So far it’s been a rather uneventful day. My incessant coughing is making my baby move all around and I think he is getting annoyed. I hope I don’t end up with problems because of all of this pressure on my belly. Anyway, today DH and I watched last night’s episode of Glee – the “Rocky Horror Glee Show.” Having been a avid singer every since middle school who unfortunately has reminded one of my medical school colleagues of Rachel ;-), I simply *love* Glee. It is truly the show that I wish was around when I was a teenager. I love it when nerdy groups become cool. If only our high school choir was as progressive as Glee. I also had a great time talking about Rocky Horror Picture Show (RHPS) with DH. He has never seen the show and I thought back fondly to my experience watching the movie. I am not sure if I had seen it before or not, but my sentinel experience with RHPS was when I was 16, visiting my family for a cousin’s wedding. I happened to see RHPS for the first memorable time in Berlin at a movie theater called the Olympiastadium – a gigantic outdoor cinema where people were coming by the thousands to see RHPS on the big screen. For all of my web searching I cannot find the Olympiastadium that I am looking for – which was in the middle of a big park. Where I was is not the concrete Olympic jungle that comes up on Wikipedia.
I remember the day vividly now even though it was *teen years ago. It was kind of a cool night, so I went wearing my green j crew huge canvas jacket (a la “My So Called Life” / “Freaks and Geeks”) , being towed innocently by my college-aged cousin and his best friend. I was enthralled by the crowds of people dressed in every outfit I could imagine, and they were towing with them all kinds of things: Newspapers, large water pistols, rolls of toilet paper, bags of flour. What the heck IS this, I thought?
And before I knew it I heard tons of German people yelling out phrases in English: expletives towards Brad, singing the songs, squirting water pistols. I saw everyone lift up newspapers during “There’s a Light” and water showered over all of us. We were low down in the amphitheater and as I looked up and up and up . . .I could see lighters and water flashing towards me, people swaying from side to side, everyone rejoicing in a HUGE crowd. People all singing together in Unison. There was no stage show like there often is here, but the spectacle was in a 360 degree radius. And for some reason the Deutsche Leute have an obsession with flour. I learned later that this “tradition” isn’t really upheld in the USA, but in Germany, when Meat Loaf crashes through the wall, and pretty much throughout the rest of the movie, you pelt one another with flour. So after being water soaked in my jacket, I found my entire self being continually pummeled with flour. And then there were the rolls of toilet paper, falling down through the hordes of people like streamers. It may sound strange, but to hear the music around me and to see the rolls coming toward me — was truly beautiful. By the end we were all a mess, happy, laughing, completely filthy covered with flour and toilet paper. My green overcoat had turned white!
When I got home from Europe I became RHPS obsessed. I joined the fan club, memorized the entire script (replete with obligatory cat-calls) and taped the movie on TV. I practically memorized history of the movie and the initial critical pans. The RHPS website became a huge haunt for me. When the time came for Halloween, I demanded that all my friends watch RHPS with me. So it happened, but the unfortunate fact is that watching RHPS in your living room shows you more what a terrible movie it is rather than making you remember all of its glory. It was not to be appreciated in its full glory at my 1996 Halloween watching among friends.
At this point in my RHPS-watching life it has become a “wrap-around,” meaning that all the bad parts eventually became good and hilarious, and the movie’s music instilled itself so deeply in my brain that it will never be released. And at times like this, I find myself digging through my CD collection looking for that beloved soundtrack. The Glee rendition was pretty good. I was disappointed that Quinn didn’t put the Transylvanian spin on the character of the maid during Time Warp – one of my favorite things is to mimic her sultry hypnotic voice! I did get a kick, however, out of Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf’s cameos. If only Tim Curry and Susan Sarandon had showed up during the episode!
Did all this really come from a woman who is giving birth to a little boy in a few short months. Cover your eyes and ears, little baby!