Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: Janet Weiss "There's a Light" ::
I think it's about time I told you all the story of how I lost my virginity. What? Why are you looking at me like that? Oh. I think you're confused. Not THAT virginity. No, I speak of my OTHER virginity. You know, the very first time I saw Rocky Horror live, in a theater (perverts!).
The year was 1995 and I was seventeen. It was the summer in between my junior and senior year of high school. My brother was sharing an apartment with something like five people while he was attending university down south. He phoned me up one day and told me that the local university theater troupe was going to be doing Rocky Horror and was wondering if I would be interested in going to see it with him and some of his friends. Um. HELL YES. So I scrimped and save money for a couple of weeks in order to afford the tickets and food while down south visiting my brother. I don't recall how much the tickets were, but I only just managed to have the money.
My brother picked me up and brought me down to his college town where we picked up some of his friends and went shopping for participation supplies. Toilet paper. Bread for toast. Party noise makers. Newspapers. Squirt guns. Lighters. The whole shebang. We went back to the apartment to divide up the stuff and make toast. The power goes out. How the heck do you make toast with no electricity? Then someone gets a brainstorm. We have bread and we have lighters. Unfortunately, bread + lighters does NOT = toast. It in fact equals soggy bread with black scorch marks on it. We brought it anyway, and it smooshed all over our other stuff in the bags. Oh well.
We get to the theater and there is a large crowd. Some of the audience people are dressed to the nines in do-it-yourself character costumes. I wondered where this girl as Columbia got her sparkly hat. Some of the women in maid outfits are hot. We're let in and it's general seating, but the chairs are steeply sloped and we get a good view. The guy playing Frank addresses the audience. Apparently they did a show a few nights ago and the actors were getting beaned by toilet paper rolls and he asks us not to throw directly at the stage. Also, the building is very old and if we look up we can see exposed wires, so please so not fire squirt guns into the air. We can shoot each other in the face if we want, but not up.
He then asks if there are any virgins in the house. Uh oh. That would be me. I sink down into my seat, hoping to avoid doing anything embarrassing on stage. However, my brother and his friends are all to eager to give me away. "Here's one!" "We've got one over here!!" They yell, pointing at me, the bastards. Every virgin in the audience has someone doing this do them. Frank asks us virgins to stand up. "Alright, virgins. Let's see if you know your stuff. What do you call Brad?" "ASSHOLE!!" we scream. "And Janet?" "SLUUUUT!" "Well done, virgins! On with the show!" My brother is disappointed that they didn't have anything more planned for the virgins. He tells me when he lost his virginity, they made all of the boys go on stage with knitting needles and the girls with balloons and the guys had to pop their balloons by holding the needles in between their knees. I find out later that this is pretty common, so I was indeed lucky.
The lights dim and the Usherette girl come on stage to sing "Science Fiction" (if you've never seen the play version, the Usherette is played by the same actress who will be Magenta later on). It's then that I notice the four piece rock band set up off to the side for the music numbers. They are loud, but the actors get microphones to sing. The guy who will play Frank is in the audience to yell things at the stage when the crowd misses an obvious line. The Narrator is an older man at a desk set up in the audience. The guy playing Eddie can actually play the saxophone and does an awesome job. I was surprised to hear that Rocky had actual lines in the play. I was glad they were cut for the movie because he just sounded retarded (but that could have just been that student actor). For the parts where in the movie events are viewed on the monitors, they have an overhead slide show set up. This was hilarious when we see Rocky molesting Janet because it's mostly goofy close ups of their faces. This was the first time I ever heard the song "Once in a While" which is sung by Brad because it never made it into the movie and is in the stage productions only. The 25th anniversary DVD has Barry Bostwick singing it as a bonus feature, so it was recorded but not used. The other audience members are great people and all props that get thrown will usually get picked up and thrown again (since we're throwing stuff at each other and not at the stage). We had a pretty good toilet paper volley going on.
After the show we went and got something to eat and talked about the performance. It was a grand night out and I'll never forget it.
Rocky Horror live and in person is definitely the way to go if you have the chance. It's like you and all of these other people you don't even know have seen this movie over and over and you still love it for being so tacky and silly. There really is nothing like a room full of people yelling the same thing at the same time or even hearing something new that makes you laugh. So, I'm curious. Have any of you seen it live? Please do feel free to give a brief run down of your experience in the comments! Did you have to do something super embarrassing to lose your virginity? I'd love to read about it!
William (dreamt it in the living room, been it in the theater)
