Thus begat the Mary Poppins Cups and all that they stand for

Pre-script: There's an unfortunate tense change in the middle of this. I could correct it. Or just warn you.

I love my mother.

Which is why I'm generally susceptible to her tricking me into things with the kind of motherly trickery that is horrifically blatant from the start, and yet impossible to avoid.

A few weeks ago she asked if I wanted to see the Mary Poppins Musical. I said no. I cited reasons like being theatered out, which was sort of true, but I secretly meant that I know myself well enough to know that there is no way I could possibly respect that particular production. Then her business trip to New York was cancelled, and her coworker opted out, but she still had a hankering to go.

Ignoring the email stating this was a mistake on my part, which led to the phone call the day before the show asking if I could go. As the topic was brought, internal-voice me was saying Uh...uh...uh...shit...oh, fuck it while my mouth-voice said "Uh...uh...uh...oh, why not." This was trickery on her part, pure, unadulterated trickery. She used the, "I just don't want them to go to waste..." line on me.

Dinner was uneventful. Some nice Thai food. The walk to the theater was horrible because it was through Times Square. We got to our seats early, I went to the bathroom, and I stopped at the concession stand. I ordered a Maker's rocks in anticipation of the show. The drink was thirteen dollars, which would have been outrageous if not for two things: the pour was easily a triple, and it all took place in a collectable Mary Poppins soda cup, replete with lid and reusable straw.

This is apparently just policy. My best guess is that, despite the numerous posted signs about no food and drink, the theater has just accepted the fact that Mary Poppins, in it's fourth Broadway year, is going to be largely attractive to theater un-savvy tourists. So instead of trying to stop everyone from bringing their drinks in, they just put them all in sippy cups. Contrast this with the shows only the musical effete attend, where people are assumed to be capable of returning to their seats carrying champagne and martini glasses five at a time (a strange nexus between musical and sport enthusiasts), and I'm not actually sure which shows enforce the no-beverage rule.

The elation of my manly sippy cup carried me into the show starting. As I sipped and willed myself buzzed--that act of nursing hard liquor and focusing on the minute buzz you would otherwise ignore if you knew more drinks were readily available--the show began and I slipped into a rare state of enjoyment.

We've all seen the movie. And if you haven't...I don't care. So we've all seen the movie. The musical throws in a lot of shit you've never heard of. It's technically from the books. I checked*, yet this does not change the fact that almost everyone seeing the musical is wondering what the fuck is going on.

What only adds to the shitstorm of the unexpected is the plot existing as this:

Dad: I am serious
Mom: I wish my family were closer
Children: We're dicks in the making
Mary Poppins: You are all idiots
The family: Oh shit, you're right
Bert: Mary, can we get back to fucking like rabbits offstage?
Mary: Shhh...oh wait, I'm god and should get back to heaven

That's all. She's perfect (there's a song about this), and the family mends their obviously broken ways to be more like her. She could have done this in five minutes of her tart and sassy no-nonsense way of telling it as it is, but she instead takes the children through a variety of drug trips.

So, first, the statues in the park come alive. They dance ballet and are wearing nude suits. It's pure and simple erotica. With the ability of musical theater costumers to make anything look like anything at distance, the scene is literally a bunch of lesser Greek gods prancing about naked and bronzed. The dudes have leaves on their junk and the chicks simply didn't have areolas or vaginas painted on their form-fitting body suits. No one above puberty can watch this and not find someone they want to bang. Let's be honest, dancers have the best bodies...particularly in nude-simulating suits. Then the statues go back to statues and we're all a little embarrassed that the weed made us think that about a statue.

Next up, earthquake.

The children meddling in the kitchen causes the hot water pipe to burst, which explodes as steam in the butler's face, causes every shelf bearing dishes to fall off the wall, and splits a very thick tabletop in twain. The moral of the story is that being a pest can seismically murder, but fictitiously delicious medicine will fix everything.

Then it gets weird. Mary takes the kids to a candy shop where the women shit cupcakes. Aside from the fact that one of the women claims to be thousands of years old, which in the scope of things I can let slide, they're wearing bustles made to look like stacked trays of baked goods. Whose idea was this? Bustles already look like devices to hide some secret ass deformity, so one that prominently features stacks of cake really just makes it look like one of those bags that catch the shit of carriage horses, except for a magic baker.

This segues into an overwrought supercalifragelisticexpialidocious sequence. There's a strong chance I'd have fled in self-preservation if not for the kid sitting in one of the boxes. He was a fat kid, and he was an energetic kid, and with the refined sugar gushing from the stage he was dancing like the love child of the Numa Numa Guy and Hercules from Nutty Professor. I enjoyed him more than the show.

