Far From Refuge

Helloooooooo.....so we had a very interesting Saturday night. I planned out a fun date night for Ash and I so we could get out of the house and do something a bit more fun than going to the Olive Garden for dinner. We started out the evening with dinner in LA at a place called Shamshiri. Its a Persian Restaurant that we actually had been to 4 years ago for what I consider our first date. This would be our first return in about 10 attempts. We have been wanting to go back for some time now, but for some reason our attempts were always stifled .

Our next, and last, stop was the Nuart Theatre in Santa Monica for a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. For all of you that have been to one of these shows, you know the craziness that we witnessed. Everyone else, take heed before you decide to go and read carefully. The first thing you see when you roll up to the theater is a line of people that wraps around the building. These aren't normal people though. Everyone is dressed up as either a character from the movie, a slutty costume that slightly resembles someone from the movie, a slutty costume that doesn't represent anything close to a character from the movie, and people dressed straight up weirdly. It reminded me a slutty, gothic version of the morP dance in high school. The most unfortunate thing about all the sluttyness is that it is mostly people that you don't want to see dress slutty, although Ash and I did get a kick out of the little gay boys dressed in only gold booty shorts, ala Rocky. All together it really reminded me of a gathering of all the weird, sometimes creepy, people I went to high school with, only on a larger scale. Regardless of this craziness, I do have to admit that it is cool that there is a place for these people to let their freak flag fly, so to speak. I commented to Ash about what all these people would do 100 years ago when their wasn't anything like this. Its interesting to think about.

Onward we went into the theater. Oh yeah, did I mention the movie started at midnight? Well it did. We were both winding down at this point. Not for long. Before the movie started there was all sorts of nonsense going on in front of the screen (explaining the rules, friendly banter, etc). They bring all the virgins (people who are there for the first time) up on stage and humiliate them. If you are a virgin they write a big V on your forehead with lipstick so everyone knows. Luckily for us, we had each others backs and entered the experience unscathed by the all the virgin nonsense. "Oh yeah we have been before..." Haha.

The movie starts...FINALLY. It felt like it took forever for it to actually start. Once the movie starts, there are people dressed like the characters from the movie that act out the entire movie on a stage in front of the screen. For the most part it worked really well. 90% or more of the characters looked almost exactly like the ones on the screen. Naturally they had an easier time finding girls to take these parts so a few girls played mens parts but it worked for the most part. Only one of the characters was overly distracting to the both of us.

All throughout the movie the audience yells at the screen and in one way or another makes fun of the characters or movie itself (usually the cheesiness of it all). We both agreed that the most annoying and aggravating part of the whole experience is when 3 or 4 people that work their walk up and down the aisles for the entire show and yell out little quips or quotes that they think are funny but mostly fall flat. Often times they were trying to play off what the character is saying by asking an inappropriate question before the character says yes, or something like that. Something like, "Hey Riff Raff, where do you keep the bodies of all the little boys you raped and killed?!" The character from the movie follows it by saying "Over here..." There were a few times where I laughed but for the most part it was just super obnoxious. Half the time you couldn't even follow what was going on because they were talking over the movie. A couple times I wanted get up and tell the guy he wasn't funny and to shut the f up. I restrained myself though.

The uncomfortable moment of the night came when we saw a couple kids under 10 years old there with their parents. I have no idea what kind of a horrible parent you have to be to subject your child to something like that. Weird.

Overall it was a pretty fun experience. If you can look past the quirkiness of the people that work there and go there, and don't mind a lot of dirty humor, I would highly recommend going. We didn't get home till around 3am. Ugh, so tired. At least we can't complain about a boring weekend, right?