Chaos Attraction

Honorary Birthday

2012-04-22, 9:47 p.m.

Today was my honorary birthday, since my actual birthday is going to be super busy and occupied with the usual Tuesday routine + adding on another CC class that goes all night on top of that. (Ergh, but I'm told the instructor is excellent...and it still allows me to go to my favorite zumba class beforehand, so there's that. But still, kinda wish it started next week.) I got all dressed up in the fancy dress that I pretty much only wear on birthdays, and Mom and Mauricio came up for the day since everyone I know here is occupied.

We went out to a restaurant in town I hadn't been to before because between their far-off location (i.e. needs car) and open hours (i.e. usually when I'm at work/no bus running) I can't go there. Some of my relatives brought bread from the place for Easter and were raving about the place, so I thought we'd give it a shot. We were actually pretty disappointed. The bread, what I ate of it (pizza) was pretty good. But their breakfast cakes were simply the most tasteless I've ever eaten. I've probably had more flavorful food bought at Wal-Mart or something. I got a slice of cake and that was better, mostly due to the orange flavoring having a fair amount of kick. I also ordered a breakfast pizza. Now, call me crazy, but pizza is usually (a) pizza bread, (b) cheese, and (c) stuff baked into the cheese, correct? I was kind of assuming that was how their pizza would go. But it was pretty much pizza bread with breakfast fixins put on top of it. Very odd eating as a pizza, though it wasn't bad to taste. But it's the second oddest pizza I've had anyway--the first being the "wet foccacia bread with a piece of lettuce on top pizza" served up by hippies at Whole Earth. Now, to be fair, I'm not really a pastry person and that seems to be their #1 selling point and I didn't really eat any of that (most of it being gone by the time we got there anyway). But it was...odd.

After that, Mom wanted to hit Forever 21--yeah, I know, but she likes it-- and I did my annual Pick Out Your Own Birthday Present shopping there. I ended up with a few shirts for dance class and one sweater--it's hard to find stuff that fits there at times, but they are good for dance shirts (i.e. ones that don't make you too hot while wearing them), at least.

Then we went to The Improvised Shakespeare Show, where four guys make up a play in Shakespearean style right on the spot. Definitely up my alley. The afternoon's theme was "British Royal Family," which I assumed was going to be something making fun of the current batch. But no, they stuck to making it up Shakespeare style. Let me see if I can give you the plot...
The Duke of York, a totally inbred dude with a claw for a hand, has killed off most of his relatives on the way to the throne. Still standing (for now) are his nephews Henry and Edwin and their mother Anne. Henry and Edwin are locked in a tower. Henry, the presumptive heir, isn't so much into the kingdom thing (he likes common things, like...common women...), but knows enough to get the hell out when Edwin reveals that he dug a hole in the tower Shawshank-style. This is amazing in itself because Edwin has such sensitive skin that apparently a rainfall nearly kills him--one wonders how he gets dressed in the morning. Roaming around the forest, Henry makes friends with a wide variety of liberal arts majors artists turned brigands, who all join his side. Well, them and Pregnant Kate the Rapist, who has apparently been pregnant for like 6 years and has no other artistic skills to recommend her.

I would like to point out that, apropos of nothing, there's mention of various tapestries featuring large animals going down on small ones and vice versa. I believe a peacock mounted an elephant, an owl mounted...something else huge, and there's one mention of a leviathan mounting a snail. At one point there was a children's rhyme sung about the first one--something like "When a peacock mounts an elephant-- everything else is irrelevant."

Henry has a girlfriend, who he pledged himself to on St. Vitus's Dance Day (okay, not the actual thing they said in the play, but close enough), Catherine. Who the Duke is now going to marry. Except Catherine talks her various ladies in waiting to ALL impersonate her at the wedding and the wedding night. Yes, they've all agreed to switch and take turns for every round the Duke is willing to go ("Fiona, you can take sloppy thirds!"). They get a big kick out of this. Catherine dresses herself up as an Italian Jewish butcher and bugs off to the woods to track down Henry, which she does after one of those sorts of scenes you remember seeing in like, 12th Night where the girl-in-disguise interrogates her boyfriend about his feelings.

The Duke recruits the Archbishop of Canterbury and Burbage the Sheriff (note: the sheriff's office has become all kinds of corrupt lately, so how's about getting someone from the squeaky clean Church?) to hang out together as they go around killing more people, like Edwin ("let me be your comforter," the Archbishop says as he smothers Edwin) and his mother. A serving girl sees the latter murder, then has the corpse dumped on top of her while she's hiding in the closet. The killers really super enjoy it and at one point make up a theme song which is totally ripping off the guys in the woods's theme song. The Duke gets a scene in which all of the various folks he killed haunt his ass.

The Duke finds out about his three brides after they continue to keep switching up during the day in hopes of getting more nookie. Apparently he lived out every guy's dream without knowing it. He slaughters them all anyway and decides to chase after his actual wife in the woods with Henry. A giant slaughter goes down, in which Pregnant Kate goes into labor and her baby strangles the Archbishop on the way out, Catherine and Henry take out almost everyone else, and the serving girl takes out the Duke. Henry decides to break the crown into pieces and hand them off to everyone, the ghosts celebrate him for that, even the ghost Duke who died five seconds ago, and they all dance around him in a circle, the end.

It was great fun and I think I'll go again next year. Wacky stuff.

After that we went to a Barnes and Noble for Round 2 of "Let Jen Pick Out Last Minute Birthday Gifts"--this went much better, thank you ;) And then we hit one of my favorite Italian restaurants, which is no longer located in my town, but at least I by god found one. Hurray!

So there was my actual birthday celebration.


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