When lesbians attack and sign language with Marlee Matlin

This just in – I looked Indy up on Wikipedia last night (hoping to find negative information to support my attacks against it) and guess what – it’s the 14th largest city in the US and the second biggest capital (after Helena, MT). 14th? What?? I know the way they calculate metropolitan areas can take in huge swaths of land, and I can only assume that the suburbs stretch waaaaaayyy far out, because I’m not lying when I say there sure ain’t much downtown. If it weren’t on Wikipedia – that faultless, perfect source of information – I wouldn’t believe it.

Last night we went to a performance of the Second City comedy troupe (the proving grounds for SNL and many other TV and movie comics). This was held at the Murat Centre, the city’s primary performing arts center. Or “centre,” I guess…this is the way this word is always spelled in this city, no joke. The Murat is known in Indy, according to the tourism council brochure that I picked up, as “that there fancy place where they have them plays and such after the monster truck shows.” This is a very lovely structure…but then I went to the restroom (is it odd that multiple stories here center around restrooms?) in the basement and was startled to see that very little had been carved out of the design budget to make a bathroom fitting the opulence of the rest of the place. It looked like a dungeon. Then I looked up the Murat and I see that it was originally a temple and it was built by those weird “Shriners,” or more specifically, the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, associates of the Masons. Sigh…what a bunch of freaks we have in this country. And if you’ve ever read anything ever by Dan Brown, you probably know the Shriners love to sacrifice virgins in their temples, and their “book” says it must be done in dingy basement restrooms. So that explains that. (The Shriners of course are best known for their hospitals…but what a Trojan Horse that is. Take the medical care…at the risk of brainswashing!!)

After Second City was a performance of the musical group They Might be Giants. I decided to skip this, however, due to my concern about likely overcrowding in the venue, based on the cautionary advertisement of the band members’ potential stature.

I checked out of my hotel this morning and got yelled at by the angry Asian lady for the last time. It was a great value, this hotel, and I’d recommend it, but there is one bizarre thing about it – the lobby is small and not far from the small restaurant. I’m not sure what the primary fare is there, but the entire lobby is filled with this smell of being at the county fair. If I had to describe the smell in one word I would say, “fried.” It’s like if you stuck your face right over a fryer that’s been used for French fries, chicken fingers, wings, etc. etc. It’s the first thing that hits you get when you walk in. It wasn’t unpleasant, just…weird.

Marlee Matlin closed the conference, for no appropriately apparent reason other than because when they threw a dart at their second-tier celebrity dartboard while looking for a closer, it landed on her. You may know her as “that deaf actress” or the girl from the Seinfeld lip-reading episode or the only actress to win an Oscar in her debut film. Though her talk was filled with a bunch of feel-good cornpone (No lie…she actually said “courage plus belief equals success”) she is just a complete sweetheart and great presenter. You’d be hard pressed to walk away from interacting with her and not feeling nice, I’m sure. After her talk I was sitting outside the ballroom on my laptop and looked up and her and her interpreter (or “handler” of sorts) came walking by. “She’s cute,” was my first thought…“I know sign for ‘thank you’ and can impress her” was my second, so as she walked by we made eye contact and I gave a big smile, said “thank you very much,” and did the sign thing for “thank you.” She gave a big, pleasant smile back ``and said, “Dab a brittle tayma runnnggggerad.” The smile said it all, though, and honestly, brightened my day (I should add that perhaps my crankiness towards this city has to do with the fact that I HAVE NOT SEEN THE SUN since my plane descended below the clouds on Monday afternoon). It was not quite as nice though as when MILF extraordinaire Sela Ward told me that I was “so sweet,” that time at the St. Thomas airport. Or when I had sex with (don’t get confused, now) Mary Matalin which was really just taking one for the team to get at her husband.

This has gotten long so I’ll greatly abbreviate another story from BWI – there was some big gay thing on the mall over the weekend so a lot of the gays were flying home on Monday, when I was leaving. There was a John Goodmanesque lesbian behind me as we waited to check in, and she decided that people should just walk up to an empty kiosk, regardless of if a Southwest staff person waved you up or not (and despite a posted sign asking you to wait.) And she’d holler gruffly up to the person at the front of the line, “Hey…just go on up. Don’t wait.” And sometimes that person – afraid…very afraid - would go up and get sent away by a Southwest person. But John Goodman continued to encourage people to go up, noting that some ball-less fear of authority kept as rooted in place when we should be more assertive. There was a Danny Davitoesque lesbian in front of me and her and her partner (think Ray Ramano) were uncomfortable with this and I’m sure were thinking, “This is why people only like the sexy ones of us.” So when it was their turn to go they got the same abuse from the woman behind me and got into a bit of a cat fig….errr….bulldog fight. It was ugly. On many levels.

Off to the aiport….I’m about to get out of this sphincter of the Midwest…hope I’ve enlightened you all!