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February 5, 2007
The Standby Line @ Guru Pitka - 2.2.7
"We can't believe we're going to get in this time," we giddily thought, while waiting on the standby line for Guru Pitka last Friday night, an exercise in patience that we've become all too familiar with. Approximately 20 hopefuls stood in the icy drizzle, hoping upon wildest hope that the tiny Magnet Theater might have enough no-shows to allow us (or at least the royal us) entry. Ten o'clock rolled around, the ticketholder line was gone, and we could feel they were about to start calling standbys at any moment. But then, the unthinkable happened...
Sarah Vowell appeared.
She emerged from out of the darkness of night and nefariously claimed one of the last remaining seats, a seat we were later informed, was taped off especially for her. We remained outside shaking our fists, mostly in anger at the NPR star for not staying at home to write her next book and to some extent from the chill we were undoubtedly catching. Just then, another peculiar thing occurred.
Mike Myers came outside dressed in full Guru Pitka costume. He popped through a door adjacent to the entrance to take a look at the pitiful standbys. In his hand was a piece of chocolate, which he then offered to all of us. Like terrified savages, the line timidly formed a semicircle around Mr. Myers. One of the braver standbys accepted the chocolate from his palm and quickly lurched back to the group. Myers retired indoors.
Two standbys were let inside. The rest of us were given a pass good for a free show at the Magnet. And that was that.
Earlier in the evening, one of the standbys had joked with a friend he saw in the ticketholder line that he should text a play-by-play recap throughout the show. Alive From New York does one better and posted a write-up and some NEVER BEFORE BLOGGED details from the event (including his own Sarah Vowell sighting):
The show certainly didn't disappoint. I appreciated the time and effort Myers spent on this show. If it weren't for those twinkling eyes of his, you might not even recognize him in his Guru costume, complete with silver wig and beard combo, prosthetic nose, and white robe. He also put a lot of work into the show's graphics. His lecture was accompanied by a slideshow that displayed pictures of his Gurus (Guru Tugginmypuddha), examples of his previous self-help books ("I Know You Are, But Who Am I?"), and highlighted clever play-on-words that parodied the ridiculous world of motivational speakers (the topic of the evening was "Intimacy" or "Into Me I See," and he spoke of taking us from "nowhere" to "now here"). READ MORE
Posted by The Apiary at February 5, 2007 1:24 PM