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feeling: increasingly tired
listening to: nothing
Well, I had to type it somewhere. Prepare for my review of Whose Line is it Anyway as performed live at the Mershon Auditorium, a 5 minute walk from my dorm, free to students and first come first serve. :D
So I left around 5:30, stopped at a Wendy's on the way for a burger dinner, and got to the Mershon just a bit before 6:00 (2 hours early). The doors hadn't yet opened, and there were maybe 30 or 40 people waiting in a line - or more like a clump - outside the door. As it turned out, the doors didn't open until 7:00, so I had to stand outside for an hour while the line got more and more insane. Finally the doors opened and the pushing and shoving and fighting for position began. I ended up getting a seat in the fourth row. Fourth row! I was close enough to see the cute little wrinkles Colin gets in the corners of his eyes when he smiles~ ^___^ Of course, I was riiiiiiight on the end of the row, 5 feet from a security guy, and had I been paying attention I could've moved up to the end of the first row, but I didn't notice it fast enough. Can't complain about the fourth row though, I guess.
Another hour went by before Colin Mochrie (the first thing I noticed: his hair was WHITE :P), Greg Proops, and Brad Sherwood were introduced and did their little intro, where they figured out how the OSU tradition of shouting O-H! and having everyone else respond by shouting I-O! works, and such. Colin walked down the center aisle of the front section (first four rows on the floor) passing sheets of paper down each row for people to write suggestions for a later game... I was wishing like mad at that point that I'd been able to fight my way to the center of that row instead of settling for the far end. *sigh*
It was odd... for some reason they changed the names of almost all the games they played. Like, the first game was Moving People, but they called it Moving Bodies. I dunno. They had a couple female volunteers moving Colin and Brad around in accordance with the suggestion for an imaginary holiday: Beer Day. Welcome to Ohio State. Yeah, it was pretty good... hehe, the one girl had Colin collapse onto one knee to give Brad a gift, and poor Colin was straining every muscle in his body, facial ones included *giggle*, to keep from falling over without making any big visual actions that would ruin the point of the game. Of course, this was still college, so there was much grabbing of Brad's butt by Colin's student-controlled hand and vice versa. Pretty fun, but that was actually the shortest game of the night.
Then they did Styles, which on the show is called Film, TV, and Theater styles. It was conducted a little differently... Colin and Greg acted out the scene, set in Ann Arbor (home of Michigan U, Ohio State's biggest football rivals, for the clueless) as per someone's suggestion, starting out normally at first, while Brad had then stop every few minutes and at that point asked for suggestions on film and theater styles. The first style shouted out, of course, was porno. *shakes head* But Brad bypassed that one and had them do action first, involving Greg driving an imaginary motorcycle with Colin as his passenger, and of course that involved them flying over an ice ramp (ice because it's Ann Arbor :P) and landing in perfect sync. These guys have amazing chemistry when they perform... when two motorcycle riders drive, turn, ramp, fly through the air, and land, you almost forget there's not actually a bike under them. Anyway... then they broke out guns and started shooting stuff ("Whaddya think we do for fun here in Ann Arbor?! ~Greg), then Brad froze them and asked for more suggestions, and picked romance next... of course the obligatory "I wonder if he noticed that I was excited when he was riding on the motorcycle with me" came up, then Colin gave Greg flowers, which Greg decided was a cactus. Colin: "Yeah. Ow. *rubs butt where apparently he'd been sitting on the cactus during the ride*" ^^ Then was the best part... Brad had them do Western, meaning I got to see Greg do John Wayne!! :D As well as another example of these guys' onstage chemistry - Greg threw the imaginary cactus at Colin, who caught it in midair with perfect timing. Even Greg was surprised. So... then they of course did Porno, in which of course Greg dropped something and bent over to get it... then they did musical theater, in which they got to dance around like idiots, which no one does better than Colin >u< Just another of many classic Whose Line staples that I got to see tonight... I'm so fortunate~ Sooo then they did Kabuki, which was also pretty funny... and finally they did Porno Kabuki, which was hysterical. Another classic Greg bit that I'm so proud I got to see performed live: shouting "Godzilla!" in a wussy Japanese-accented voice. ^o^
