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Audience Participation
Whilst on my cruise a couple of weeks ago, I was subjected to various forms of entertainment which ranged from amateurish to truly talented. Sometimes it's difficult to decipher between which shows will be good or not, but there are always a few clues. First of all avoid all ventriloquist-magician acts or handicapped impressionists, they will surely disappoint. I've also come to the conclusion that anything that is billed as "The Musical Stylings of so & so" puts you into immanent trouble. If the vocalist doesn't have a style of their own, then they just aren't worth listening too. And if they are style-less to begin with, they'll have to pepper their performance with some distractions. The most common and annoying trick...AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION!
Nothing makes me wish that I had opted for the balcony more than the moment when the singer, magician or comedian saunters down the stage steps and into the orchestra section of the audience. My body language screams shriveling bacon, which naturally makes me a prime target for the entertainers shenanigans. Nothing says pick me more than looking at your watch, staring into the ceiling while whistling a tune, examining your cocktail stirrer or turning the dreaded "Scarlet A" also known as "Red Faced Audience Member" subject to humiliation.
It makes me squirm when some bloke from Madison Wisconsin is chosen to get up on stage with a professional singer and forced to sing the chorus section from "Under the Boardwalk" in a voice so cumbersome that nearby cats lose all bladder control and pee under your sleigh bed. Actually when this exact scenario happened on my cruise, there were some audience members that lost control of their urinary function, because the gentleman from the Midwest's voice was so comically piercing. But as we all chuckled at this spectacle, many of us heard another voice simultaneously...our inner voice sounding relieved as we were not the idiot chosen instead.
And what if you are the poor schlub with irritable bowel syndrome? Just as the comedian takes the spotlight your colon twists up like a knot in a helium balloon. You've got to get up and run to the restroom, ducking as you scramble outta there, and just when you reach the aisle what do your hear at 90 decibels? "Sir is it something I said? Do I not amuse you? Couldn't you have gone to the can during the warm-up act" screams the comedian. Now your face is as scrunched and distorted as your sphincter, as hoots and hollers come from your contemporaries in the mezzanine. Mind you they aren't laughing at the talent. Oh no! It's sympathy laughter for you, because they are just glad that they weren't the one mocked for one of the 12 million lame reasons comedians pick on audience members. You know the standard tricks...."Ma'am did you know that this guy here you married would lose all of his hair by the age of thirty-two?" Or "Sir with the 200 pound wife, who picked out your tie exactly..." you fill in the rest. You know what I say? "F U funnyman!!! Try to think of something else to entertain me instead of this hackneyed crappola that I've heard a thousand times before. You're paid to be funny...we're not. So you do the work and start saying some funny shit before I get up and leave, not for the toilet, but permanently! "
Two other things. Why are we compelled to clap when the singer says that she just flew in from Cleveland? Who cares. So there are Cleveland residents in the damned audience. Should this change my feelings about the singer or the saps from Ohio? I personally don't care where anyone is from and frankly I don't want anyone else to know that I'm from Westchester County. Because I know while lounging at the pool the next day, some moron who saw the show, will interrupt my book reading, to ask if I know Sally Smith from Tuckahoe, of whom I of course never heard of.
And finally the standing ovation. How the hell does that get started? I've never seen a performance, outside of my boudoir, worthy of getting up out of my nice cozy velvet chair. (And even at that moment I was too dizzy to do so. Instead I just smiled real confused-like.) I'm baffled when one or two folks feel compelled to express such passion by standing up and giving an ovation. Then the whole thing spreads throughout the rest of the audience like flies to doodee. (Did you see Congress and The President the other night? My point exactly.) Is it that everyone suddenly felt struck by such emotion that they must also rise up? Or do they get up because they no longer can see the stage over the noodnick in front of them who's clapping like an Iranian during an effigy burning? Or do you stand for the same reason that I do? I'm too damned embarrassed to be the only schmuck NOT standing, thus opening myself to the same ridicule as the bozo with the chronic intestinal tract and in need of the bathroom.