Upon moving to New Orleans from Brooklyn, Kelly McClure and Lindsey Baker noticed a lack of music blogs featuring New Orleans music blog type things. This is a music blog type thing called Bleedin' Armadilla that will be a regular feature here on Total Bozo. This music blog type thing will focus on shows we see here in New Orleans, both local bands, and bands that tour in the area. Disclaimer: do not look to this music blog type thing for "actual' music coverage. We'll mostly just be talking about ourselves, and what sort of emotions, grievances, etc. we happened to have during these shows. Thank you. This is Bleedin' Armadilla.
It's been quite a while since the last Bleedin' Armadilla because the majority of the shows we've been going to have either been shows that one of us (Guts Club) have played, or shows that our friends have played, and as interesting as it is to write about ourselves and our friends, it's not as interesting as writing about people who are NOT us, or our friends, and also way easier to "speak the truth" when there's not an immediate pipeline for responses along the lines of "why would you say that about me? I hate you." Last night we went to see John Waters' annual Christmas show at The Civic Theatre and (spoiler) we only have good things to say about it. The audience in attendance is, as always, another matter, and if someone who was there last night wants to reach out with a hearty "I hate you" rebuttal after reading this, that's perfectly fine. We (probably) hate you too.
John Waters has done a Christmas show for many years now and I've gone to it the past two years in New York. When I saw that he was doing one in my new home of New Orleans, I immediately bought tickets. This year he called his show A John Waters' Christmas: Holier & Dirtier, which is a good thing to call something. The show took place at The Civic Theatre, which is a place we hadn't been to yet, and it seemed fancy so I wore my Great Grandmother's fur coat. If you have a fur coat that your Great Grandma handed down to you in your closet, you may find yourself lacking opportunities to wear such a thing. I wore mine to see John Waters because I had a mental fantasy that he'd see me wearing it and say something like "here she comes, wearing a fur coat," and then I'd humbly smile as if to say "I know, right?"
It was cold(ish) last night so after our cab dropped us off in front of the theatre we huddled on the sidewalk and quickly smoked our pre-show cigarettes before rushing in so we could warm up, get drinks, pee one last time, and then find our seats. I was lucky enough to get floor seats, which was nice, because I like to be able to see what I paid money to see. I'm not sure if the show was sold out or what, but when we sat down about ten minutes before the show was about to start there were quite a few empty seats still. The theatre had sent out a notification prior to the show saying that it starts at 8PM SHARP and that if you get there late John will probably call you out, and I was not trying to run the risk of that happening. I guess maybe other people were okay with the possibility of that happening.
Going into this scenario I knew that John Waters had a reputation for hating people being on their phones during his shows. I would never dare disrespect him in that way, but I guess other people didn't know this was a pet peeve of his, or didn't care, because minutes into him coming out on stage he called out a few people in the front rows for being on their phones saying that the lights from them threw him off. He had to ask one person twice to please turn off their phone and the second time he asked he ended his request with "ARE YOU DEAF?!" This made me laugh. For this evening John chose a suit that looked to have an all-over pot leaf print. He threw out his signature Maybelline eye pencils (Expert Eyes in velvet black, the ones he uses to fill in his moustache) to a few people in the crowd and I felt upset that I wasn't close enough to grab one.
 |
| I hope the moron who risked being yelled at by John to take this picture of the top of his head feels good about themselves. |
I can't really remember the last time I went to a show of any sort where at least one person in the audience didn't make the experience of being there worse by simply being alive, and last night was no exception. Shortly after the show started two hell beast women sat behind us and began talking a blue streak that didn't end until the show was over. They had heavy Southern accents and would punctuate everything John said with things like "YES" and "OKAY?" even though it was pretty clear that they had no idea what was going on, both at the show, or in life. I don't understand, and will never understand, why someone would pay money to see a thing and then spend the whole thing talking, but maybe I'll never in my life understand this because I'm not a full blown idiot. Mid way through the show they left for a glorious ten minutes to go outside and smoke cigarettes (again, why?) and that was the only time I was able to fully focus on what John was saying. Otherwise I was splitting mental time between straining to hear, and fantasizing about turning around and macing them both in the face. Towards the end of the show they capped off their reign of terror when one hell beast turned to the other and asked "how much longer could he possibly talk?" Oh, and they also had a friend who sat in our row and during the Q&A portion of the night he stood up and screamed at John some nonsense about having fucked a relative of Pat Moran's. He also walked up to the stage and tried to give John what looked to be a book or a DVD of some sort and John was like "I can't take that, I only have one suitcase.
All in all, aside from the whole "other people being there" thing, the show was amazing, as any show of John Waters always is. I hope he lives to be 189, and hope he'll one day offer the option of doing private shows so I, along with my loved ones, can enjoy what he has to say without sitting by a bunch of morons.
Previously: Plantain & Rudy Stone @ Saturn Bar
