn't inflated to the size of Texas. Hanson was still popular. And TRL was some low budget show that MTV seemingly haphazardly threw on the air to see if it would catch on with the tween market...and did it ever.
However, even most die hards do not remember the early days of TRL when there was no studio. There was no set. There was no going to the MTV window to wave at screaming fans in Times Square. There was only Carson Daly alone in a black room announcing a countdown of videos that were actually based on your votes. In those renegade days, there was no fancy website to tally votes. I remember typing out my vote and emailing it the old fashioned way through good ole AOL. I pity the intern who had to sit there tallying those things. With the recent TRL buzz in light of the finale, I've brought up these glory days of programming in conversation with many musically in-the-know friends. No one else seems to remember Carson's black room. Maybe I'm just really die hard...or maybe I was a bad-ass 7th grader simultaneously on the honor roll AND shrooms, and Carson's black room was all in my head.
Another memory I must share is when I actually had the opportunity to be in the live studio audience at TRL (a right of passage for any good teeny-bopper). It was my freshman year of college, and for the first time in my life I was living merely a short train ride away from New York city and the place where celebs gathered, MTV studios. My friend Lauren and I skipped English class (what did I tell you, I'm bad ass) to stand in the cold in hopes of being granted admission to the TRL studios to get a glimpse of one of out favorite stars, Clay Aiken. We came, we saw, we got hugs from the Gayken (eep omg ahhhh!)...and then I grew older and wiser and realized that he was in face, "unavailable".
All of these memories do hold a dear place in my heart so thank you, MTV, for those glory days when you actually played videos and brought joy into a young Claymate's heart. I was truly there for the beginning...and being that I managed to sit through the 3 hour live finale I can now say I was there at the end.
On the night of the first and only time I saw Avenue Q, over three years ago in the summer of 2006, I looked down at the floor during my train ride home to Jersey and found a penny from the year I was born. I thought it was a sign that I was going to find my purpose, so naturally I burst into song because everything was of course going to be okay.
y being the 30-second "I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today". Finally my mom broke down and told him that his beloved puppets have sex on stage. That put an end to my hopes of that family outing.
