I Am Cool with Nerds Having Money

Meaning that, at least in certain ways, I live in exactly the right place.

A friend and I went and saw Catching Fire at Cinerama yesterday. It had been almost exactly a month since I was last there, long enough for the costumes in the cases to turn over. Oh, Adama’s fanciest dress. Sure, 7 of 9’s incredibly tiny catsuit. Good good.

And then, across the lobby, I saw it, and I knew it without even being within sight of its plaque.

dude and leelooOk, I was excited about Leeloo too. But THE DUDE! I’d know that manky cardigan everywhere.

the dudeTHE TINY HOLE. Probably as it was when it was pulled from Jeff Bridges’ closet.

So yeah, I’m cool with nerds having money. When I imagine being stupid wealthy, the first thing I dream about is travel and relative freedom. The second is preservation – buying up a couple favorite blocks in Capitol Hill and having them be – well, not preserved in amber, but having the liberty to evolve in a way uninfluenced by development.

I like Cinerama.* And I like that we do get the benefit of this ubernerd’s incredibly deep collection of… stuff.

*Fun fact: when I first drove into Seattle nine years and two or three weeks ago, I stayed near the Cinerama. I drove by it and was a little freaked out, because it looked, at first glance, like Boston’s porno theater, and I had a shivering moment of not knowing what the hell kind of neighborhood I had booked myself into. I spent the first night hiding in the Days Inn, eating pizza I’d had delivered and contemplating my fate while watching cable.

Cancel Your Plans for Tonight.

Go on. Get your phone. Tell your mom you can’t come over for dinner, cancel your Bible study group, and tell your sweetheart they’ll have to have a ménage à moi tonight. You have new plans for Saturday night, and here they are:

You are going to see shadow puppets tonight.*

“What?” you just said. I heard you. I’ll play along with you, even.

You are going to see shadow puppets tonight.

You see, the newest installment of the seriously-I-cannot-overstate-how-delightful-it-is Sgt. Rigsby series at the Theatre Off Jackson is closing tonight. Ignore what it says on the site and go with Brown Paper Tickets – tonight is the last night it is playing and you need to go see this.

Look, I even took a surreptitious picture of the set for you. Just look.

The set of Sgt. Rigsby at the Theatre Off JacksonOk, that doesn’t tell you much except that it’s neat. But you’ve got four voice actors on your right, voicing a cast of dozens and providing sound effects. You’ve got a pair of musicians on the left, providing mood music and the musical numbers liberally studded through this thing, and you have the salacious, wonderful story of Chicken Jenny, scrappy chanteuse and gal who simply cannot escape her own bad luck. And happens to be a chicken. There’s a rentboy lamb, multiple poisonings, topless mermaids, double- and triple-crossing, dreams come true, fallen priests, and more noir-style similes than I can even begin to recount here at this late hour.

Just go. Get a friend you like and trust, grab yourself a banana beer or lime rickey at the bar, and just go. And then wait eagerly with the rest of us for the next installment.

If you must, there are some snippets on YouTube. It’s late, so I haven’t vetted them, but the first several are relevant.

Make it a full night and take your friend to Harbor City around the corner first. You can order baskets of dim sum dumplings before waddling, full to the top, over to take in culture.

Go. Go! What else were you going to do, hand-wash your dainties and catch up on your Tivo? Get out of the house! Go see this thing! Laugh your ass off and thank me later.

*Assuming you are within reasonable distance of Seattle. Which, in this case, is up to a three-hour drive.