nerdseyeview

The Last Dragon, 1985

PG 13 (?), 109 minutes

Starring Taimak, Vanity, and a bunch of other people you haven't heard of either

Produced by Berry Gordy

Plot: Young kung fu student Leroy Green searches New York for a master who can help him complete his training so he can acquire the "glow" of a master himself

Worthiness as a piece of cinema: 5 out of 10

Fun rating: B+


Introduction:
On Friday night, I got home from class and Ray said, "You've got to check this out." What he wanted me to watch was a video of a young man named Noah playing an acoustic guitar and singing LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It." It was bluesy, completely different from the original, and (to my very great surprise) really good. And funny, because how could it not be funny to hear an earnest young artist singing the heartfelt lyric, "I'm in a Speedo trying to tan my cheeks"?

Anyway, we're watching the video, and Noah sings, "Like Bruce Lee yeah I got the glow," and Ray says, "Wait--that's not right. It should be, 'Like Bruce Leroy I got the glow.'"

I said, "Um, what now?"

He said, "It's a reference to this movie, The Last Dragon."

Which is how we came to be watching said movie tonight.


Factors to Consider When Trying to Decide Whether to See this Movie or Not:

Normally, in my reviews I have a section describing the good things about a movie, and then a different section describing the bad things. However, this movie kind of defies that formula. To start with, it's bad. There's no getting around that. Half the actors can't act, and half the ones that can are overacting to try make up for it. The plot is so silly, and so unnecessarily complex, that you can't think about it too much or your brain will overheat.

But, at the same time, it's really fun--and it's so 80s cheesy that sometimes the bad things are what make it fun. So, rather than trying to judge it, I'm just going to lay it all out there for you and you can decide for yourself.

1. One of the big decisions martial arts filmmakers have to make right off the bat is who to cast as the lead. Do they choose someone who is primarily a martial artist, or someone who is primarily an actor? For The Last Dragon, they chose a martial artist. Taimak, the actor they picked to play our hero Leroy, studied Chinese goju, taekwando, and jujitsu, and his expertise shows. In the opening scene, Leroy is doing martial arts form, and it's beautiful. All his fight scenes throughout the movie are good, too. His acting is hit-or-miss (which is the downside to casting a fighter rather than an actor), but his good looks and natural charm carry him through. It helps that Leroy is supposed to be a great martial artist but completely clueless where anything else is concerned.

2. They help Taimak out by casting a strong child actor as Leroy's younger brother, Richie. Richie is maybe 12, but he is already obsessed with women, and he is as worldly as Leroy is UNworldly. The interplay between the two is funny, especially since it's the much younger brother who knows all the important things. For most of the movie, Richie has nothing but contempt for the weirdo older sibling who dresses in traditional Chinese outfits, talks like a fortune cookie, and does yoga on the roof of their apartment building. And you can see where he's coming from.

3. Speaking of which, the filmmakers do a great job of creating visual comedy from Leroy wandering around Harlem and other parts of New York in his traditional Chinese clothes. There's a scene mid-movie where Leroy runs into three Asian men breakdancing to rap music, wearing tank tops, baggy 80's pants, and backwards baseball caps. The contrast between Leroy, an African-American man wearing his Chinese martial arts outfit, and the three Asian men trying to talk like Harlem gangsters is both hilarious and really, really wrong. That's how the whole movie is, actually.

4. The love interest is Laura, a famous "VJ" who is holding a dance contest to win a date with her (part of the absurdly complex plot). Vanity, the actress playing Laura, is pretty, but there her usefulness to the movie ends. Her acting is minimal, confined mostly to a trick of biting her lower lip seductively every time she looks at Leroy--which, given Leroy's complete innocence in anything but kicking butt, makes her seem like a predator plotting to steal his virtue. When she invites him up to her apartment at one point and offers him a drink, I wanted to shout, "No, Leroy! Don't trust her!" I wondered if the filmmakers were purposely trying to subvert the usual worldly-man-meets-innocent-young-girl movie theme, or if they just failed totally at creating a warm and touching romance.

