Why didn't someone stop me?

I used to think it was important, in some areas of life, for us to take a small amount of responsibility for our actions, like when that woman in the US a few years ago sued a fast food outlet for burns to her, uh-hm, inner thighs from driving with a take-away coffee between her legs. I remember thinking at the time there may have been a few things she personally could have done to avoid the incident.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the horror that is the fast food industry or their inexplicable desire to douse our nether regions in hot coffee, but I just felt the fast food joint wasn't entirely to blame for the unfortunate mishap.

But that was then and I hadn't seen Jerry Springer: The Opera.

Post-Jerry Springer any question about where responsibility lies for all future actions has been resolved. From now on, responsibility lies with everyone else but me: friends, loved ones, associated acquaintances and, why not, complete strangers. Clearly I am unable to make sound decisions for myself so the best thing I can do is stop making them and pass the decision baton on to others who might make less of a hash of it than me.

This is all a long way of saying, when I said "Jerry Springer: The Opera? Sounds awes!" you should have said "are you out of your frickin' mind? No, you fool! Put your money away and go sit on your hands."

From the refrain of the opening song ("my wife used to be my Dad!"), through the call-and-answer "'what do you want?' - 'lesbians fighting!' - what do you want?' - 'open-crotch sighting!'", to the Ku Klux Klan having their 'Jerry Springer moment' it was all so very wrong.

The funniest part was that the audience was full of dressed-up Opera House aficionados who were whooping and guffawing it up big time.

[The nicest part, as always, was the company.]

So from now on when I come up with some sandwich-short-of-a-picnic idea, like getting tickets to see Shane Warne: The Musical, what do you do?

You wave your big decision baton at me and yell: "Are you out of your frickin' mind? No, you fool! Put your money away and go sit on your hands!"

Excellent - things are going to be ok from here.

I thought the day would never come

Jerry Springer: The Opera!


It's on tonight, peeps. Be still my beating fun stick.

Musical Confessional

It's possible that I'm the last person to discover this, but did you know that no-one likes musicals?

Apparently most people would prefer to spend the rest of their days doing public speaking engagements (or heck, their taxes and / or dying) than go to a musical.

In fact, I recently scored free tickets to see the multi-award winning, highly acclaimed smash hit Billy Elliot and my aggrieved viewing companions felt we'd paid too much.

"That's a bit harsh," I thought, as the bell rang to mark the end of intermission. "Silly buggers, just wait 'til they see the second half, I can't WAIT for them to see how it all comes together."

It took me ten minutes to realise THEY WEREN'T COMING BACK.

Anyhoo, so I accept there are problems with musicals, including naffness, general offence to intelligence, and the bringing forward of the onset of dementia. But it's possible (I have to believe it is) that there's someone else out there who could spend a heart-stopping 120 minutes watching grown adults leap around in cat costumes, so for the sake of the two of us, here are some bad-arse musicals that might just win you non-believers over:

1.

2.

3.

Hmm, after staring at my blinking cursor for a good half and hour I've realised there is nothing good about musicals. I wonder if it's too late to get a refund for my ticket to Jerry Springer: The Opera?