Five frakkin' thirty in the morning. That's when I got up today. That's like a day and a half earlier than I normally get up. I've seen 5:30am before a few times, but usually I come in from the other side ad roll into bed. Usually after an After-Prom or a night of heavy drinking with supermodels... okay, just the After-Prom, but still...
Anyway, I got up at the aforementioned UnThomly Hour to drive, along with Bob Ingersoll, to New York for the New York Comic-Con. The drive's about eight hours, and it's one I made for years during my time at the Kubert School. So I didn't have to be awake for the drive. I was, but I didn't have to be.
Along the drive, Bob and I talked of many things. And, I got to expose him to some new music (how could he not have heard Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana song If We Were a Movie) as well as the podcasting brilliance that is MacBreakWeekly.
After a couple stops for fuel and food, we got to the Javitz Center and set up the booth. You may notice that there's not so much a table or a chair there. That's because it's not included. Now, on every other comic convention on the planet, and I believe a couple on Tatooine, a table and chair is part of your booth. Sometimes it's the whole booth.
In fairness, it's my fault. I'm sure somewhere in the information for the show it said "You get nothing." Seriously, I'm sure there is. I, not thinking to look for such a note, never found it. So, I have no table or chair.
Fortunately, you can rent a table for a mere $200. And get a plastic folding chair for $85. Now, I get the Union thing, and the markup thing. You get stuff like this at a show, you're going to get frakked. But $85 to rent a chair, one-ninth of a Herman Aeron sixteen point adjustable chair. That's not just frakked, that's something that they do on Oz.
Look I'm not taking Freeman or the convention center to task. It is what it is and these are the things that happen at a show. They're allowed to charge what the market can bear.
I just hope they need some artwork sometime.
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After setting up, Bob and I got dinner at a little Italian place and then headed to see Young Frankenstein, the musical. It's the second Mel Brooks film to become a musical. The first, of course, being The Producers, which I was lucky enough to see with the original cast. Well, I saw it with the origial cast performing. I actually saw it with a couple of friends.
You ask anyone about Young Frankenstein and they'll say the same thing: "It's not as good as The Producers." That's horribly unfair. Just off the top of my head, the Mitsubishi Lancer is not as good as the Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder Convertible. Doesn't mean the Lancer isn't a good car. It's just the Eclipse is a home run.
Okay, that may just be my reality.
I just think The Producers, being a show about a Broadway musical, is a perfect storm of Broadway goodness. Young Frankenstein isn't quite so lucky.
It's a good show. Not great, but definitely solid. And I'm a big musical theatre geek, big enough that I even enjoyed Dance of the Vampires, so it was a great time all around for me.
The performances were great. Megan Mullally is good in the Madeline Kahn role, Andrea Martin is great as Frau Blucher (cue horses) and Roger Bart is fantastic as Frederick Frankenstein. Sutton Foster is very engaging as Inga, and Christopher Fitzgerald does well with the unenviable task of following in Mary Feldman's oh-so distincitve footsteps.
Sadly, we were informed that Kevin Ligon would not be performing the part of Victor. Anyone who's had the pure delight of seeing Mr. Ligon perform in Law and Order: SVU, or better yet in 1776 or Hello, Dolly, in which he got to perform with Carol Chandler, knows what artistry we missed out on.
Okay, I don't really know Kevin Ligon and couldn't pick him out of a lineup if the other four people were Jawas. It's just when we got there, we were informed that he wouldn't be performing and it became a running joke. I'm sure he's great. I wish him nothing but the best. It was just kind of funny to me. But I'm writing this on five hours of sleep and almost twenty hours of straight consciousness, so maybe it's just me.
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Anyway, that's how today, Day Zero went. Tomorrow will be Day One of the show. Release the Kraken and bring on the fans, because I've got some books to move.