Laura is also supposed to be a singer and dancer, and we are treated to one of her numbers towards the beginning of the movie. It's awful. Horrible. She appears to be enacting a piece of performance art wherein she is a drug-addled witch with a Jamaican accent* suffering from violent spasms. Thank goodness there was only the one number. But it led me to wonder why Vanity was in the movie at all. SURELY they could have found an attractive person in Hollywood who could sing, dance, and act. Or even one of the three, for crying out loud.

*Laura did not have a Jamaican accent except when singing this song.

5. On the other hand, the two main villains* play their roles with evil, scenery-chewing relish. Christopher Murney as power-crazed producer Eddie Arkadian is everything you want out of a cheesy 80's movie bad guy, and Julius Carry as Sho'nuff, The Shogun of Harlem** is even better. He manages to make lines like, "Kiss my Converse," both funny and menacing, which is quite a feat. The Shogun is actually pretty scary, making it all the more satisfying when Leroy defeats him in the end (which of course he does).

I also enjoyed Thomas Ikeda as Leroy's slightly deranged kung fu master. It was like if Mr. Miyagi was an alcoholic with a loosening grasp on reality.

* Yes, there are two main villains in this movie, along with more than a dozen evil lackeys. The two villains go along with the bizarrely complicated plot. Each villain is part of a separate plotline, and the plotlines kind of come together for the big, climactic battle scene.

** Did I mention that the movie is funny and wrong at the same time?

6. Oh, before I forget: William H. Macy has a throwaway bit part near the beginning as Laura's agent. The jacket that he's wearing is so incredibly ugly and 80s-tastic* that I'm sure he hopes now, looking back, that no one who watches movies like The Last Dragon knows who he is.

*Interestingly, the spellcheck didn't like "plotline," but it didn't have a problem with "80s-tastic."

7. Which brings up the subject of clothes. The movie might almost be worth watching just to marvel at the costumes. Leroy and his kung fu students wear straight-up martial arts outfits (although in one scene Leroy does wear a yellow bodysuit--one of the movie's homages to Bruce Lee). The Shogun of Harlem and his evil henchmen wear bodysuits and jackets that look like they were sewn back together at random after a car carrying 80's costumes and a car carrying kung fu costumes crashed into each other headlong at 90 miles an hour. Laura and all the people at her VJ party (including Richie) look like they are taking part in a "Worst 80's Stereotype Outfit" contest. This movie was made in 1985, but even in 1985 nobody dressed THAT badly in real life. Yikes. And the hair is just as crazy. Several tons of AquaNet died bravely so that the movie could live.

My personal favorite is Laura's outfit during the climactic battle scene, where she's wearing a very short satin dress designed to look vaguely Chinese. Like maybe Leroy will fall for her seductive ploys if she's wearing something Asian. When she first appears in the dress, it's covering both shoulders and she's wearing tights under it. By the end, the tights are gone and the dress has fallen completely off one arm, for no apparent reason. Hollywood magic!

Maybe I shouldn't make fun of that too loudly, though. Leroy's shirt gets ripped off by the Shogun during that last battle, again for no apparent reason, and I thought that was a lovely artistic choice. So maybe good or bad is in the eye of the beholder.


Epilogue:
I thought you might be interested to know that at the end of the movie, Leroy achieves "the glow" of a master martial artist (which sounds awkwardly feminine, but is actually not. Just cheesy). And he's called "Bruce Leroy" by someone early on. So the line in "Sexy and I Know It" DOES refer to this movie.

Think that's an incredibly random reference? Well, it's not as random as it seems. The Last Dragon was produced by Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown. Redfoo and SkyBlu, the members of LMFAO, are the son and grandson, respectively, of Berry Gordy.

So there you go.

Good-bye, Maurice Sendak. I loved you not only for Where the Wild Things Are, but for King Grisly-Beard, Outside Over There, and Really Rosie. We used to sing all the songs from Really Rosie on car trips when I was little. I got to play Pierre and yell, "I don't care!" when we got to his song. I loved that, but I was a lot more like Rosie than Pierre. I played dress-up too, and had big dreams.

Good-bye, and thank you for all the wonder and joy you brought into the world. You will be missed.

