A friend of mine just messaged me saying “I fucked up. I was doing math with my son, and I told him to ‘hold up eleven fingers’ and he started to panic and I didn’t realize why until he screamed ‘MOM…MOM I ONLY HAVE TEN”
SOMEONE CALL THE FUCKING AMBULANCE I AM DYING
(via clockwork-mockingbird)
Saw Stephen Fry live last week, and he told us this story: Just after the first Harry Potter book had been released, he was offered the role of narrating it for audiobooks. He hadn’t read it, and was simply told it was a children’s book, so figured it would be an easy afternoons work. When he met JK Rowling, she mentioned that she was writing a sequel. Stephen replied very condescendingly “good for you”.
A few years down the line, the books are selling well, and he is doing the recording for the Prisoner of Azkaban, when he runs into the phrase “Harry pocketed it”. Stephen could not say this line. It always came out as “Harry pocketeded it”, unless he said it ridiculously slowly. They tried time and time again to get it right, but to no avail. Eventually, he called up JK and asked if he could say “Harry put it in his pocket” instead. She thought for a moment, then said “no”, and hung up.
The phrase “Harry pocketed it” appeared in the next four books.
Petty Revenge: Your daily dose of the best petty revenge stories. | cr
(via amusewithaview)
so last night my roommate and i were watching not another teen movie. anyone who knows me knows that’s a weird thing for me to watch but
- my roommate has a cold and had taken nyquill and wanted to watch it
- chris evans is in it and there’s a scene where he has a banana in his butt
so there we are, waiting for the amazingness that is chris evans’s butt when my cat, who was flopped on the floor dead asleep, suddenly perks up. stands up. meows. and we’re both looking at him like ‘what got into you’ when suddenly from her window, which is at the back of the apartment, comes a sound, loud enough to scare us all, just once BANG and we look at each other and decide
- some poor creature has just run into her window
- we’re going back to watching chris evans with a banana up his butt
but my cat doesn’t settle down and he’s now staring intently at the window and meowing and there it is again but not so loud this time and not just once Bang Bang Bang and now we’re both freaking out just a little bit because it’s two am and we’re trying to watch chris evans with a banana in his butt
and then from the front of the apartment, at the living room window, directly in front of her room, we hear BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG and now we and the cat are all freaking because
- what the fuck
- it’s like two ten in the morning
- we’re trying to watch chris evans with a banana in his butt
and the kitchen window is open because it’s one of the few that has a screen in it and a deep voice booms out our names and then the person outside, trying to get in and interrupt our chris evans watching goodness, begins beating on the door and jiggling the knob.
i knew the voice and so did my nyquill drugged roommate. her ex, with whom she was on friendly terms. until he interrupted our chris evans watching. my roommate is small and drugged.
- i am not
- i am now very angry
- you interrupted me watching chris evans with a banana in his butt
i stomp to the front door, yank it open, and scream ‘WHAT THE HELL’ so loud a few apartments down i hear a dog start to bark. the ex is startled. i’m taller than him and i’m angry and he is obviously drunk and tries to tell me he’s here for my roommate.
- “Uh no,” i say in a very black widow-esque voice “you’re leaving”
- and i slam the door in his face and flip the deadbolt
i shut the kitchen window and drop the wood pieces in the rail so it won’t open because i live in a cheap apartment that doesn’t have locks or screens on a lot of the windows. i go back to my roommate’s room where we resume watching chris evans (we’re coming up on the scene with the banana)
BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG
the door
‘WOULD YOU LEAVE. YOU’RE NOT WELCOME HERE’ my roommate wonders if i’ve always been able to yell that loud.
BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG
the window
‘LAST WARNING ASSCLOWN. LEAVE NOW.’
lots of yelling our names. frustrated, i pull out my phone and call the cops. the dispatcher gets my info and says a unit is on the way and at this point i’m very upset because i’ve missed the banana scene. then she tells me if he gains entry to the house to call her right back
- lady i have a baseball bat
- if he gains entry his face will meet it and you’ll need an ambulance not a cop car
thirty minutes after he showed up, the cops arrive and haul him away. my cat settles down. my roommate falls asleep after a second dose of nyquill. i have missed chris evans with a banana in his butt.
moral of the story: don’t mess with me when i’m trying to watch chris evans with a banana in his butt.
I just saw this and needed to go back to the original source to reblog the whole thing in full.
(via clockwork-mockingbird)
tonight-im-a-rock-and-roll-star:
There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.
best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere
During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well
Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.
Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.
So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).
This is wild from start to finish
I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hook’s mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went “YOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!” in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)
My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and she’d get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com “zombie Juliet” and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.
i attended my county’s performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so it’s not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actor’s workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show.
my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.
in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.
so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-
PFFFFFFFFFRRRRRBTFTBTBFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.
the lesson: sometimes there are fuck ups you just can’t recover from.
During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?
Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.
The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.
Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.
Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.
Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.
Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.
Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.
Sunday Night: Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise - apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.
Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.
In a dress rehearsal for Peter Pan, Wendy forgot one of her lines and started singing the star spangled banner and the audience was singing along and people got emotional
Once during the closing night of our high school production of south pacific, we were havin our pre-show pep talk, and our director reminded everyone (mostly seniors) not to go off script to try to be funny. Of course we had one lead who decided to ignore this advice. So during one scene where the sailors were “fishing” at the edge of the stage, he decides to pull up his rubber fish, make a comment about how it wasn’t big enough, and throw it back into the “ocean”, which of course, was the audience. Now, this probably wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if he had gently tossed it, since it would have landed right behind the pit. But naturalt, he decided that this fish had to break free in the most dramatic way possible, so he winds up and chucks this fucking foot-long rubber fish with all of his strength. So now imagine the stage crew, all of us huddled together, silently screaming as this limp fish goes sailing over the heads of the audience in what looks like a low-budget reenactment of free willy, only to slap some poor parent across the face. I swear, you could almost hear the chorus of “mmmm whatcha saaayyy” rising from all those backstage. From that moment on, all rubber fish were ferociously guarded by yours truly, under the direction of our stage manager.
This post gets better every time it shows up on my dash
In high school I did costuming for The Wiz and accidentally made the Lion’s wig too backheavy and didn’t even know that toupee clips were a thing then. (it was the first ever show I designed and costumes for) In the first show, during the middle of the scene when the lion is introduced, the wig fell off his head. There was a beat of stunned silence, followed by a scandalized “MY WEAVE” from the actor for the lion and the audience lost it. It was practically glued to his head after that.
During my high school’s production of Chicago the boy playing Amos got a little flustered with his lines during Funny Honey and ended up calling Roxie his ‘waifu’
In the final dress rehearsal for our high school production of A Christmas Carol, we had to do a quick set change from Scrooge’s office to his bedroom in the scene where he meets Marley’s ghost. However, this also meant that the actor playing Scrooge had about 15 seconds to peg it to the wing, and do a quick change from a full suit to a set of pyjamas, then hop into a bed to be carried on stage. But on this show, Scrooge just couldn’t make it in time and the only people who knew about it first were the assistant director, the costume/makeup people and those in charge of carrying the bed on stage. Everyone else was oblivious. So the silence settles in, the lights come up, and the music starts, with the sounds of Marley’s chains pre-recorded over the music. Marley has no choice but to make his way on stage without a Scrooge to confront. This is the moment when everyone realises, and the tension in the air is unreal. The music guys fade the sound out and Scrooge still isn’t in the bed. So Marley takes a seat by Scrooge’s bed and pulls off this huge, incredible, improvised monologue about his time with Scrooge and what he has come here to do. Throughout this, everyone backstage is dying. Some doubled over laughing, some trying to claw Scrooge’s eye out for missing his cue. But the audience did absolutely nothing. Then Scrooge vaults himself into the bed and makes like he’s asleep. Marley slowly stands up and says “time to make myself seen” and the rest of the scene went on without a hitch.
