The "group"

After dinner we headed to The Blue Man Group. I only had a vague understanding of the “group” before the show, so I didn’t quite know what to expect. There were only three highlights, other than the band playing high above the stage in cool glowing costumes. The “group” is some sort of percussion show for the Twin Peaks/Emo Phillips fan base. We sat there, waiting and waiting for something “big” to happen, but all we got was more of the same - the “group” beating the drums with paint splashing up. Wow, if they beat the drums lightly, the paint only goes up a little ways, and if they beat the drums harder, the paint flies up higher – a basic theory of physics that was only marginally exciting the first minute or two, although they performed it off on and on for about 30 minutes of the 90 minute show. Ok, I guess it was TOTALLY different when the paint came from a weird hole in the chests of their jumpsuits. Evs.

Then the “group” spent 30 minutes pandering for applause from the audience, either by slowly turning their heads away from each other and towards the audience, or facing the audience and slowly raising their hands to the sky, or putting a paint ball in their mouth and squirting a (simple) line of paint across a canvas. The other 30 minutes were spent on the absolute weirdest videos I have ever seen in my life, and a couple of so-called “audience interaction” tricks. One video starts out talking about how cities of people are connected through something so magical and exciting (and we are thinking the internet) that turns out to be plumbing. Then the video shows what happens when the sewer system gets backed up and starts coming out of your toilets (luckily for us, it was only the same aforementioned drum paint). The other video just repeated “rods and cones”, “rods and cones”, while these two circles of statues on either side of the stage showed how our eyes adjust to the spinning height of each of the statues, and how our eyes actually take a split second image of what we see before it is passed on to the “rods and cones”, and that is why we see images when we close our eyes. Then we were schooled on how “rods and cones” see differently – the rods see black and white, and we have more of them so that we can see at night, and the cones see color in variations of three main colors (I forget which three). Right after this these long strings of those three colors fall from the ceiling and start spinning. This is about as entertaining as waiting in line at the DMV. I can’t recall how many times I leaned over to Susan and said “I don’t get it,” or I can’t see Paul Vaught watching this show, to which she said, “twice!!” Then at one point, the “group” starts walking over the audience chairs and messing with people in the audience. Seeing as how we were seated in Row “JJ” and the bottom floor of the arena only went to “KK”, it seemed liked this part of the show lasted three lifetimes!

Towards the end of the show, there was more “audience interaction.” There were these numerous rolls of (significantly less rip-able, I tried) toilet paper on these huge wooden rolls that we were supposed to keep passing over ours head until it reached the stage. Mind you, with us being on “JJ”, this was no small feat. When we finally thought the “passing” was over, I looked at Susan, and all of a sudden, this huge mound of toilet paper landed right on her head (one of the highlights!)! Apparently, there was someone standing behind Row KK gathering up the mound while we “passed”. At least we got a good chuckle out of that!

My hero for the night was Ray. After about 40 minutes, he says to Susan – “I’ll see y’all later – I’ll be out in the casino! This was highlight number two. Ray wasn’t about wasting any more time waiting for something “big” to happen!! Highlight number three – when “Ray” came back in. All of a sudden “Ray” was right in Susan’s face, and we both looked quickly to the right, and couldn’t believe that he came back in!! A split second later, we realized it was one of the “group” members, and we burst into screams followed by laughter! Let’s face it – it really seemed like Ray in the dark, what with the smooth top of the head and all…