Back in the day, Geneseo hosted a super-cheap trip to Avenue Q – a Broadway play… about Sesame-Street-like puppets. As much as I like theatre, I hate puppets, so I took a rain check on that excursion. Damn… what was I waiting for?
Avenue Q is awesome. I had the fortune to catch it off-Broadway at the New World theatre this evening, and it was incredible. What they don’t tell you about the puppets is…
- They’re incredibly, irreverently funny.
- One of them is a slut, some of them are gay, all of them are racist.
- There’s a sex scene with full puppet nudity.
- They talk about real-world, real-life issues with profound insight.
- Any person in their 20s can relate to almost every single one of them.
This is basically Sesame Street re-imagined for a New York City setting, re-invented for adults, reconsidered for the challenges we face after we learn to count and spell.
While it takes amusing stabs at the corny memes of Sesame Street, Avenue Q plays a similar role to the show that inspired it – relating to its audience and giving them some consolation despite the confusion. In doing so, however, it flips our childhood lessons on their idealistic heads.
Some memorable quotes:
“Look around and you will find, no one’s really color blind. Maybe it’s a fact we all should face… everyone makes judgments, based on race!”
“What is my life going to be? Four years of college and plenty of knowledge, Have earned me this useless degree. I can’t pay the bills yet, ’cause I have no skills yet; The world is a big scary place, But somehow I can’t shake the feeling I might make A difference to the human race…”
“Right now you’re down and out, and feelin’ really crappy. And when I see how sad you are, it makes me kind of happy!”
“The Internet is for porn!”
“I wish I could go back to college, life was so simple back then! What would I give, to go back and live, in a dorm with a meal plan again? I wish I could go back to college, in college you know who you are. You sit in the quad and think, ‘Oh my God, I am totally gonna go far!’ How do I go back to college? I don’t know who I am anymore! I wanna go back to my room and find a message in dry erase pen on the door…whoa whoa whoa…I wish I could just drop a class. Or get into a play. Or change my major. Or fuck my T.A. But if I were to go back to college, think what a loser I’d be. I’d walk through the quad and think, ‘Oh my God, these kids are so much younger than me!’”
“Sex is only for now. Your hair is only for now. George Bush is only for now! Don’t stress relax let life roll off your back exept for death and paying taxes everything in life is only for now.”
As great as it would have been to catch this in a Broadway theatre, I’m glad I waited past the Geneseo trip. For one, those trips are usually kind of awkward. This play wasn’t written for people in college or younger, nor people 30 or older. It’s a gem conceived for post-grads living in New York, who get offers at jobs like these:
http://www.ripoffreport.com/Employment-Services/ECS/ecs-called-for-interview-long-jbeb6.htm
To these and all other job scams that spend hundreds of dollars posting to Monster and Career Builder to hire desperate post-grads as “marketers,” “public relations specialists,” “managers in training,” and in actuality charge them $50 a day to learn a good “pitch” to use on shoppers at the local New Jersey Home Depot – my response to your ads is ubiquitously this:
Thank you for your time, now fuck off and die.
This has been your friendly neighborhood blogger Dan.