Then they did Questions Only, which ran MUCH longer than the game usually does, because they made it an actual contest where something was at stake. They had 3 (female) volunteers come up and sit on stools while Brad, Greg, and Colin performed. Each of the guys represented one of the volunteers, and each one chipped in $20... the winner of the game got to keep his $20 and give the remaining $40 to the volunteer he was playing for. And since there were 3 of them, they all just went back and forth at first, and the first person to be "buzzed out" (by the audience) three times was the first loser, then the two remaining guys would battle it out until someone won. The setting: a Chinese restaurant. Some great moments included: "Can't you see the sign?" in response to EVERYthing, Brad's dorky Chinese accent ("Where are you from exactly?" "Wuld yoo beleeve Cleeveland?" ~Colin and Brad), obligatory homoerotic innuendo, the eating of a poodle, and another classic Whose Line staple that I'm so glad I got to see live: Colin using "Pardon?" as one of his questions. I love that man. >u< Also, somewhere in the middle of the game, Brad and Colin started using song titles that happened to be questions, such as "What's Love Got to Do With It?" a few I don't remember, and yet another staple, by Colin: "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" :D And when they ran out of song title questions, Colin ended that little aside by asking "Why can't we get a radio?" hee... Anyway, Greg was the first to lose, so he went over and half-sat, half-leaned on the lap of the lucky chick he'd been representing while watching the rest of the game. *envyenvy* Then the game went on... and on... and on... and at one point Brad made some really bizarre question that kinda threw Colin off, and Brad added "Can you believe what I'll do to save 20 bucks?" at which point Greg leaned really close to his charge's ear and whispered something about Brad being a cheapskate (I assume) that his mic didn't pick up. That almost made me wish I'd had the guts to volunteer to be pulled onstage. >:P Anywho... Brad finally won, darnit. Colin is the best at that game, but I think he finally just ran out of comebacks. I quote: "Ah, screw it." Another Colin staple. x)
Next game is known on the TV show as Quick Change, but they changed the title to New Choice for some reason. Brad and Greg acted out a scene revolving around the suggested situation of a riot while Colin stood off to the side shouting "New choice" now and then, at which point whoever just spoke had to redo the last line they'd said into something totally different. This one was fun... by the end, Greg was Brad's physics teacher and they were both ready to emerge from their home and charge into the rioting mob on their hands and knees wearing full reindeer suits, but then Greg learned that Brad was actually a hologram. I LOVE this show. X) Yet another example of that great chemistry: Brad said that if Greg turned out the light he'd disappear, so Greg flipped an imaginary lightswitch and Brad went to hide behind a curtain. Then a minute later Greg flipped the imaginary switch again, and just made the tiniest little lightswitch-flipping sound effect, and that was the only cue Brad needed to know when to emerge.
Then they did some Jeopardy thing where Greg was the host and the other two were contestants in this Jeopardy-ish thing where 1) the contestant in control made up a category, 2) the audience suggested something that fit into that category, and 3) the contestants had to come up with a question to match the suggestion. Example: for the category Latin American Countries, they used the suggestion of Bolivia, and Brad's question was "Who is the singer Newton-John". Heh, it was funny... one of the categories that came up was Exotic Foods, and the suggestion they used for that one was ice cream. For the rest of the night they made cracks about Ohio's taste in exotic food. :P Oh, and Brad and Colin's questions in response to the ice cream thing were, respectively, "what you get when you tip a cow in winter" and "what happens when you excite ice." *snicker*
I can't remember what name they gave the next game, but it was a twist on Whose Line, a game that comes up often on the show. Instead of keeping 2 suggestions each in their pockets, Colin and Greg drew them at appropriate moments from this giant bowl that contained the suggestions of most everyone in the first section (the front 4 rows, which included me) and a few from the main section. The scene was a haunted house, and I'd say at least 15 suggestions were used, but mine wasn't among them. ;_; Mine would've been perfect too... toward the end they drew one that said something about shaving their eyebrows, so they went back and forth yelling at each other about what good shaving their eyebrows would do and stuff... and my suggestion was "Would you mind if I licked your eyebrow?" Which I might add was a heck of a lot funnier than some of the ones that did get drawn. >.> I can imagine them using both of those eyebrow ones and then remarking after the game "What is it with you Ohio people and eyebrows?" And they never would've known that mine, at least, was inspired by some weird quote that kinda became the "motto" on this dorm floor during my freshman year: "It's a wonderful night for eyebrows." Ah well...
