The Hizzle of T-Fizzle

Today’s expedition to see “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” began well until we departed the PA turnpike to find that it was questionable whether a plow had even touched Route 1. 95 was not much better. We saw a bunch of ditched cars, but aside from slowing down, there were no major issues.

Upon our arrival we made our way to Hard Rock Cafe, Gab’s lunch request, which we were glad to accommodate since this trip was her birthday/Christmas present. We were soon met by The Book and his friend Kim and ate lunch. Of course the pager (which has hardly made a peep in the 2 weeks I carried it) went off while we were eating. Why is it that our systems only seem to experience hardware failures on Sundays? Luckily, The Ginner was available to do the needful. We made far better time than we had anticipated, so we killed some time visiting the Hershey’s store and Toys R Us.

Upon our arrival at the theater we were asked if we wanted to volunteer to actually be IN the spelling bee (four guests sit on the bleachers with the performers and are called up to spell words). Unfortunately while around 25 guests are interviewed and 4 of those are chosen, of the three of us who “interviewed,” none of us were chosen. X, who originally seemed skittish about the prospect came out of the show already planning to return JUST to try to get selected.

By this time we had met up with Finks and JMR and JMR’s parents, but there was not much time for chitchat as the show was soon to begin.

The show itself is very unique and very excellent. Definitely go see it if you have the opportunity. It is hialrious and at the same time presents a unique and touching perspective on life through the lens of a children’s spelling bee. Some memorable lines:
A guest speller is given “Jihad.” Upon asking for it to be used in a sentence, she was given “Get down behind the West Wall, Billy, I think there’s a jihad coming!” That guest misspelled the word. We suspect she was instructed to do so, as that seemed way too easy to miss.
Another guest speller was given “Cow.” He asked for a definition and an exasperated reader replied “Its…a COW.” When asked for a sentence the reader’s response was “PLEASE SPELL ‘Cow!’”

After the show Finks and clan JMR were off to the incomparable Harold’s NY Deli for dinner. I’ll post about THAT place when I am actually there. Since we had taken the train, that was out of the question. Book and Kim had a great idea: We could try to get in the $25 ticket lottery for “Wicked.” The drawing for an 8:00PM show opens at 5:30PM so we wandered to Starbucks to kill some time.

We returned to the lobby of The Gershwin and were ecstatic to find only about 10 people in the lobby! To further add to our excitement, a large group of people LEFT soon after we arrived. After about 10 minutes and the lobby getting emptier and emptier (according to Book there were usually around 100 people waiting by this time) we asked a crew member if there was a drawing for the 8:00 show and from her we learned that Wicked does not DO a Sunday night show! Ah well. We only lost a little time.

We stopped by a few shops before Book and Kim took off, and then we made our way back to the station where we decided that since we were in the neighborhood, we would hit up Joe’s Crab Shack for dinner. Hopefully the roads won’t be too bad on the way home!

Next show will probably be Sweeney Todd.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 15th, 2006 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Mobile Post, Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.