Monkey thrashes Rihanna, Michael Bay- Transformers and reviews Dame Edna!

 

Monkey, on rare occasion, gets a wonderful treat from his very good friend, Robert. No, no, no. Not bananas!  And no! Not cigs either!  Nor coffee!!  Could you believe it? Anyway these things are not treats to me anyway, but necessities.  A treat is something loved but something not often received.  And I partake in those necessities (or vices, perhaps) multiple times in a single day.  Well, what is left that Monkey loves, you say? Well,  Monkey loves musicals!  There I said it, outloud (denoted by the bold  type I used for the word). Outloud for all you hairless beasts to hear. MUSICALS! It gives me such monkeybumps just to think about it.  Oklahoma, South Pacific, The King and I, Carousel…just fabulous they are with their spinning pirouettes, beautiful melodies, and scintillating dramas!  I love them ever so much!   And my friend Robert knew this, and offered me up two tickets to the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles.  The lovely boy! The only catch was that I had to bring his 17 year old daughter with me.  Well, well, I had met this teen-age creature on several occasions before and knew that compared to many of her peers, she was not so bad.  Moody, perhaps, but a real lover of books and things intellectual.  The little creature actually loves to watch the “Behind the Scenes” documentaries about movies even more than the actual movie itself, so I knew that we could have a jolly great evening as long as I kept her fed and the conversation off boys.  She has a brain (unless she’s jibbering about the male of the species), and Monkey appreciates that greatly from his company, especially after spending years locked up in the lab next to a singing hominidae named Rihanna, who was continually tested for the effectiveness of  a certain brand of rubbers that reminds Monkey greatly of Greek mythology (wink, wink) and sadly, also tested for the durability of boxing gloves (made by a brand supposed to last forever…hint, hint).  And no this is NOT an  insensitive dig to that poor soul’s later victimization by the ungloved hands of one named Chris Brown.  Okay, maybe it was, afterall a bit insensitive, but one can only take the repetition of the word Umbrella so many times before wanting to express their annoyance! 

I lived locked in a cage next to the puppet for nearly a year.  Heaven help me, that was the only word she muttered for 11 months of it.  The other word, for the last month, was Disturbia-which by the way is not a real word  (Don’t believe me? Look it up in the dictionary).  The bloody word  ended up being the title of one of her hit songs.  Well, what else could she name a song?  Oh, yes. SOS. Another brilliant word.  One that denotes the need to be rescued. Hmm. Well, enough thrashing of the poor Barbados beauty queen.  Monkey really believes that physical abuse is cowardly, dysfunctional and plain wrong.  So, perhaps instead of hitting her, Chris should have put a little plastic widget and string on her back, so she could speak only when he pulled the string.  Yes, that would have solved the problem.  Too bad the scientists at the lab hadn’t thought of that. It could have saved me countless nights of dreaming that Mary Poppins was hovering over my bed with a large unbrella shoved in places I’d rather not have an umbrella shoved, whilst she  stuffed  spoonfuls of sugar down my throat.  You see umbrella references always remind me of Mary Poppins and since I suffer from a phobia of nannies in general, it wasn’t perhaps the best idea to put our little pop princess in a cage next to me. I did much better when the cockroaches took her place.  Their drunken states from the Raid and such were so humorous and did much to tickle my funny bone.  Anyhow, enough of the thrashing I said, and I really must abide by my own declarations! I hope you do forgive Monkey’s verbose digressions. 

Anyhow, Monkey does enjoy intelligence, so though Robert’s daughter  is a mere teenager, she would be an acceptable accompaniment to a night out at the Ahmanson. I accepted the tickets with alacrity! Little did I know at the time that the tickets to the Ahmanson were not to a musical at all! They were to see Dame Edna, Live! My First Last Tour!

Oh, the horror! You can imagine my shock when just two days before the show, I pulled the tickets out of my billfold to check the exact showtime, so the child and I would not be late, and it said the show was one by this comic buffoon! To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if this Dame Edna was really a woman! I thought I remembered hearing that she was really a man dressed in drag, as this sort of alter ego.  Egads!  Good bye Oklahoma,  hello Las Vegas!  More’s the pity! 

So, when Friday rolled around, I tried numerous things to dissuade the child from wanting to go to the theater.  First, I picked the child up at eleven in the morning and took her to The Pancake House in Redondo Beach, Ca.  I forced chocolate chip pancakes, potato pancakes, eggs and corned beef hash upon her small frame, hoping she might feel a bit ill later from the effects of overeating.  Turns out she felt fine, and I was the one who suffered from gastritis and needed to take a pack of Tums.  Kids apparently can eat what they want and not suffer the consequences that plague those of us over thirty.  Then, I took her for a nice long hike of nearly three hours amongst the rocks and cliffs by the sea  in Palos Verdes, Ca in hopes of tiring her out.  It was indeed a splendid time poking at hermit crabs and such, although she had a much harder time scrambling over some of the rocks than I.  I mean, afterall, I am a monkey and that young creature, though talented in many areas, does not have the ability to use her arms like they are legs.   Unfortunately, however, she does have the physical fortitude of Britney in her 1000 sit-ups a day years.  So, by the time we got to her home to prepare ourselves for purple-haired troll comedian, I needed an entire pot of coffee (oh, to suffer!) to get my opposable thumbs moving and an entire loaf of banana bread to get the gumption up to dress for the theater whilst the creature was all chatter and excitement. I do believe she showered, dressed, and applied maquillage in a tornado of energy last seen hurling a house on top of the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz.  So, off we went to see Dame Edna.