I was with a bunch of my dance students. We were sitting in chairs in a circle and reading songs out loud (but not singing them). The last song was an old ballad from the 16th or 17th century about Argentina invading Ireland.

??!?

I was at a party at a friend's house. Also there was Simon Baker, the star of The Mentalist. Simon Baker kept following me around, telling me of his undying love for me. I didn't like him, so I ran away. I got in my car and drove off, but Simon Baker followed me and we had a car chase.

The strangest thing about this is I've never even seen the Mentalist.

I dreamed I was at an Irish dance competition where the music was being played alternately by a fiddle and an accordion. However, there was some kind of problem, and the music (and the competition) stopped. While I was waiting for it to start again, my cousin came up to me and told me that he'd gotten a new job. He said that as part of his new job he'd gone rifle hunting. I asked him what kind of job it was.

"Come with me and I'll show you," he said.

So I went with him. We got into this 70's-era giant car with fins and sat in the back seat. Also in the back seat was the accordion player from the competition, who was tied up. In the front seats were two men I'd never seen before.

We drove for a while, and then a police car pulled us over. One of the men in the front turned around and said, "You have two choices now: you can fight the cops, or you can get arrested."

"But I haven't done anything wrong!" I said. So I didn't fight, but let the police come and pat me down. Unfortunately, one of the men had planted a giant handgun on me. I was arrested and charged with cocaine possession.

However, instead of finding myself in jail, I found myself back at the dance competition.

The End

The Pirates! Band of Misfits, 2012

Animated, rated PG, 88 minutes

Starring the voice talents of Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman, David Tennant, Imelda Staunton, Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek, Brendan Gleeson, Brian Blessed

Directed by Peter Lord

Plot: The Pirate Captain and his misfit crew are trying to win the coveted Pirate of the Year Award when they capture a ship called The Beagle--Charles Darwin's ship. Darwin persuades them to go to London with him and present the Pirate Captain's "parrot" to the Royal Society.

Worthiness as a piece of cinema: 6 out of 10. Sigh.

Fun factor: Um...B-/C+ if you have a high tolerance for crazy. If you have a low tolerance for crazy (if, for instance, you find Monty Python disturbing and incomprehensible), do yourself a favor and skip this movie.

Reasons To See This Movie:
1. You want to support Aardman Productions, the wonderful creators of Wallace & Grommit, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and the underrated Flushed Away. Their claymation-style characters have enormous personality, and their stories are (almost) always zany fun. I hope they keep on making (good) movies and shows for a long time.

2. A great voice cast doing solid work. I especially liked Martin Freeman, who voices the smart, loyal Number Two (aka Pirate with the Scarf). (An aside here: I love the not-so-very-well known Martin Freeman, who has played Dr. Watson and Arthur Dent and will be playing Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming Hobbit movie. Yay Martin Freeman!). I also liked the cameo voice of Brian Blessed (another actor I love), playing the Pirate King, and Ashley Jensen as The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate.

3. A ton of funny moments. Near the beginning, our hero, the Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) and his misfit crew fight and capture a series of ships. They are hoping to find gold. Unfortunately, the first ship they capture is a plague ship, and the next one is a bunch of elementary school kids on a field trip and so on, getting worse and worse each time. This is a good illustration of the luck of the Pirate Captain. Later, through a series of really strange and improbable events, the Pirate Captain ends up presenting his pet dodo before the Royal Society in London, and the presentation scene is really funny. There's also a running gag with a chimpanzee butler holding up cards with words instead of talking (like "Uh" and "Oh" at one point when things are going badly).

4. A ton of funny sight gags. It's probably worth getting the movie on DVD just to watch the background for bad puns and silly visuals. In one port, there's a shop called "Napoleon Blownapart." Later there's a dentist's office called "D.K.Ying" (my husband had to say that one out loud for me). When the pirates are at the Royal Society, the crest over the door has the motto "Playing God Since 1660." One of the pirate crew is missing a leg, hand, eye, and his nose, which has been replaced with a cork. The figurehead on the front of the pirate ship (The "Briny Rose") is a voluptuous woman's body with a bearded man's head on it. There is a Wanted poster for the Pirate Captain which offers 12 shillings and a free pen in reward for his capture.

