On Friday night, I went to the last Birdstrike Theatre show of the year--the graduation show. The graduating seniors all did crazy monologues about their time in the troupe--including drug call pranking, walking on the ceiling, and one guy swallowing his own fake tooth and having to get it back...the hard way. They also did a "Tarantino" in which they acted out a show about a rogue milkmaid/sheriff's deputy. And the non-graduates sang them a song along the lines of "We hate your guts, we hate your face" while stopping periodically for tribute verses for each guy--and the final verse was about how they'd be missed. Awww.

As for Saturday, it was a busy day.

I woke up and watched The Primary Instinct. I was in on the Kickstarter for this and had my name in the credits and everything. It is excellent. Features stories of telepathic babies, how Stephen had the role of "Buttcrack Plumber" written especially for him, the element of surprise, what "the primary instinct" is, his parents, getting Vince Lombardi's signature, pennies, Stephen's party central house back in the day ("I don't want to say we had orgies, orgies are such an ugly word...but we had clothing optional parties that were famous for our lack of decorum.") and having his mom over, things you can't prepare for as an actor, and how stories hold a mirror to our lives. I don't know how the rest of the world's gonna get access to viewing it someday, but I hope you do.

I attended the Promenade of Mermaids. I told Dawn about this a few days ago and she wanted to go, which was awesome. I first heard of it last year, but I didn't have an outfit to wear to such a thing. Now I do, so I signed up. Oh my god, the costumes were amazing. Yes, I was a bit hot, but I didn't really care and I tolerate that sort of thing well anyway. I got a lot of shots of people before the parade and Dawn was on camera duty while I was in the parade, so she got shots of that. I had a lot of fun talking to people about my costume and theirs and taking photos and having photos taken. It was lovely.

Someone asked me if I was going to add to it next year and I said "I need to add stuff from the neck up," because I didn't really do my hair and don't like, have shell barrettes or something like that. (I pondered wearing a wig, but I was hot enough already and planned to do other things after.) I had fun chatting with an Ariel who normally is off doing children's parties when the parade is on, but was delighted to be there. It was really funny how she was still talking in Ariel voice even when talking to me or other adults--at one point asking me what my "cute name" was--same as her sister's down to what we answer to, even. Very, very cool, fun, fashionable people at this one. And Dawn did an awesome job of photography because I didn't realize how BIG the parade was until we were looping around at one point.

And for those of you wondering "how do mermaids walk," it depended on the costume. Some wore dresses, one contest winner had 70's flare pants as a tail, and yes, there were several mermaids being wheeled around in wagons/carts. One mermaid had a unicorn turtle set up on a wheelchair to ride around on, and another guy had used a wheelchair to build a pirate ship upon. I'm pretty sure I've seen a few of these folks at the Pirate Festival...and will again, probably. It was amazing. I'm still uploading photos over here.

After that, Dawn and I went to see the We Know Jack project. On Easter, Mom and I saw a giant art rabbit at Fenton's and it turned out to be part of an art project around town. The paperwork said that on May 30, the rabbits were all going to be in one location for the first time, so I wanted to see that. The rabbits were all beautiful and delightful and did not disappoint in their awesomeness, especially when combined with the artists' other artwork. It was adorable how many people were in there looking at them, and how excited the volunteers at the museum were about them. I only wish I had the room to take one home. Or most of them home. (I'll get to that album after the mermaids are done.)

Also, that area of Vacaville was one neither of us had ever been to before (honestly, there usually doesn't seem to be much of the town beyond the outlets--I went to downtown once and everything was closed by 4), but it was quite charming and full of nice Victorian houses and both a wedding and a BBQ going on nearby. Very pretty. I definitely have to take Mom to see this before they go out to other homes.

And then I took Dawn to Vampire Penguin and she seriously nearly fell off her chair swooning at the goodness of it all. Then we ran into some former coworker of hers outside and plugged it to her immediately.

After that I went home for a bit and them eventually left for the Comedy Spot to go watch the "flagship show," Anti-Cooperation League, for the first time. Because this is the first Saturday night since I started going there where I was in town and alone and not with people who wanted to go home early, so I'd better take advantage of that now. I've been told they normally sold out, but ah...not this time. Oh well, more room for me and the knitting.

The format of this one is that they interview someone every week (for over a half hour, apparently?) and then base their improv scenes off of the interview. This time they interviewed a guy who takes class here and brews his own beer and rode his bike 200 miles in a day and has issues deciding on what to name people (he kept changing his mind on what to call the new baby) and has a degree in medical illustration and has never done any.

So Brian (owner/instructor) was doing the interview and..at one point he utterly derailed by randomly going on about how last night Eric pointed out his nipples ah, "stand out", and now he can't think of anything else but, apparently. (And uh, yeah, I noticed this myself.) "It's noon on stage all the time!" Someone suggested he get stick figures tattooed over them. "You don't know what it's like to go through life with huge nipples!" And then someone else--Eric again, I think--was all, "and they're getting bigger since you started talking about them...." Brian attempted to ask the guy about how his parents worked on Apollo and explained that his tattoos are all space related, and someone mentioned that you could see his nipples from space.... Oh yeah, and we all found out that Brian's mom (here tonight!) has just returned from Hawaii, seeing her hairy lovah "Atlas."

As you can imagine, there was a lot of grist for the comedy mill from those facts alone. Brian acted out his mom telling TMI to the kids and then Molly strolled in as the dirty lovah, and during one skit, attack nipples happened.... Also done were attack algae in Clear Lake, a very tall fellow being annoyed at his girlfriend's tall fetish, a guy whose hands hurt so much from biking he can't open his button fly jeans to pee--could you help?, a pancake contest in which the lazy dude with the box of mix wins...okay, I can't recall it all, but it was a hoot.

The night was finally finished out--of sorts--with the free "Last Laugh" show, which is some random thing they're trying out for the first time. This was a "Greek chorus" of five people wearing Rodney Dangerfield paper masks and all quoting Dangerfield lines at the same time. Hoooo boy, did I ever not get what the point of that was whatsoever and walked out after about ten minutes.

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