It’s Raining Men
I went to a male review this weekend. The word review has a bad connotation for me. I think of my former job and the dreaded performance reviews that were meaningless and painfully boring. The feeling that comes along with that word has not changed – I still feel a little nauseous, and now maybe like I need a shower. I’m also a little confused about why these shows are called a review. I didn’t get any score card to fill out. Maybe it is more of a review for the audience about what the correct body parts are or what a guy is supposed to look like naked. Either way, review is not a word that makes me jump up and say “I want to go to that!” Yet I did.
I have never been to a male review so I didn’t have a reference point. I haven’t even seen the movie Magic Mike, but I have seen quite a few memes with a bunch of half naked dancing dudes, so that was pretty much what I expected. This particular show was a group of touring performers, so I assumed the guys would meet a certain standard. None of my expectations were met. I felt like maybe the club owner walked onto the street and stopped random guys leaving the gym to see what they were doing that night. By gym, I mean the local YMCA. Oh, and he only found four guys. That’s fine though, the audience/performer ratio was still 5 to 1.
The audience consisted of a very drunken bachelorette party, a group of gay guys and their fag hags and us. The bachelorette and her posse were all wearing tight white dresses, and one of them was roughly the size of half of our group. She turned out to be the only member of the audience who really appreciated the attention from the dancers – so much in fact that she ended up on the stage with them more than once with her cell phone recording all of the incriminating evidence. The stripper/comedian on stage referred to these ladies as the “wasted white wedding” and us as “the sober divorce club” since we were the only patrons still able to stand up unassisted. He had no clever name for the gay guys which surprised me because I had about twelve. One of the gays was wearing a flannel shirt and what appeared to be a toupee. I had a half hour commentary about that guy alone before even looking at his companions.
Maybe the best part of the night was that we actually watched these yahoos setting up for the show. We arrived an hour after doors opened, right as a group of guys was hanging up a giant blanket on the back of the stage. This blanket was the highlight of the show. It was covered in dancing lights that mesmerized me for a full hour while half naked smarmy guys in cowboy hats danced around. It was magical. I spent the better part of the night trying to figure out how to remove this masterpiece from the stage and get it into my car without getting tackled by a shirtless guy with half a boner. I decided the odds were against me and left empty handed.
At one point my girlfriend turned to me and asked “where do you think they get these outfits?” My reply was “Walmart. Definitely Walmart.” They fit right in with the venue though. It was like a VFW hall outside of a trailer park. At one point I reached under my chair to move it and stuck my hand in something sticky. The makeshift bar may or may not have been on wheels and the ladies room was right outside of the dressing room for the dancers where they could be heard getting changed. At least they had a professional sound system or we may have missed all that witty banter from the guy with crooked teeth and cornrows. He announced he was from the south. No really!?
I was surprised at how many dances occurred with less than a half dozen men performing. They had group dances, individual dances, costume changes and even a few props. I think it was as entertaining as it could be given what they had to work with. From my understanding, a male review is supposed to be somewhat fantasy inducing, and my mind was definitely wandering. Unfortunately, my mind was reeling with questions like “I wonder how adonis ended up here, did he want to be a Juliard trained dancer but just couldn’t cut it?” or “I wonder if any of these guys were actually in the armed forces. Does putting on the military vest cause them to suffer PTSD?” or “who the hell picked this music? I heard the same songs at Drag Queen Bingo!” I mean seriously, when the song that is played repeatedly is pretty much the drag queen anthem, you have picked the wrong music to dance to.
When the country song came on, it was time to leave. I can only endure so much. Unfortunately, I think half of the audience was just waiting for someone to make the first move. I didn’t have to be asked twice. As soon as one of my friends made the “let’s bolt” face, I was at the door waiting. As we exited, the bachelorette party stumbled out behind us. A few other stragglers followed as well.The dancers were left with the gays and their crew which I think was right up their alley.