Those are all things I caught in one viewing. I bet there's lots more.

So there are plenty of the zany, cute moments I expected from an Aardman production. Unfortunately, they were outweighed by the Reasons Not To See This Movie:

1. They stuffed 10 pounds of crazy into a 5-pound bag. I love random crazy stuff. I love Monty Python, Douglas Adams, and the Muppets, whose motto back in the 70's was that if you didn't know how to end a skit, you blew something up, had a monster eat someone, or threw penguins in the air (seriously). But even I was rolling my eyes and muttering, "Come ON already!" There was TOO MUCH CRAZY in proportion to plot and action. They must not have read their Zany Fun recipe right when they were cooking this one up.

Some examples: the mid-level villain of the movie is Charles Darwin. The big villain is Queen Victoria. Also appearing in cameos are Jane Austen, the Elephant Man, and the inventor of the dirigible.

At one point in the movie, the Pirate Captain gets his pirate-hood revoked, and he moves to London and knits baby clothes instead, which he sells from a wheelbarrow.

The pirate crew has a "ham night" once a week where they, uh, have ham for dinner. This is the Pirate Captain's favorite part of being a pirate. Their ship's Jolly Roger flag is a skull and crossbones with crossed turkey legs underneath it. They have a special flag for special raids that has googly eyes and flames sewn on it as well.

These things all sound kind of funny when I'm typing them, but in the movie they felt forced (and there were far too many of them). It felt like the creators were trying way too hard to be silly. I wanted to go back in time and tell them, "Look, if you're having to work so hard to cram all this silly stuff in there, DON'T. Just make the misfit characters and then tell the story. That way, it'll be the perfect amount of silly on its own." That's what's always worked so well for Aardman in the past.

2. Too many plots. At the beginning, we find out that the Pirate Captain wants desperately to win the coveted Pirate of the Year Award. We also find out that he has as much hope of winning this as Keanu Reeves has of winning an Oscar. He's inept as a pirate, and moreover he's up against stiff competition from three other pirate captains.

Okay. There we go. Hero: Pirate Captain. Villains: three other pirate captains. Quest: find gold, win Pirate of the Year.

But wait! They capture The Beagle, Charles Darwin's ship, and Darwin tells them that there will be untold riches if they take the Captain's "parrot" to London and present her to the Royal Society.

Um, all right. New villain: Charles Darwin (?!). New plot twist: go to London.

Once in London, it turns out that Queen Victoria desperately wants to get her hands on the Captain's "parrot," and Darwin wants to give it to her. He uses his trained chimpanzee butler to help him steal the bird.

New villains: Chimpanzee butler (?!?), Queen Victoria (?!?!). New plot twist: Captain's pet gets stolen, captain and crew have to get her back.

And then...but, no. I'm not going to give you the other three plot twists, because I don't want to ruin them for you. Also, you would never, ever believe the last one. I hardly believed it, and I was there.

The point is that there was too much plot. We didn't really need all these twists and all these villains. A more straightforward storyline with one adversary would have been better.

However, I know the movie was based on a book, so possibly the book is to blame.

In the end, I was left sighing, wondering where it all went wrong. It wasn't all bad, and for some viewers the funny parts might make up for the trying-too-hard silliness and awkward, over-the-top plot. I don't know. I do know that as I left the theater all I really wanted to do was go home and watch Chicken Run so I could remember all the things that made me love Aardman in the first place.

Drive, 2011

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman, Christina Hendricks

Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn

Rated R

Plot: A mysterious Hollywood stuntman, mechanic and getaway driver lands himself in trouble when he helps out his neighbour.

Worthiness as a piece of cinema: 8 out of 10 stars first half, 4 out of 10 stars second half (average 6)

Fun rating: B first half, D second half (average C)

Reasons to see this movie:
1. Ryan Gosling. I first saw him in Lars and the Real Girl, and I was very impressed by his sympathetic portrayal of a troubled man in love with a...um...life-size doll. He is just as good in Drive, where he plays a getaway driver--a strong, silent type. We never learn his name, so the credits refer to him just as "The Driver." In the first ten minutes of the movie, he says maybe a dozen words, but his actions speak volumes. Even when the movie went downhill for me, Gosling remained solid.

