Pretend this is a bunch of little posts

BBQ

Yes, the barbecue was good. Yes. Yes, it was. HOWEVER, I'm a little surprised at all the press this place is getting. Part of what makes a barbecue sandwich taste so good is the fact that it doesn't usually cost TWELVE DOLLARS. With NO SIDES!

So yeah. It was good. Damn good. Twelve dollars good? Maybe after a couple Long Island Iced teas.

And excuuuse me, princess, but since when is brisket only available chopped up on a sandwich?

Don't get me wrong! The sandwich was great! But come on. I was really hoping for some SLICED brisket. But sliced brisket wasn't even an option. In fact, the Fat Republican Texas BBQ Sandwich was the ONLY beef brisket option on the whole six-item menu!

I'm torn. It was so good. And yet...so overpriced and underwhelming and succulent and delicious and disappointing all at once.

I think I'll stick to Everycity BBQ on Forty-Deuce. It might not be quite as good, but once you slather your meat in sauce you can't really tell a difference anyway (unless, of course, we're talking about Rudy's--a.k.a., the official restaurant of Heaven). And $12 at Everycity BBQ gets you a platter. Why go quality when you can go quantity? Besides, if you're eating barbecue correctly, the room should already be spinning and your tastebuds slightly numbed by the time the barbecue consuela brings out your heaping dish.

That's what I'm talking about.


The Day of the Show

It's the day of the show, y'all.

Good grief. How many times am I gonna hear that tonight?

Seriously though.

Last night...

Director: Fork, I think this time, we need to make you a little less lumberjack and more computer nerd. Arrogant computer nerd, and try to seem really disinterested and unenthusiastic, but with energy so you still contrast from Actor Will. Oh, and I want to split the difference here, so make sure, no matter what happens, NEVER smile.

Me: Never smile.

Director: Never smile. Okay, a few more notes. All three of you guys who enter in this scene with Actor Will, remember, you're here for a party! Have fun! Be really excited to be there! That goes for all three of you, okay?

Me: (sotto) Never smile.

And I keep having this recurring nightmare that I make the prop girl in our show cry. Only thing is, we don't have a prop girl.


Pokémania


Managed to get some stuff up on the Theology Arcade, but here are some decidedly UNtheological stuff regarding the Pokémon event I helped out at this past Sunday.

I worked the big New York launch party celebrating the grand return of Pokémon to the United States this weekend. Pokémon never really left since they infested the States ten years ago, but this is the first "new" game in the series to be released in a while, so Nintendo decided it was time to go all-out and re-introduce the Pocket Monsters to the generation of kids who grew up wanting to play the games like their older brothers and sisters but couldn't read.



Conventions and fan-events like these are always completely unpredictable. Sometimes they're really lame. Sometimes they're really eye-opening. This was one of those times. Not just in the let's-go-and-watch-the-crazy-fans sort of way, but in the where's-the-Poképarenting-class? sort of way.

It's always fun to go to these events and see which people are going to dress up. Most conventional folks look at the cos-players and say, "Those people are INSANE!" Personally, I think they're kinda cool, as long as they don't think they're actually a grand-wizard elf lord when they put their plastic ears on. Some of them put a lot of work into their costumes.

Case in point.

But then there's Pikachu Man.

In case you've been living under a cultural rock the past decade, a Pikachu is sort of like the Mickey Mouse of the Pokémon franchise. It's a yellow rat with a lighting bolt for a tail and has two bright red circles on its cheeks (the Pokénerd in me tells me I should add "the red circles are actually for conducting electricity" but I won't.)

Pikachu Man wears a camera around his neck. He has thick glasses, a pasty complexion, a permanent smile on his face. He wears a Pikachu hat wherever he goes.

But best of all, Pikachu Man shaves his facial hair so that he leaves two big circular patches on either side of his cheeks. Then he dyes them red.

The regulars told me he comes to the Pokémon events all the time and that everyone keeps a sharp eye on him. I mean, how could you not without worrying that some child's life may depend on it? He walks up to complete strangers and starts talking to their children as if the parents aren't there. When a kid is getting its picture taken with a Pokémon costume character, there's Pikachu Man standing a few feet off to the side snapping a few of his own.

