My husband and I were there Friday night, too, right in the middle of the front row! I knew there had to be other folks there from the board. But I'm not bold enough to go up to random people who look vaguely familiar (as they might be from a picture from a Meet-Up or something) and ask if they were knew of this discussion board.
I'd like to post a thorough report, if I may. This is the first time I've ever seen a live performance of anybody I was a real fan of, so this was especially awesome. If you want just to read about the actual performance, and not all the details about our evening out, then you can skip this post.
I had told my husband a while back that all I wanted for Christmas was a ticket to CT live in Chicago. Not only did he get tickets, he got VIP tickets for both of us for all three nights!
Unfortunately, we couldn't attend the first show. An untimely snow storm Tuesday forced the rescheduling of my older daughter's holiday choral concert from that night to Thursday night. (Sorry, guys. I love CT, but my kids come first!
)
There was another lovely snowstorm late Thursday night. The streets were cleared off enough by Friday afternoon to permit us to travel to downtown Chicago without trouble. In fact, the snow may have worked in our favor. Either a lot of people had left work early, or hadn't gone in to work on Friday at all. We encountered hardly any traffic as we drove in from our northwestern suburb at 4:30 -- when rush hour is normally in full swing.
We managed not to get lost or in an accident, always a plus. There's a parking garage just a few doors away from the Lakeshore Theater, so we left the car there. We stopped by the theater and asked when the doors would open. See, when my husband called the box office to order the tickets, they explained that the theater is general seating, with the VIP seats in the first six rows of the middle section. First come, first seated; so we knew we wanted to get there as early as possible to be near the front of the line when the doors opened. It's not a big venue, only 300 seats. We had over an hour, as it turned out, so we went to have dinner.
The theater's in quite a decent neighborhood there (always a concern when visiting a new place in Chicago). Lots of small shops, restaurants, and exercise places (?!). So we waded through the slush-filled sidewalks looking for a place to eat. Only once did I step into a slush puddle that was deep enough to go over the top of my boot and soak my foot. We passed up a few empty cafes where one person sat alone at a back table, arms folded, glaring at passersby. We also avoided The House of Hooka. A five-star restaurant, fine, but--hookas? Seriously? Yecch.
We ended up at a Japanese restaurant, Nohana. I dried off my slushed foot as best I could with flimsy paper towels in the restroom. We had very good sushi (and some nice hot sake which we didn't nearly finish. Memo to self: next time, the 5 oz. carafe is plenty, especially when drinking from 1/2 oz cups). Still with plenty of time, we headed back to the theater.
Now this is the magic of live theater: we walk into the theater, and the first person we see is none other than J. Elvis himself, leather jacket, little earring, and all. We even had to squeeze around him to go on into the lobby.
We showed our tickets, got our wrists stamped in case we wanted booze (gee, they didn't ask to see our IDs, and we're only in our mid 40s!), and passed the tables of merchandise. We didn't get anything that night. They were taking cash only, and we weren't sure we'd brought enough. We also knew we'd be back Saturday night. It looked like they had CT T-shirts, DVDs, and signed cast silhouette photos for sale.
As it turned out, we weren't the first in line. There were two young guys, one with a scrolling LED button that read, "Push the button, Frank," and a few other couples ahead of us. Still, we were in a good spot. Basically, we hung around in front of the ATM, intimidating anyone who wanted to withdraw cash.
It seems that a big thing at the Lakeshore is their full drink and snack bar. Young women with trays wandered back and forth, trying to get people to buy stuff. We were full of sushi and sake, though, so we weren't tempted.
It was awesome to just stand there, looking around, and realize, hey, that's Trace, rocking a beard, talking to people! And, look, there's Mary Jo wandering around! And there's RAD, Mary Jo's husband Ron, serving as a an effective bodyguard. (Seriously, he's a pretty tall dude in person.) And that's Joel over by the bar talking to the staff! The only Titan we didn't see while we waited was Frank.
It's an odd experience to see them in person. Mainly because it isn't odd. They just look like... ordinary people. It seems that there should be some sort of magic aura or background music to let us know that here are some of the most brilliantly funny minds around. But, nope.
Speaking of music, the only unpleasant part of the wait was the loud music being blasted at us the whole time.
Finally they opened the theater doors around 7 o'clock. As I mentioned already, since we were so close to the front of the line, we got to sit right in the front. There was a fairly long wait, it seemed, but we did get to see Trace and Joel again, talking in the aisles. Frank finally showed up as well.
RAD, interestingly enough, wasn't sitting in the VIP section. He had an aisle seat not far back. My husband urged me to go up and say hi. After twenty minutes or so, I managed to build up my courage enough to go up to RAD and say, "Mr DeGroot?" He gave me a funny look. (Did I say his name wrong? Does no one ever call him by his last name?) But when I said, "RAD?" he jumped up out of his seat! And when I said I was Donna from this board, he gave me a hug! Now isn't that nice? I'm sure he doesn't have any memory of any Donna. But just hearing his user name, I guess, was like a code word or something--alert: true fan ahead.
We talked a little bit. He joked that he didn't know how they were going to do two performances that night and another two the next; because
he was exhausted already. He also very nicely said that I should bring my husband over and introduce him during the intermission. As it turned out, the show ran late and there wasn't time, but it was still a nice thought.
After we got into our seats, we waited. The Lakeshore staff had a few trivia questions. Then, sometime between 7:30 and 8:00, the warm-up act guy who does the poetry--what's his name?-- came out and did his jokes. Then Josh came out with him and they did some jokes and haiku stuff together. The best part was when Josh picked up his bass guitar. He pointed out his guitar strap, because his old one had broken and Joel had made him a new one out of duct tape! (Or fixed the old one with duct tape, I forget.) As Josh put it, "Joel's still got it." The funniest part was that the strap promptly broke during the first song.
Then Frank came out. He did a mildly naughty joke about a massage parlor that sounded strange coming from our sweet, naive TV's Frank. But as Josh said, we should call him DVD's Frank now. As Mummi mentioned, he did his Convoluted Man bit. During the last part where Frank sings
really hard, I got a bit worried because Frank's face turned really red.
They went off behind the stage curtains and another long wait ensued. In fact, I think it was another 20 minutes or so. It was a little after 8:30 when the Titans all came out and started the show.
To be continued....