Interrogation was probably the best game of the night. Too bad they don't seem to play it on the show anymore... I think I only saw it once, and that was in the British version. Anyway, the point of the game was that Colin committed a crime, but he didn't know what it was, and he had to guess what it was along with some other details - location, items used, etc. - based on hints given my Greg and Brad, who were interrogating him. First they made Colin leave the auditorium, and they had him take an audience member with him to make sure he actually left... that lucky, lucky, lucky female who happened to be sitting right on the center aisle... *seethe* Anywho... they then made it a point to take suggestions for locations that were local places that Colin had never heard of. Eventually it was decided that Colin's crime was 1) shaving his bikini line, at 2) Mirror Lake (campus location), 3) Cockins Hall (campus location), and an 4) oriental massage parlor, using a 5) Vlasic dill pickle and a 6) penguin. Naturally, it took him forEVER to guess all this, but it was extremely hilarious watching him try. He guessed the shaving part first based on many clues, one of which was "the bald truth." It's just not Whose Line without a bald joke at Colin's expense. :D Then he got Mirror Lake using clues having to do with reflection and skinnydipping, then Cockins Hall based on... well, this is college, so you can probably guess -_-;... then somehow they had barely hinted that he'd done it in a third location, but right off the bat he guessed massage parlor. Didn't take much more for him to get the oriental part, but he had to go through Chinese and Asian first, and when they kept grilling him for "oriental" he did this hysterical full-body twitching thing that just screamed "whyyyyy did I ever agree to play this game..." *giggle* Then came the pickle... he had never heard of the Vlasic brand before, which led to another Whose Line staple: "You're Canadian, aren't you?" "Yes, I am!" ^_^ He finally got it by putting the Russian name Vlad, without the d, together with the reason he'd taken out health insurance - to avoid getting sick. Vla-sick. Yeah. Then for the penguin one, he knew from the start that it was a living thing, and they hinted at the Penguin from Batman (called him a real Joker or something), then they said they wanted him to give his FULL confession, detail for detail, in one utterance. So eventually he says "I shaved my bikini line in Cockins Hall, Mirror Lake, and an oriental massage parlor with a Vlasic dill pickle and... a... bat!" Then he tried to plead drunkenness and run away XD... but it didn't work, and they gave him a couple more hints, made him say it from start to finish again, and finally he got it right. Then they took their final bows, and that was pretty much it.
Some general things I noticed throughout the night:
~Colin's hair was WHITE. Did I already mention that? :3 No, heh... it's always been fun observing how his hair color grows lighter and lighter with every new season of Whose Line... but now it's just WHITE. I love Colin. ^o^
~There were several college-related jokes, of course - including the standard teacher/student relations, failing physics, and much making fun of Michigan - but there were far more Ohio jokes than college ones. Especially after that one kid suggested ice cream as an exotic food. They never did let that one die. And with good reason. :p There was also the Ohio River one... Ohio River was a suggestion in the Jeopardy game (Colin's question for it was "What is the Irish name for the Hio River" ^^), and Greg said "We also would have accepted "What dumps all the flammable material into Lake Erie." Eheh.
~It would've been PERFECT if Ryan had been there. It was a blast as it was, yes, but Whose Line just isn't the same without everyone's favorite tall big-nosed freak. Colin looked so alone up there... ;_; But, at least we got Greg and Colin. Brad wasn't bad - better than he usually is in the show, in my opinion - but Greg's my all-time favorite next to Ryan and Colin, so at least it was great to see him. When I say all-time, I'm referring to ALL seasons of Whose Line, going back to the days of Paul Merton, Steve Steen, and all those other guys from the British version that no one remembers anymore. A lot of people probably don't know that this show was around for 10 years before Drew Carey started his own version, and that was, what, 6 or 7 years ago now? Anyway... that's why Ryan, Colin, and Greg are my all-time favorites... they're the only ones still on the show who were there since the early-to-middle years of the British version.
~Best exchange of the night, during the Interrogation game:
"Stop beating around the bush!"
"I told you, I shaved my bikini line!"
~Greg and Colin
*stifle*
Yeah... it still doesn't really feel real, you know? They way they performed was pretty much exactly as they do on TV, except with less censoring and more college/Ohio jokes. It almost feels like I was watching a Whose Line movie or a special anniversary filming or something. But I'm sure it'll dawn on me by late tomorrow that I got to see Colin Mochrie, Greg Proops, and Brad Sherwood perform LIVE. And that I'll never see a rerun of it. ><;;
But man, it'd be much easier to revel in the Whose Line glory if I'd been able to take some pictures. >_< No flash photography was allowed, and they were actually confiscating flash cameras, and there was a security guy sitting literally right next to me the whole evening. I never would've gotten away with it. *le tremendous sigh*
But, at least I have this blog to remember it by. And using such, even though I won't have pictures to look at, I can remember that Colin was wearing a maroon shirt that was either silk or faded with dark/faded black pants, Brad was wearing a red and gray plaid shirt with regular blue jeans, and Greg was wearing - prepare to squee! - a Hawaiian print shirt. Royal blue with white flowers to be exact. That's my Proop Doggy Dogg. x)
Lord, I love Whose Line. I never dreamed I'd be able to see it live. Maybe that's why it still doesn't seem real...
*returns to bouncing up and down squeeing about how fun tonight was*
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dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 11/10/2003 12:55:00 AM
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