Just before intermission--oh yes, we're only halfway there--was one of the more terrifying things I have ever seen. The toys came to life. This could have been innocuous if not for the first toy to do so being a rag doll that A. stuck a creepy, grasping, artificially-long-fingered hand out of a dollhouse window before appearing, B. was pretty much Scarecrow from Batman, and C. immediately and angrily pointed out it's own massive flesh wound caused by the kids. The tone amply set by this, other life-sized toys like cannibalistic clowns and Vaudeville actors dressed as frogs began dancing around and complaining about being toys until the children awoke into this nightmare version of Toy Story and, immediately, were scared shitless.

Mary's solution was to steal the toys and leave for intermission.

I mean...really?

At the intermission I went back to the concession stand. A different guy asked if I wanted a single or a double. I said double on instinct, which drew grins from parents with children and the concession staff--basically everyone who clearly felt as I did about the show--and I got a generous pour even for a double. I quickly realized that I didn't have the cash for the hideously overpriced drink, and said it. But the guy gave it to me for the price of a single. I still accidentally short changed him, and after correcting myself I only had a fiver to tip with, which I clearly had to because the guy had just given me what was tantamount to a quadruple bourbon for what would be a single-and-a-half at any other New York bar.

It was this point that I knew I'd be okay. I also knew that from this point on, my closest friends would learn to worry for me when they saw me with my Mary Poppins cups, the surest sign of me regressing into secretive alcoholism.

Second half.

First, Mary Poppins uses mind control to force an evil nanny into a body-sized cage that drops below stage. There's no other way to explain this. That is simply what happened. The only interpretations that I can think of are murder or kidnapping, and torture either way.

Second, she takes the kids to the roof where they meet the chimney sweeps, who were presented as the friendly hoboes of the sky. Whatever the hell they were singing is irrelevant because the kids loved it. They were enamored by the magical floating realm of the sky-hoboes, who apparently spend all night tap dancing on chimney pipes instead of coughing gobs of black blood.

Bert is prominent in this. He was the only redeeming character in the whole thing. He's a jack of all trades who is wise to the ways of happiness. He understands the magic, which makes him way smarter than I, and he's not throwing it around with the explicit purpose of making everyone else look unevolved like Mary generally does. The other thing that makes him awesome is that he's clearly nailing Mary whenever she's in town, and when she leaves, it's no big thing. He's fuck buddies with a maddeningly perfect and magical succubus. That's a pretty sweet deal.

So when Bert gets strung up on wires and tap dances on the ceiling, I was worried. I have seen precarious performances, but never one where the performer is head-side-down and pushing against his supports on the ceiling. Fucker's dead, no question, if that rig breaks.

Then the family starts pulling their shit together in a collection of scenes that my brain, for simplicity's sake, has only entered as "See the scene in Hook where Toodles regains his marbles."

It wasn't all bad. The set pieces were pretty big and cool, but uninspired because they were just big dollhouses. The magic bag was cleverly done, but, you know, not original. The visual production was well done with every trick in the stage craft book, just with nothing new. When your main character can induce euphoria and hallucinations in anyone she pleases, you've got to throw in something that's more "Wow!" mindfuck than "Sorry, what?" mindfuck. And the performances...well they were flawless...for what they were given. But, for me, at least, musicals thrive on the poetry of the lyrics or emotion so overwhelming that it fits the grandiose nature of being backed by an orchestra. There was one song--one--where the mother sang about trying to save her family's soul that was stirring. The rest were...the crap you'd expect from acid trips.

Ugh. I'm bored with this. I didn't like the show. It was cute. Kids might like it. Fat kids definitely, apparently. Someone more technical about it than I might have a lot to say about production value. That's kind of a de facto result of a Disney musical. But where Lion King had a singular mind-blowing design throughout, this was just a giant dollhouse where Barbie has tea with Mr. Potato Head and a Ninja Turtle because...well, there is no because. Kids are just okay with throwing disparate crap together and calling it a story.


*I was a little surprised to see that they existed (and were being published through the eighties)

I mean, I knew it was only a matter of time...

I have resisted the tubes for a long time and refused to blog. Many have suggested I do, and in response to my response asked why I'm so pretentious. The simple answer is that I don't really like the format that is standard for blogs. It works for some, for sure, and it can work well. My objection is the inherent amateurism. I don't mean that as an insult. I simply mean that no reasonable person starts blogging thinking that it's great writing. I mean, let's be honest, blogging is kind of the fanfic version of memoir writing.

And, as a deluded wanna-be writer, I want to Be Taken Seriously whenever I give someone else anything better than a drunken gchat. So, I'll be up-front; I'm not disagreeing that my aversion to blogging is pretentious. Just wait until I'm dead to decide if that pretense was warranted or not.

Anyways.

I saw the Mary Poppins musical tonight. It changed how I think of blogging. The one thing that I was thinking through the entire experience was that I just wanted to mock it...immediately. I was channeling my inner Prototoast. It just made perfect sense.

I have no idea how frequently I'll post here, nor what my criteria will be. Just set your communo-box to tell you when I do and otherwise forget it.