tl;dr - Marley enters Scrooge’s bedroom and Scrooge isn’t there. Marley saves the whole play by coming up with a huge and brilliant monologue to the audience about his time with Scrooge just when we all thought we were fucked.oh boy do i have some stories from my most recent show
- my buddy drew and i both played Puck in our high school’s rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (don’t ask, our drama teacher had a cool idea that we’d both play him at the same time as if we were twins and like alternate our lines and say things at the same time and stuff, it was neat, you had to be there) and during our second showing the person who played Robin Starveling brought one of those fake candles onstage except at one point she dropped the candle and iT SHATTERED ALL OVER THE STAGE and we had dancers coming onstage after Puck’s monologue and they were all barefoot and we didn’t want them to step on the glass so drew and i had to nonchalantly bring a fuckign BROOM onstage as if it were just any stage prop and right after we finished our monologue and the lights went down we had about 5 seconds to sweep the glass off the stage as quickly as possible it was a shitshow
- during our final show there was this one moment where drew has to hop on my back and i have to piggyback him offstage and it worked flawlessly every other time but for this oNE PARTICULAR SHOWING my dumb ass didn’t plant my feet well enough and as soon as he got on my back my knees buckled and i deadass just collapsed onstage so we quickly and non-verbally agreed to have drew piggyback me offstage instead but i’m also like 40 pounds heavier than he is so it looked really awkward with me on his back and him kinda just hobbling away
- ok during the parts where either Puck or Oberon has to sprinkle this magic whatever from this love flower onto certain characters there’s usually a pinch or two of glitter in the flower props that we get from a cup that’s filled with glitter backstage but for our final show we still had a lot of glitter left in the cup that we had to get rid of so we had the brilliant idea to just fuckin pour the entire rest of the contents of the Glitter Cup into the flower prop so it was filled to the literal brim and have the person who played Oberon dump it all over the person who played Demetrius so during that scene drew and i watched from the wings and struggled to hold in our laughter as we just saw this GIANT CLOUD OF BRIGHT PINK GLITTER emerge from the flower prop and settle all over our Demetrius so like the entire right side of his face and body was absolutely coated in glitter it was so fucking hilarious and the best part was there was this big confrontation scene between Demetrius, Lysander (shoutout to my pal brad), Hermia, and Helena and they all had to stay 100% serious doing probably the most intense scene of the whole play with Demetrius looking like a vampire from twilight the whole time. as soon as he came backstage he came after our Oberon angrily yell-whispering “FUCK YOUUUU” at him it was AMAZING
(Source: stardustschild, via bronzedragon)
this is how u use tinder right
he came out of left field with this one
update: I banged him
(via thepainofthesass)
Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”.
There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.
or the one where the bridge never came out for Javert’s suicide and so he just pretended to stab himself and then lay there until the lights went out
best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere
During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well
Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.
Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.
So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).
This is wild from start to finish
I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hook’s mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went “YOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!” in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)
In my seventh grade play, which was a midsummer night’s dream, Thisbe didn’t have a sword so she stabbed herself with a coathanger
My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and she’d get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com “zombie Juliet” and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.i attended my county’s performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so it’s not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actor’s workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show.
my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.
in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.
so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-
PFFFFFFFFFRRRRRBTFTBTBFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.
the lesson: sometimes there are fuck ups you just can’t recover from.
During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?
Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.
The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.
Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.
Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.
Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.
Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.
Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.
Sunday Night: Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise - apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.
Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.
In a dress rehearsal for Peter Pan, Wendy forgot one of her lines and started singing the star spangled banner and the audience was singing along and people got emotional
Once during the closing night of our high school production of south pacific, we were havin our pre-show pep talk, and our director reminded everyone (mostly seniors) not to go off script to try to be funny. Of course we had one lead who decided to ignore this advice. So during one scene where the sailors were “fishing” at the edge of the stage, he decides to pull up his rubber fish, make a comment about how it wasn’t big enough, and throw it back into the “ocean”, which of course, was the audience. Now, this probably wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if he had gently tossed it, since it would have landed right behind the pit. But naturalt, he decided that this fish had to break free in the most dramatic way possible, so he winds up and chucks this fucking foot-long rubber fish with all of his strength. So now imagine the stage crew, all of us huddled together, silently screaming as this limp fish goes sailing over the heads of the audience in what looks like a low-budget reenactment of free willy, only to slap some poor parent across the face. I swear, you could almost hear the chorus of “mmmm whatcha saaayyy” rising from all those backstage. From that moment on, all rubber fish were ferociously guarded by yours truly, under the direction of our stage manager.This post gets better every time it shows up on my dash
My Junior year of high school our drama club put on Peter Pan,which involved the construction of a small boat fashioned out of scrap wood,plaster and an old wagon. A few of the actors who were cast as pirates had to ride the boat-wagon down the aisle to the front of the theatre,which had a concrete floor that sloped. About halfway down the brake they were using to control their speed gave out,and they crashed into the front of the stage at high speed.The entire boat imploded. The actors just sat there in silence for at least a full 10 seconds in the midst of the wreckage before my friend Adena screamed “ABANDON SHIP” and they all jumped out and took off running.