The woman who planned this event apologized profusely as we walked to our cars and we all assured her that the comic value made it a worthwhile night. She ended with saying “maybe we should stick to the arts and crafts…” Somehow I think we are going to end up in some DIY studio and they will also be playing “It’s Raining Men”.
**Photos have been withheld from this piece to protect the innocent.
There are only a few guys I want to see sweaty on a stage and Henry Rollins is one of them
I’m beginning to wonder if a few days with me makes my family sick. Every other time we go out of town or spend a long weekend together we all end up sick. I mean, I get it – I make myself a little sick on a regular basis, but it would be great to spend some time together without having to worry which one of them is going to start throwing up first. I would like to say I am not the cause of it, but I seem to always be the last one to catch whatever plague takes down our house. I spend the first few days after vacation taking care of the other two and then my mom has to take over babysitting while I barf for a day uninterrupted. I attribute this to me having a higher tolerance for myself than my other family members.
By the time my 8.01 year old was getting into bed, she was complaining about a stomach ache. She lasted about 15 minutes before she started throwing up. I don’t think anyone in our house slept more than a half hour at a time the entire night. For me it was similar to the night I gave birth to her, and many nights after. Luckily, the wee one recovers quickly like her mom and was done barfing within 24 hours. Her father on the other hand has been down for the count for several days. He ended up at urgent care having bags upon bags of fluid pumped into his veins. I attribute this to his inability to properly process vitamin JEN since he hasn’t had a four day dose in awhile.
Believe it or not, when I was a little kid, I was super shy. I didn’t really blossom until second grade when I changed schools. But, my first two years in school were pretty hellish, mostly because I was small and shy, and therefore, easy prey for the bullies of the public school system. Oh yeah, and I was smart. Smart enough that my teachers were somewhat frustrated with the fact that I already knew how to do a lot of the things they were supposed to be teaching me how to do. I was not particularly popular with my classmates or the teachers.
My daughter is going to be 8 this week. She has had her fair share of boys being mean to her, and never have I told her that the boy was doing it because he liked her. I have also never told her that a girl was being mean because she was jealous, which is something I also heard growing up. I have, however, heard several adults tell my daughter or other girls her age these things. I don’t think either excuse is valid or accurate. It’s one of those leftover ways of thinking that makes little girls feel responsible for other people’s actions and base their self-worth on how other people view them. At the very least, it teaches girls to think they are causing boys to behave badly. But far worse, it is telling girls that they should expect boys to be mean to them and that it’s acceptable for boys to mistreat them both emotionally and physically as long as it’s because boys just don’t know a better way to express themselves. That’s a load of garbage.
I took my daughter to get her hair cut last weekend. She has ridiculously thick, curly hair. It is beautiful, but when it gets too long it gets tangles. Some are so bad that it looks like she is working on some natural dreadlocks. One day I expect her to walk out of her room with a crocheted beanie on saying “Ya mon.”
Apparently my house now has communal socks. A month ago I bought myself new gym socks, but several pair have disappeared. A few weeks ago I found a pair on my daughter’s feet. The best part was she just thought I bought her new socks since she found them in her drawer. This is what happens when my husband folds the clothes. He has no idea what undergarments belong to who either. I found a pair of Wonder Woman underpants in my drawer awhile ago. They were a size 8, as in made for an 8 year old child.
It’s bad enough that my kid steals my socks, but now my husband is stealing them too. He met me at the gym the other day and promptly said “I think i’m wearing your socks.” I told him to pull up his pant leg so I could see and sure enough, I recognized them. He proceeded to tell me how soft and comfortable they were to which I responded “I should hope so. They’re cashmere!” I’m glad he was able to spend his last day at the gym in total comfort, but I don’t know if I even want the socks back now that they spent six miles on his sweaty feet. When he got home, he reached in his drawer and handed me another pair of the same socks. He had managed to confiscate two pair of my favorite socks without me even noticing.
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