When asked why he was doing that by one of the video game website reporters who were covering the event, Pikachu Man replied in a very coherent, I-clearly-have-all-my-faculties voice, "I don't want children to be afraid of me. I love children. I'm here to have a good time like everybody else. Why can't anybody see that?"


But then this is where it gets really interesting, not that cross dressing animé otakus and potential sex offenders weren't interesting in their own right. But this is what Pokémon is really about...

The Pokénerds. The Pokédorks. The Pokéchildren.

The Pokékids are easy to spot, although like the little critters they covet, they come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes. What they all have in common, however, is a certain frantic energy hidden behind an easily cracked veneer of shyness. All of them.

Typically, they wear sweat pants and some sort of t-shirt that may or may not have been purchased within the past five years, they have messy hair, and, possibly the worst offense, they don't seem to have a very good grasp of manners (the rich kids are the exception. They wear knit shirts with collars and spend a lot of time looking sheepishly at the ground, wishing they could let loose and have a good time while their too-tanned mothers complain that they'd rather be at Sak's ("too-tanned mothers"? Holy crap, I hope that comment doesn't get me fired from a high-profile radio show)). I doubt anyone has sat down to teach them how to hold a fork at a dinner table. No, really. I doubt it very much. They're WELL on their way to becoming Warcraft addicts.

I know this sounds like I'm totally ripping on nerdy kids, but I'm really not. I was a huge dork back in the day, but despite that, my parents were determined to instill in in their children an unwavering appreciation for manners and appropriateness, both of which my acting teachers and subsequent discovery of alcohol would eventually destroy, but the core values abide.

The Pokékids also talk very loudly and wide eyed about what they feel is very important. It would be cute if it weren't so...well. Here's an example.

Pokémom: Barry, did you have something you wanted to ask this man? He's teaching people how to play the game so he could probably answer your questions.

Barry: ............

Pokédad: Come on, Barry. Speak up now.

Barry: DO YOU KNOW IF THERE'S A DOWNLOAD STATION WHERE I CAN JACK IN MY NINTENDO GAME BOY ADVANCE SP TO DOWNLOAD THE FOUR LEGENDARY POKéMON ONTO MY LIMITED EDITION POKéMON RUBYRED GAME CARTRIDGE?

Me: Sorry, kiddo. We're not doing that anymore.

Barry: BUT I READ ABOUT IT ONLINE THAT THERE WAS A DOWNLOAD STATION WHERE I CAN JACK IN MY NINTENDO GAME BOY ADVANCE SP TO DOWNLOAD THE FOUR LEGENDARY POKéMON.

Me: Yeah. Sorry.

Barry: Okay.


And the Poképarents just enable all this. They're even worse than the kids, if you want my honest opinion. Heck-bent on collecting as much free swag as possible, one mother commented, "You all should have free posters. Why don't you have free posters?"

We have free balloons, free tattoos, free coloring pages, free keychains, free crap, free crap, and more free crap. And the woman wants a free poster.

Me: Well, there's a free poster folded up inside the instruction manual of the video game.

"That's true, I guess."

Good grief, people! It's GARBAGE! This is like working at the dog show all over again! You've got a million dollar dog and you're going to feed it a FREE SAMPLE of some random dog food?? And simply because it's free doesn't mean you're automatically ENTITLED to it. But try explaining that to the one dad who got FURIOUS with me because we were out of FREE BALLOONS.

"Didn't they KNOW they were going to have a HUGE crowd?!"

I braced myself for the ol' "They're just doing this to create a demand!" but it didn't come.

Parents, please. Your child is growing up to be a social retard. Pokémon is fine and all, but children don't know about temperance and balance. They don't look at the video game clock that tells you you've logged in 40+ hours into the game and think, "Dear Cod! What am I DOING with my LIFE?!"

But what do I get? A half dozen parents who tell me, "Yeah, Junior over dere loves dese Pokéwhatsits. He explains it to be but I'm really not dat interested so's I just lets him play. I can't figure dat stuff out."

Well. How can you argue with THAT?

Watch the video for a Pokésurprise!






Big Changes

I'm thinking of making a seriously huge change in my life!

Should I:

Go to seminary?

Move home with Mother Darling and act out my favorite scenes from "Grey Gardens" as I grow into the "talented yet directionless offspring that never quite found his 'path'"?

Stay in New York and cross my fingers?

Get PAID to live in JAPAN and teach English as a Second Language?