2. A number of strong supporting actors. Carey Mulligan, who plays Irene, The Driver's apartment-building neighbor and love interest, is just as good as Gosling and almost as strong and silent. The "date" they go on together where they drive around the streets of LA in his car features no lines at all, but their slow, quiet smiles glow with attraction and chemistry. Bryan Cranston is great as Shannon, The Driver's boss, a garage owner and two-bit schemer who exploits "the Kid" and isn't above a little criminal activity on the side. Albert Brooks is slick and oily as a local mob boss, and young Kaden Leos is charming and believable as Irene's son Benicio.

3. The driving. Wow, were the driving stunts great. Flips, sudden turns, wrecks--all heart-pounding and well-filmed.

4. The first half. The movie opens with The Driver playing getaway chauffeur to two robbers. He doesn't know them; he's just a driver for hire, and all his dealings with them have been over a disposable cell phone. The opening scene lays out his terms: once they enter the building they're robbing, they have five minutes to get in and get back out again. After that, he says, they're on their own.

The robbery is incredibly tense. Not much happens at first: The Driver pulls up outside a warehouse and watches in the rearview mirror as two masked men break down the door. He calmly puts his watch on the steering wheel where he can watch it. His eyes flick back and forth from the watch to the mirror, mirror to watch. When one of the robbers runs out with a bag, The Driver opens the door for him. But the second one isn't there yet. My mouth was dry. I was sure the second man wasn't going to appear and The Driver was going to leave him.

The second man appears, but the police have seen the car, and what follows is one of the most creative car chases I've seen. The Driver has a radio tuned to the police frequency on his dash, and most of the tension of the chase is because we can hear that the police are on to him. Only at a few key moments is The Driver actually tearing away from police cars or a search helicopter, and those moments are heart-pounding, gut-wrenching excitement. Throughout the scene, the only talking is from the radio. The Driver himself is calm and collected, acting when he needs to with speed, focus, and resourcefulness. And the way the scene ends--I won't give it away, but MAN it was awesome.

The whole first half is like that. The Driver never says much, but his actions and body language show him to be respectful of Shannon, wary of Albert Brooks' Bertie, and wistfully in love with Irene. He has a slow, sweet smile that comes out occasionally, mostly in the company of Irene and her son Benicio. They like him, and we like him, too. The pace is slow but not dragging, and the script and cinematography are good. We feel like we've got insight into The Driver's character: sure, he acts sometimes as a mercenary getaway driver, but (as he tells his clients) he doesn't carry a gun, he doesn't perform the robbery himself, and when it's over he walks away. He's a good guy at heart. He's just gotten sucked into some bad company. We're rooting for him to get out of that life.

If only that's the way things were actually headed...

Reasons not to see this movie:
1. The complete waste of Ron Perlman. Ron Perlman is one of my favorite character actors, and seeing him in a cast list always makes me interested in that particular movie. But in Drive he's just a stereotypical heavy, a mob boss with no brains, no subtlety, and a vocabulary made up entirely of the f-word. Sigh.

2. Christina Hendricks' character, Blanche. I have nothing against Mad Men's Christina Hendricks, and the pointlessness of her character is not her fault; she gives it her all. But Blanche turns up out of nowhere, does nothing significant except carry a duffel bag of money and scream through a car chase, and after about fifteen minutes of screen time dies horrifically. What was the point?

3. The second half. I don't want to give away anything, but in the middle of the movie we suddenly (ahem) shift gears. We the audience knew it was coming to some degree. Irene's husband gets released from prison and after a week or so The Driver finds him in the apartment parking garage, where he's been beaten up by some criminal ex-friends of his. We knew that Irene's husband spelled trouble for The Driver.

What we didn't know was that his appearance was the cue for the entire movie to change from one of creativity and tense psychological thrills to a brutal, violent bloodbath. Gone are shots of subtle expressions and scenes of The Driver cruising LA at night to cure insomnia; instead we are treated to graphic depictions of (among other things) a man getting stabbed in the eye with a fork, a woman getting her head blown off, and a man getting stomped to death. There are still some beautiful shots within this bloody shoot-em-up, but it was hard for me to appreciate them when I felt sick to my stomach.