On the way, the child wished to hear a band of whom I have close relations to blasted from my Mini-Cooper’s speakers: Asphalt Messiah. They are an intriguing mix of rock and hip-hop,  tempestuous in their passion, with catchy and some-times quite beautiful melodies. So, I blasted their song Transform Me, orignially intended, I think, to be in the Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen movie and soundtrack. 

Asphalt Messiah – listen to “Transform Me” rejected for Transformers2 due to time constraints.

However, the word is, that time constraints left it out of the movie and my poor blokes in a sorry state and feeling quite rejected.  My opinion, however, is that Mr. Michael Bay has sold his soul to the corporate evil empire and rejected anything not bought and paid for.  Have you noticed that all the artists on the soundtrack are Warner Brother’s artists? And there is no doubt that the soundtrack panders to the white male twenty something audience.  Hmm. Anyhow, the child loves this Asphalt Messiah, so we screamed their song the entire way.  I did quite imagine that that is what the jungle is like.

We arrived in plenty of time to head to the toilet, grab a cookie and a glass of vino…for me, not the child.  We found our seats, row D, seats 3 and 4.  Lovely.  Now usually I would be thrilled to have seats  so close to the stage.  However, this is never a wise idea when a comedian is on the stage.  Usually one finds oneself the unwilling object of unjustified attention, and by unjustified attention I mean ridicule.  So, I slumped in my seat the entire show in hopes that the great dame would pass me over in her quest to find a victim to thrust her jokes upon.  You’d think a monkey in the audience would be an easy target, but Dame Edna seemed more interested in the elderly, housewives or homos of another kind. Or as she liked to call them friends of Kenny- Kenny being her most beloved son who resides in West Hollywood, if you catch her drift.  They all seemed to adore her and for that I was grateful, as the teen and I were sandwiched between four friends of Kenny, all of whom were light hearted and gay (excuse the pun) and made our experience all that more enjoyable, nudging us ever so carefully in the ribs when ever Dame offered up a “good one”. 

I learned quite a bit about our Dame Edna from the program thrust into our hands as we made entry into the theater.  As we sat to enjoy our wine and cookie, we both took a look into the pages of the damned thing, the teen-ager to find out if there were any songs (I was curious to this as well) and me to find out if the Dame is really of the female gender or not.  Well, there it was. Barry Humphries is Dame’s creator, the genius behind the woman.  The man underneath the frock.  I suppose it is fairly obvious that this is the case, but for a reason Monkey is quite unsure of it seemed to slip the mind when Dame was performing.  Dr. Humphrie’s small, seemingly insignificant  characterizations of Dame Edna gave her such veracity.  She, for instance, called the audience possums perhaps every other sentence, and it reminded Monkey of  his dear friend, Mabel, whose job it was to clean the laboratory.  My sweet, dear Mabel always pilfered bananas for me and brought them during the late, late hours at the lab when all the coats had gone home. I lived for those times and that friendship, I did. She  even made secret Starbuck’s runs for me, too and she called me… Monkey.  Because of her, my Mabel, I still go by that name.  And it’s the way Dr. Humphries said possums that reminded me so much of the way she said Monkey.  With sweetness and love in their voices, both of them, like real grandmothers. Warm and soft.  Of course our Dame Edna would cut through that warmth with a thick blade of humor, usually crass and perhaps a tad bit scathing, but mostly always uproariously funny.  Dame also had an effectual way of clasping her hands together and claiming how lovely things were. Monkey has seen many elderly women do that who were trying their best to be polite in a situation that wasn’t so necessatily lovely. It was testament to Dr. Humphries meticulous observations of the women around him, to realize that more often than not women try to smooth over indelicacies and inappropriate behaviours.  Bravo to Dr. Humphries!

Monkey would, however, like to point out that their were moments in the performance that were less than spot on, so to speak.  There were times when Dr. Humphries was interacting with the audience that he seemed at a loss for words. His improv wasn’t as cultivated as other comedians Monkey has seen. To his credit, however, he was able to fall back on Dame Edna’s brilliant characterizations to pull himself through those weaker moments.  Only a practiced performer could  achieve that.  It did, however, leave Monkey feeling more appreciative of the rehearsed material being tossed about the auditorium and perhaps, if I dare say,  a bit cheated.  After all today’s audiences are used to improv geniuses such as Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, and one of Monkey’s favorites Russell Brand. 

In addition, Monkey could have done without Dame Edna’s daughter played by a boring Erin-Kate Whitcomb. Monkey doesn’t want to slam the actress too much, but her part didn’t really seem to fit into the act.  She performed a song, which to her credit, was funny…but it was not brilliant.  Monkey actually has seen funnier from those silly cockroaches he mentioned earlier.  Perhaps Dame should have sprayed the poor actress with a little Raid before she took the stage.  That would have livened things up wouldn’t it?

Anywho, the child laughed at almost every joke and even caught a gladiola that Dame had thrown into the audience. She, with about thirty others, got to wave it around and make it “tremble” so that the audience was filled with a garden of trembling gladiolas.  Monkey knows that this sounds a bit silly, but feels that he must remind you that silly can be a very wonderful thing.  Especially to a teen girl who has an unbearable amount of pressure on her shoulders to get “life” all figured out…now.  To get all A’s, to choose a career that, for her father, will make her happy or, for her mother, will make her financially stable. Monkey does believe that sometimes being silly helps us all just cope a little bit. Helps remove us, at least temporarily, from the cages that we live in. And for that, Monkey is grateful for both Dr. Barry Humphries and Dame Edna. 

Well, hope you enjoyed this one. I do say I’m ready for a cig.

Dr. Barry Humphries will be touring in the fall throughout England as Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson in the fall in a show called “Last Night of the POMS”. Click for more info.

To learn more about Barry Humphries, take a moment and watch this video: