5:49 p.m. - 2004-09-26
On a Hot Summer Night...
Some days, you just gotta listen to Meat Loaf. That's what I'm doing. It reminds me of when Artie and I used to make the 3-hour drive down to Louisville every other weekend, just so we could go to the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Vogue Theater.
Before the movie started, this cast actually had 35mm videos for Tim Curry's "Paradise Garage" and Meat Loaf's "Bat Out Of Hell." Something tells me there was one other video, but I can't remember what it was. Probably a Tim Curry song, that's why. Sheesh.
The Vogue actually had a large, wooden stage in front of the screen for the cast to do their "acting" on. For the Meat Loaf video, the audience would line up around all three sides of the stage and slap out a rhythm (the one-and and the three-and) while Eddie lip-synced in the spotlight. Now, everytime I hear that song, I remember that part of the show and that time of my life - being 19 or 20, having friends that really did (at that time, anyway) mean the world to me, finally free of the pressures of high school. Artie and I stuck together for another 5 or 6 years before we started falling out of touch, but we still visit one another at least once a year.
Aside from the NYC cast that I saw in videos, the Louisville cast had the most well-organized show. On Halloween, they'd make this giant to-do: decorating the inside of the theater, staging raffles with actual prizes, arriving in limos, getting on the news, and showing the movie two whole times in a row. There was a Best Costume contest in between showings, and the creativity was mind-numbing. This was the place to be with your clever costume on Halloween.
In contrast, the cast we had in Cincinnati was full of drama and debauchery. The first Janet was killed in a car accident. The Frank N. Furter got one of the Magentas pregnant and married her, the Brad got another Magenta pregnant and married her, the Rocky got a Columbia pregnant and married her. My friend had broken up with the Frank and made several attempts to stalk him (to no avail). Years later, she announced that she was a lesbian, anyway.
The first Rocky from this cast tried to date me, but it was the most awkward dating experience I ever found myself in: he was notorious for being incredibly proud of the number of women he'd slept with by the tender age of 21 (looking back, 38 isn't a bad number for a short, cross-eyed guy with a lisp). When he asked me to go out with him, he used the phrase "go out with me" and not "have sex with me", so I agreed. After two weeks of holding the girlfriend title, but not having put out, I was given a really scripted speech about how many other girls were waiting to spend time with him and I should just not call anymore. Which I wasn't doing, to begin with. And it was over, just like that. I didn't even get a dinner out of it!
It seemed at the time like I hung around with this same crowd forever. I felt like I was a bastion of sanity in a sea of white trash. Only a little bit of white trash rubbed off on me, thankfully. Even so, I have mostly good memories from all that.
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