The main reason I felt sick was that I no longer had anybody to root for. Sure, there was still Irene and Benicio, but you don't see them as much once the shooting starts. And I couldn't root for The Driver anymore, not really. It turned out he wasn't the reluctant-criminal-with-the-heart-of-gold that the first half made him out to be. He's right in the middle of the killing and torturing and dismembering, with no reluctance to be seen. He's doing what he's doing to protect Irene; okay, I get that. But in his protective vengeance he
goes to lengths that only a sadist--and a practiced sadist--could reach.

Strangely, what bothered me more than the big moments of violence were the little ones. A man approaches The Driver and says he has a job for him. The Driver tells the man to shut up and go away or he'll kick his teeth in. Later, he needs some information from Blanche (remember Blanche?). He gets it from her by slapping her around and threatening her. I was upset when that happened. Blanche was stupid, a harmless pawn. She hadn't done anything. I didn't want our hero with the shy, slow smile to be the kind of guy who would hurt a dumb bimbo to get his way. At that moment, I wondered if he was any better than the mob bosses he was fighting.

The second half was so violent, so devoid of goodness and humanity that I didn't care whether The Driver lived or died. I just wanted it to be over.

One of the joys of working with kids is the funny things they say. Here are a couple gems from yesterday.

A 4-year-old dancer asked me where a classmate was. I told her that her classmate was sick with a fever.

"Oh," said the 4-year-old. "I had a fever once. And then I got a sore throat. And then I got an ear confection."

Later, I was explaining to some more advanced students how to think about engaging their core muscles while they danced.

"Think about pulling in your belly button," I said. "It's just like putting on a pair of tight pants. You know when you've washed a pair of jeans and then put them in the dryer and they come out all tight?"

My 7-year-old student shook her head. "I don't know about that," she said. "I don't do the laundry at my house."

So here I am at the hair salon, once again learning about the crazy world of fashion by reading beauty magazines. Today, I read an article by a famous (male) fashion designer, called "The 10 Things Every Woman Needs." Here was his list (presented in no particular order):

1. An interesting book.
Okay! I totally agree. A great start.

2. Chocolate truffles.
YES!

3. A membership to an art museum.
Also worthy, but I wish he hadn't gone on to explain that art museums were fabulous because of their "atmosphere" and "people watching." Um, how about because of the art and the expansion of your mind?

4. A black evening dress.
A little black dress is a useful thing, I admit. I was a little taken aback that the particular dress he was recommending cost $1200. And was designed by him. My little black dress cost $35 and came from Forever 21.

5. Bose noise-canceling headphones for airplane travel.
Probably useful, especially if you travel by air a lot. But do you really NEED them? I feel like Inigo in Princess Bride: I do not think that word means what you think it means.

6. Organic raw and vegan food delivery.
I think this means that a company delivers organic food to you, rather than you having to go out and get it. Awesome if you can afford it, and if such a thing is available in your area.

Part of my problem with the list was that Mr. Designer was obviously coming from a very different place in life than me. A richer, more elitist place.

7. A push-up bra.
Hmm. I was kind of torn over this one. I do own a push-up bra, which I bought originally to fill out a dress instead of altering it. I wear it once every couple years, usually for Halloween. Last Halloween, I was dressing up as one of the other teachers at my dance school, and I wore my push-up bra with my sister's on top of it. I managed to go from an A to a B+ --nowhere close to the D I was imitating. Seriously, what's the point? It's like trying to make two cupcakes look like wedding cakes by putting them on top of coasters. Not gonna happen.

For a designer who supposedly celebrates the beauty of women, don't you think it would be better to celebrate a woman's NATURAL beauty rather than trying to alter her to look like someone else? Or maybe that's just me.

8. A thigh-length shearling coat.
Okay--how on EARTH is this something I NEED? How is this going to improve my life? My mind? My spiritual well-being? I don't even know what a shearling IS! A kind of sheep?

