I'M FAMOUS! . . .

No, not really. But last night, I was on stage!

We went to see Cookin', the Seoul, Korea-based off-Broadway show. I can't describe it as anything other than a cross between Stomp, Blue Man Group and a bunch of Korean cooking, complete with audience participation (thus, me strangely appearing on stage. Okay, it wasn't that strange because I nearly strangled JKA trying to get their attention so that they would select me out of the audience), massive heart-trembling drumming, and typical Korean-style slapstick comedy.

IT WAS AWESOME AND AMAZING AND SO, SO, FUNNY. (A word of advice: to enhance the funniness, try to take Jaime with you. Just listening to him laugh will make you laugh, until you become afraid that he's going to have an embolism in the process.) Try to sit in the front row if at all possible -- there's something weirdly hilarious about being sprayed with chopped vegetables and other food products. Don't wear any "dry cleaning only" clothing ...

There were lots of traditional Korean elements infused into the show: drumming, ribbon dancers, song and music. Something about the plaintive wrench in the voice of the p'ansori singer, something about the sheer abandon and physical strength and concentration in the drummers, something about the beauty of the ribbons flowing and spinning from the heads of the dancers, something about not understanding fully but realizing that these elements must date back countless generations but are now being presented in full force to a 21st-century jaded New York public ... sort of brought tears to my eyes, and I had to momentarily close my eyes so I could truly feel the beat of the things that are me ...

Sigh. I can't explain it. Nothing I say or write will accurately convey how much I laughed, how my insides echoed in time to the eardrum-buzzing drums, how my eyes widened at the intensity of the performers, how I was kind of scared when they were flinging knives around mere feet in front of me, how I regressed to my childhood when the performers started pelting the audience with small plastic balls, how I wanted to come home and chop at cabbage and carrots and onions and make them fling and fly everywhere like the actors did ... GO SEE IT.

***

HEHEHE . . .

A small bit o' boozing and a 7:00 a.m. call for grocery shopping and cake-baking in preparation for Banana's bridal shower ... the invitation said to wear pink, so a few of us have decided to wear pink indeed. From head to toe. In various shades. Fashion sensibility be damned. We're just doing what the invite instructed us to do. Wink, wink.

Unfortunately, our appearance today shall be memorialized for all posterity somehow, I'm sure, but ... anything to give Banana a laugh.