My school once did a parody of Cinderella and I was Cinderellas dog. At one point Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother, and the dog had to flea the ball. I thought going down the stage steps wasn’t dramatic enough for “fleeing” so I launched myself off the stage and landed painfully in the center isle about three rows in accompanied with a very, very loud thump of face on concrete where I laid there like a dead fish for a while. At this point Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother got to me, not knowing what to do they stepped over me and continued running. But Cinderella had forgotten to loose her shoe so half way out of the room she chucked it back where it hit me in the head. I bolted upright and ran shrieking hysterically out of the room. A moment later the Prince came down to where the shoe was picked it up, looked dramatically at where I had exited and said “I hope that dog’s okay.” completely forgetting his line.
This may be my all time favorite post.
I was once in a production of “Hello Dolly!” and the two leads were complete jokers and would prank each other during rehearsals all the time. The rest of the cast never thought they would do that during a show, but they told the chorus (separately) that they each were planning to add some tongue into the final kiss between Dolly and Horace. Of course, we told neither of them about the other’s plan, so during the very last show, we were all waiting in the wings to see what would happen. What happened was we ended the show with the two leads violently frenching each other on stage as the curtain dropped. They started dating two weeks later.
Last year we did “Once Upon a Mattress” and the jester was supposed to do a somersault off of a stack of like 3 mattresses and then the minstrel and Lady Larken would be covered up with a blanket, but during one show the jester knocked down one of the mattresses and we had no time to fix it so we had to throw the mattress on top of them
(Source: stardustschild, via dyinghistoric)
i’ve definitely told you about this before but my dad and my uncle have this whole star wars vs star trek rivalry where they’ll get each other passive aggressive gifts (my dad is a star wars fan, and will always get my uncle star wars merch. my uncle claims star trek is so much better and star wars is lame. he will always get my father star trek merch. this has been going on since my parents got married.)
this is going to be a good year for arguing
my uncle just arrived. my mom shouted “kids, uncle rich is here!” my dad bellowed “MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU” down the stairs. my uncle shouted back “YOU CANT SEE IT BUT IM GIVING YOUR DOG THE VULCAN SALUTE” i love christmas here
dinner was alright until over dessert my dad brought up “so, richie, you see the new star wars movie” until it devolved into a wine fueled shouting match. highlights include “WELL AT LEAST WE DIDNT HAVE JAR JAR GODDAMNED BINKS” “AT LEAST WE DIDNT BLOW UP–” “YES YOU DID. FIRST MOVIE. YOU BLEW UP A PLANET” “shit”
this years argument, like every year before it, ended with “nice to see you.” and them slapping each other on the back which i think is a guy way of hugging goodbye.
this is the best thing i’ve ever seen
(Source: lesbianshepard, via yea-lets-do-this-shit)
Have I ever told you guys the true story of the Revolution Christmas Tree?
This one absolutely 100% happened (unlike the drunk zombie geese story which likely only 35% happened, but maybe I’ll tell you about it one day). It happened to my family when I was 4 y/o.
So imagine Evil Commie Land in the late ‘80s: severe food shortages, no heating (seriously, people slept with their stoves on for heat and sometimes the gas was cut off and came back randomly during the night and carbon monoxide poisoning was a thing). Also large, beautiful, historical chunks of our capital city were being bulldozed into oblivion because our megalomaniac shithead supreme leader wanted to build the biggest fucking thing there was. Anyway, it sucked.
On top of that we were also technically not supposed to celebrate Christmas, because religion is the opiate of the masses etc. etc. But we did anyway, every year and with great enthusiasm, running as we did on the sweet fuel of go ahead and tell a motherfucker they’re not allowed to do something.
So. Christmas. The way we did Christmas back in the day was to make it as secular and proletarian as possible: officially no church services, no religious carols, no Jesus thingy, no calling Santa Claus Santa Claus (we called him Old Man Frost idk)
The only thing we did exactly the same as regular Christmas, in the privacy of our homes, was the Christmas tree. This is how you got a Christmas tree:
- you went to the marketplace where Christmas tree sellers were
- these were not like, official, state-sanctioned commercial workers, but people with the capacity to somehow provide you with 1 pc. coniferous for Proletarian Christmas celebrating purposes
- I have no fucking idea who they were or how they got them
- anyway, you went to the marketplace where Christmas tree sellers were and you talked to one of them and you told them what kind of Christmas tree you wanted (options were: fir/spruce, medium-ish/small)
- you paid them in advance and agreed on a date where you’d come by and pick your Proletarian Christmas tree
- you picked up your Proletarian Christmas tree, brought it home to the family and decorated it with stuff you inherited from your great-grandmother or your mom made out of candy wrappers like 15 years before
- you celebrated Christmas. Proletarianly.