Moreover, I don't see how owning a $4500 coat is going to do anything for most women except bankrupt them. Sure, it's important to have a coat, but my $60 purple one from Burlington Coat Factory does the job just fine. Seriously, the only thing I own that cost anywhere near $4500 is my car.

9. A resculpting facial from a particular spa in New York City.
Maybe my definition of "need" is different from Mr. Designer's. Or maybe I'm not a real woman. Or maybe--and this seems more likely--he is from a different planet. One where everyone has enough money for a $1200 evening dress and a $4500 coat, and lives in New York City.

10. "The glamor of the Chrysler Building captured in a boxy clutch."
What does that even mean???

Forget it. I'm out of here.

On Tuesday night, when we got back to our office, our assistant had taken a message for us from one of our Wednesday shows. We were scheduled to have two shows in Boulder, an hour northwest of our Denver studio, and for some reason the two Boulder shows had decided to switch times.

Arg!

It would have been OK if we'd had the same group of dancers for both shows, but we didn't. After cussing under my breath for a minute or two, I sent an email to all my dancers, letting them know that the shows had switched times. Then I sent out new directions to everybody, crossing my fingers that people would get the messages.

One of the Boulder shows was our first stop of Wednesday morning. We'd been told when booking the show that we wouldn't need to set up our boards because the facility had a parquet floor for us. There isn't a parking lot at this residence, so my sister had to park on the street, across a busy road from the facility itself. When we got in, the activities director greeted us.

"Hello!" she said. "Did you get my message? Sorry about the inconvenience." Then she looked at us. "Did you bring your floor?"

"No," I said. "We thought you had a parquet stage."

"It's broken," she said. "I told your assistant that last night."

Arg!

So my sister walked back across the road to get the floor.

The show went fine, and as soon as it was done we hopped back in the car. Our next show was in Denver, and the times were a little tight. Luckily, traffic wasn't too bad, because we arrived with only about twenty minutes to go to showtime.

The show was in a facility that was an old converted house, and the tiny parking lot was full. We parked across the street and unloaded. We put our boards on the dolly and wheeled them to the house, team-lifting the whole dolly-and-boards arrangement when we got to a set of stairs. It's not light, but we had the strength of desperation. We were going to have to fly to get the boards down and the show started on time.

We were met at the front door by the activities director, who seemed extremely stressed out. I was worried that it was because we were running a bit late, but I think after talking to her that stressed out is her natural state.

As we worked the dolly and boards over the giant front step, the director looked at us. "Why did you bring your own floor?" she asked. "We have a stage."

Arg!

That show went well, including good debut performances from a couple of young beginner dancers. As soon as it was over, we got back in the car and went BACK up to Boulder for the next one. Time was a little tight when we arrived, but our fabulous parents got the floor down and we started right on schedule. Everything went fine.

After that, we had a little breathing room. My sister and I actually had time to sit down and have dinner at Chipotle before driving BACK down to Denver for our fourth and final performance. The facility was downtown, but even with heavy traffic we were too early. We found a nice parking spot on the street right next to the residence, and we decided to roll down the windows and read while we enjoyed the beautiful evening.

After a while, we started hearing someone speaking. We looked out the car windows and saw that the residence had a porch on the second floor. A man was sitting on the porch and talking, apparently to us.

"What's he saying?" my sister (who has a hearing loss) asked.

I listened.

"Hey, baby!" he was shouting. "Come on out of the car! I'd like to talk some business with you!"

"Don't worry about it," I said.

After a while, I began to think he wasn't really talking to us at all. He was making a whistling noise and saying, "Here, sweetheart! Come on in!" It was like he was trying to coax a cat or small dog inside. So I stopped paying attention.

But when we got out of the car twenty minutes later, it was clear that he HAD been talking to us the whole time.

"At last!" he cried. "There you are! I've been waiting, baby!" And then he started singing. It was a kind of toneless, rambling song, about beautiful flowers in the spring.

Right then, our dancer Phil arrived. He parked close to us, got out of his car, and came over. As he reached us, he looked up at the singing man.

He sighed. "Oh, it's going to be THAT kind of show, isn't it?"

But actually, although the facility's residents definitely had their share of, um, eccentricity, they were a very warm and appreciative audience. Shows are like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get.