communist dracula pageant

communists, vlad the impaler, and bears, oh my! Perfectly fitting for Halloween, The Communist Dracula Pageant, written by Anne Washburn and directed by Anne Kauffman, is an eastern bloc circus, drawing parallels between the notorious Romanian regime of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, and frickin' Vlad the Impaler, another vicious Romanian, otherwise known as Dracula. although hundreds of years apart, both seemed to suck the life out of the Romanian people. go figure.

my absolute favorite was Karen MacDonald, who played the fake-scientist know-it-all Elena Ceausescu perfectly (not that I knew Elena), especially her post-dead monologue, complete with bullet holes.

The disillusioned dictators were perfect characters in their own reality, and the Communist Dracula Pageant makes their reality better than fiction.

needless to say, m and I enjoyed it, and the A.R.T. venue (a place we've wanted to go to for awhile.). good thing i won those tickets.

the globs

take a listen to the globs, here at their good old MySpace page. My favorite is "I Hate the 21st Century," but Marie is partial to "Happy 2 B Alive." They have this poppy keyboarding flair, but seeing them at the Middle East last night definitely solidified their rock-a-bility (not to be confused with rockabilly. *sigh).

this was the second trip to the M.E. within three days, since we met up with Marie's friend Mandy there on Friday night, ate some middle eastern food, and drank sam adams summer ale (I liked it, but Marie is a dark-beer kinda girl). there were swarms of lesbians there (ehem, kristin) otherwise known as 'faaamleee' thanks to my former coworker ms. tammy.

last night's trip was a bit unexpected, since we haven't been out to see a friend's band in a while... our friend, linda, is the bassist and she was fabulous — but of course, she didn't think so, which is an annoying musician thing they do (I'm allowed to say that since I've done it many a time... a minor temper tantrum in the choir room after a particularly heinous cello performance at church in sixth grade will bring a slight cringe to my dad's face every time... all he said was, "you did a great job," poor man).

anyway, two thumbs up from the peanut gallery.