So along comes 1989. Shit boils over and by December 21st, we have a violent revolution right on the streets of our capital city.
Now, I was 4 and my brother was 6 months old and our parents decided that we absolutely cannot go without a regular Christmas in our house, especially now that the world is about to go to shit. We didn’t have anything, presents or nice food or. Anything? Basically. The one thing we had was dad had arranged to get our Christmas tree on the day. So he tells my mom that he’s going to pick it up, and instead of knocking him cold and chaining him to the radiator, like the sensible woman she usually is, my mom goes ok just put on an extra sweater you don’t want to catch a cold haha right?
Let me break this down for you in case there’s any misunderstanding as to what we’re talking about. Outside:
- violent riots
- army
- snipers
- tanks
- plainclothes secret police randomly shooting people dead in the street
- I seriously cannot stress the snipers enough
So off goes my dad to pick up our Christmas tree. And he’s gone for five hours, on a trip that normally takes like 30 minutes at a casual stroll. And the more time passes, the deeper my mother sinks into an all-out nervous breakdown. She’s barely keeping it together, my grandmother is trying to comfort her, while my brother is sleeping quietly, which is a good thing, because at some point there’s a weird rumbling outside our building.
‘What’s that?’ say I, 4 years old and desperate for some straight, no-bullshit answers
‘Nothing,’ says my mom. ‘Nothing’ is the second stupidest thing to say to an observant, intelligent kid who’s been locked up for a week and kept in the dark about shit that’s very obviously happening just outside.
‘No, really, what is that?’ say I, seriously determined to get a straight, no-bullshit answer.
Years later, after piecing bits of memories together, I realized there are only so many ways to skirt around ‘It’s a tank, dear’, which is the single stupidest thing to say to a child who’s been locked up for a week if you expect them not to run outside because they want to see, damn it.
So when my dad finally comes home five hours later, with the goddamn tree, she’s either too exhausted to say much, or doesn’t want to have that conversation in front of her kid, who is seriously right on the brink of smashing something out of frustration.
It wasn’t until I was in highschool that he told me he’d actually been shot at several times, because sneaking around street corners carrying a large tree is not at all suspicious when everyone is so strung up. Any sniper who might have been around absolutely did not think he was probably a revolutionary agent smuggling weapons or w/e instead of a dad trying to make a nice Christmas for his family BECAUSE WHAT THE ACTUAL EVERLOVING FUCK
So this is the story of the Revolution Christmas Tree, aka the story of how my dad almost got shot lugging around an overpriced bit of spruce in the middle of violent street fighting so his kids could have Christmas.
There are some levels of parenting you just can’t beat.
(via bonehandledknife)
Anonymous asked: okay, that story about your roommate and the spaghetti squash sounds intriguing.
@appropriately-inappropriate this rivals your coffee story, for sure!!okay this story falls under the ‘sarah is bonkers & has to make everything she does way more difficult than it should be’ category of life decisions
so this happened when i was an undergrad, & i lived in an apartment with this other girl in the same town my parents live in, which was actually an ok setup because i could borrow their car & get free food without having to listen to my father snore or play james taylor’s christmas album. my mother belonged to this farming co-op thing where she’d get a bunch of weird ass veggies & stuff once a week from local farmers (& i grew up in arizona so like. sometimes it was weird shit). & i often got all the extra weird food my parents didnt want to bother cooking because i was a poor college student & didn’t complain about it.
so one week my mom picks up her veggie order & gets this giant monstrous spaghetti squash, its HUGE. my mother HATES spaghetti squash for whatever reason. hates it. naturally she offers to give it to me & i’m like ‘yeah ok sure’ & she’s all ‘sarah i can walk you through how to cook this but i don’t want it in my house i hate these things but tell me if you need help cooking this’ & i’m like ‘MOM i can cook a fucking squash it’s fine i’m 20 years old’
& i become VERY DETERMINED to cook this damn thing because my mother had implied that i didn’t know what i was doing & was helpless & just floundering my way through life. how cooking a giant evil orange oblong squash was gonna prove this i can’t tell you but that’s what i thought. i think i wanted to demonstrate that i was RESOURCEFUL and HEALTHY and ATE ADULT FOOD SHE DOESN’T LIKE.
naturally it was NOT FINE.
