Why Yesterday Was Amazing

Two days ago I said I wasn't going to see William Shatner's one-man show in Dallas. I believe my exact words were "I'm just a lowlife blogger and I don't do awesome things like that."

Today I'm pretty sure I'm still a lowlife blogger. But I'm a lowlife blogger who totally got to see Bill Shatner last night, bitches!

OMFG, and unicorns!

I think I still owe my friends ChrisAndBek about 6,000 more lame, inadequate expressions of gratitude for making it possible. It was soooo much fun. Bill (who is now my boyfriend, because I don't think a 37-year age difference is an insurmountable obstacle, nor the fact that we've never met) was great. If he comes to your town with his one-man show, go see it. GO! I'M NOT MESSING AROUND HERE!

Now you've gone and made the unicorn angry.

Ahem.

But it wasn't just the performance that caused yesterday to be amazing. Here's what else made March 22, 2012 a day full of win.

1. Jonathan Coulton - Bek introduced me to his music yesterday while we were driving downtown. Now I lurve him. The only thing better than a day when I discover a new singer-songwriter to dig on is a day when I discover I actually left myself a couple of shots of vodka at the bottom of the bottle for once. Wholly unexpected and tremendously exciting. Listen:




2. The world's most unhelpful "You Are Here" sign - We parked in this really cool parking garage across the street from the Majestic Theater. It's six stories tall and about 12 feet wide. Seriously. Ascending the levels of this garage in a car is like being a ladybug trundling up a corkscrew.

As helpfully illustrated here.

Thankfully there was an elevator to take us from the fifth level to the ground floor. And posted next to the elevator was this sign:

You are here...in the vicinity of this tiny X in the upper left corner of a
completely featureless rectangle that represents this parking garage or perhaps
a broom closet in the Guggenheim.

The sign did a somewhat better job of pointing out the nearby fire escape/exit. We didn't get a picture of it, but it was marked "DO NOT USE THESE STAIRS." I guess because they belong exclusively to Mark.

3. It was Bill Shatner's birthday - We got to sing "Happy Birthday" to a living legend, in person, while he tried to blow out trick candles on a birthday cake. Did you do that yesterday? Well, if you were at the show you did, or if you're a close personal friend of Sir Lord Baron Duke Earl King Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose birthday was also yesterday. But he's not William Fucking Shatner. I win.

4. Dolly Madison Zingers - This has nothing to do with Bill Shatner's one-man show. Even I can't forge a connection that tenuous, and my mind is wired by stoned elves with 10 lb. test fishing line.

I actually Googled "stoned elves with 10 lb. test fishing line"
to see what would happen, and I got this picture of a bag of baby carrots.
Thanks for making me look like a slacker, Google.

However, a while back in this space I lamented the appearance of Hostess-branded Zingers following the merger of Hostess and Dolly Madison into a single snack-cake entity. It made me sad, in the way that only completely insignificant changes to a large corporation's marketing strategy can make one sad.

But yesterday, feeling peckish and down to the last four quarters of my vast personal fortune before payday, I took a chance on the coin-devouring vending machine in my building and scored some chocolate Zingers. I could have gotten pretzels or a granola bar or some healthy shit like that, but I didn't. Because I'm edgy that way. And before I ripped away the wrapper and shoved those little artery-cloggers down my gullet, I noticed this:

Cue heavenly strains of "Linus and Lucy."

It was when I saw the Dolly Madison label returned to its rightful place on a package of Zingers that I realized this might turn out to be a pretty good day. And for once I was right.

5. "'Yes' is risky" - Mr. Shatner said those words during his show, and they made it all worthwhile for me. "Yes" is risky. "No" is safe and easy and is what I very nearly said when Bek asked me if I wanted to go with her to the Majestic. Because my mind tends to make a beeline for "no." It winds through all the doubts and questions that try - and with me, generally succeed - to disrail me.

Accept a free ticket? Does she feel sorry for me? How am I going to repay that? Spontaneously give up an evening at home to go downtown? On a weeknight? What if Beloved Spouse is mad that he can't go? What if Precocious Daughter is sad that I'm bailing on "American Idol" results night? What will they have for dinner while I'm gone? Is it worth it? Can I do it? Can I risk it?

I came so very close to making a lame excuse for turning down Bek's generous offer. It was a knee-jerk reaction, an automatic assumption that I couldn't, shouldn't, upset my normal routine. But at the last moment, a smart little voice in my head - one that almost always gets drowned out by my big dumb doubts - managed to ask, "Do you think you'll regret going more than you'll regret not going?"

So I took a chance and said "Yes." Despite my deeply ingrained resistance to not paying my own way, despite my natural inclination to never put my own needs in front of my family's, despite the fact that I don't do anything spontaneous unless I've carefully planned it out beforehand (yes, I know)... I risked a "Yes." And it was a great time.

Yeah, yesterday turned out to be amazing. And it had a lot to do with a free ticket to a really fun show. But it also had to do with a bunch of little unrelated joys that I actually allowed myself to find and grab on to. They added up to one damn fine day. I've got to do that more often.

Hmmm...I wonder if George Takei has a one-man show?