i bring the damn thing home & decide it’s too big to really do anything with so i’ll cut it open before i cook it because that’ll be easiest. i DID NOT read any directions on how to cook a spaghetti squash because i was determined to DO IT MYSELF LIKE AN ADULT WHO EATS SPAGHETTI SQUASH AND NEEDS NO HELP FROM NOBODY.
so i pretty quickly realize that i’m pretty unable to actually cut the squash open. it’s massive & has a thick rind & i can’t get a knife into it. i spend probably twenty minutes sitting on my kitchen floor with the squash in my lap trying to stab it with every knife in the kitchen & i can’t even get it fucking started. if i’d owned a fire ax i probably would’ve taken a fire ax to it. & naturally the situation evolves from simply a test of my adulting abilities to a TEST OF MY HONOR AND STRENGTH. I’VE GOT A 4.0 i tell myself I CAN OUTSMART A SQUASH but i can’t because i can’t cut it open. i have a bit of a meltdown at this point because my self worth, which is fragile & bewildering on a good day, is being torn to shreds by a stupid fucking orange gourd.
the logical thing to do at this point would have been to give up because i’m not all that wild about spaghetti squash anyway but i CANT ADMIT DEFEAT I HAVE TO OWN THIS STUPID MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!
so i decide to stick the squash in a giant pot & boil it for a while until it gets soft enough to be cut open. brilliant. i’m a genius. i’m so pleased with myself. everyone in the entire world could have told me this was a bad idea. if i’d called my mother to ask for her help she would have probably had a heart attack but i didn’t do that because i’m DETERMINED TO WIN.
so i stick the damn thing in the biggest pot i have, put it on the stove, & feeling very pleased with myself go to take a nap because i’ve fought a battle that i am winning
my roommate gets home maybe an hour and a half later, drops her stuff off, sees me sleeping on the couch and walks into the kitchen. and naturally, as soon as she walks into the kitchen the vegetable bomb that i planted in a pot of boiling water on our stove goes the fuck off which is what happens when you put a large round semi-hollow object in a pot of very hot water so steam builds up inside and then forget about it. so roommate walks into the kitchen
and the squash TAKES FLIGHT.
because, surprise, when you let an incredible amount of steam build up inside something shaped like a bomb it will BURST A HOLE IN THE SIDE AND FLY INTO THE AIR LIKE A RED HOT GOURD PROJECTILE
it sounded kind of like someone firing a cannon in our living room so i wake up thinking someone is SHOOTING AT ME, vault over the couch screaming to see the squash launch out of the pot of water straight up into the air. it misses my roommate’s head by maybe a half a foot. she screams and i scream and we both hit the deck and the squash smacks into the ceiling and then to the ground, splattering squash insides all over us and the floor.
needless to say i had a lot of apologizing to do because i almost murdered her with dinner, & i then had to tell my mother that i’d completely failed in making my point about being mature & self sufficient, but had discovered that spaghetti squash work really great as weaponry if the situation ever arises.
i think she laughed at me for forty five minutes.
so there you go, that’s the story about how i almost accidentally committed squash bomb homicide
BEST FOOD STORY.
Soooo, dinner at @shittybknights place. I’ll bring the after-dinner cafécito.
So I’m in theatre class
We’re working on Shakespeare scenes for competition
A couple of freshmen boys are doing a scene that mentions a sword
The teacher is trying to tell them that they do not need to have a prop sword
They are not understanding
So young
So naive
“90% of the time” she says
“When Shakespeare says ‘sword,’ he’s not talking about a metal sword”
They are still not understanding
The rest of the class understands
We know what we are witnessing
The destruction of innocence
They are so new to the ways and language of the bard
Cinnamon rolls
Pure
Unaffected by theatre kids
Untouched by the horrors of the world
They still do not understand
The teacher does not know what else to do
She knows they cannot go to competition wielding an actual prop sword
She knows they will eventually learn
The class knows this too
We are dying to know what she will say next
She opens her mouth
We are on the edge of our seats
She yells
“LETS TALK ABOUT PENISES!”
Whoop.
There it is
The secret is out
Shakespeare makes dick jokes
Theatre teachers sometimes say things other teachers don’t
It is a shock to their system
In their minds, the kill bill siren
Their world has turned upside down
We can see it in their face
We lose it
We are accustomed to this
We have heard worse
But seeing their faces
It is too much
At this moment
The door opens
A sophomore enters
This is his first theatre class
All he heard was
“Let’s talk about penises”
He shouts out in a confused horror
The cycle is never ending
(Source: its-maria-not-maria, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
Vodka Tia Moran
