show highlights and new material
The order of this stuff probably isn't quite right... just so you know.
--I already knew the blue men would be John, Pete Si., and Matt R., with Pete in the center role... As shadow drumming started, we spotted John in the left spot (Philpart) and Matt on the right (Mattpart). The familiar rhythms started pounding and the show had really begun (ooooooo yay!). When Matt smoked his cigarette (I think), the light came on John, who looked away from his drum at Matt. All of the seasoned board fans cracked up, since that's not something that normally/used to happen... that's one great thing, is that we'll notice the smallest things that are different and it makes them that much more humorous, hehe... it keeps the show fresh. ...and John was FULL of quirky little blips like that... oh, he so killed me...
--Crunch cracked me the hell up, ohhhhhhhh my goodness. John was absolutely hysterical. When he covered his face in cereal, as expected... he didn't just ignore that he'd done it, like Philpart usually does... but went back into his box for more and practically wallowed in it. He was all "ooooOOOoo000ooo, cereal" and lathering it over his face, a couple extra times, in complete straight-faced character. In the meantime, Pete in Center was cracking a HUGE grin, but since his mouth was full of cereal, he could get away with it... he poked John's arm as if to say "um, hello? earth to blue man..." and John, mid-wallow, looked at Pete and slowly and deliberately dropped his handful into Pete's box, never cracking even the tiniest of smiles. So John's face was COVERED in cereal, and Pete played the "you got something on your face, dude" game with him to no avail--there was so much cereal that knocking off sections didn't even seem to reveal any blue patches, lol. By the end of Crunch, Matt was hurling chewed-up mush into the first few rows... after two very noticeable blasts into the audience he turned to the other blue man and got both of them, haha.
--"Drumbone" involved the band not starting on time, as seen in the Complex show... methinks it was slightly less amusing since you couldn't see the band just milling around and not paying attention like the guys on tour did, haha.
--"Fractals" was replaced by a history of animation video, which was really very cool... It started out with simple/ancient animation, demonstrating how cave art may have been a simple form of animation... It then moved into shadow puppets, where two blue men played with small humanoid figures, who ended up apparently arguing and flipping each other off... It always cracks me up when the blue man shows his not-so-innocent side, hehe... Anyways, at some point the shaving cream was pulled off the screen to reveal Matt eating from a bowl of cereal (and not actually playing with his shadow puppet), heheh... The video moved to the idea of the zoetrope, which made me wish the Astor had the zoetropes around the vortexes (like Vegas does). By the end, the video had shifted to everyman in his digital city world, while the voiceover stressed that animation is still largely trapped in a 2D world... and poor Everyman ran into the "screen," then hit it a few times with his arm in frustration. We felt bad for Everyman.
--When the Blue Men found their way into the audience, Matt came climbing over chairs on our side. He was a few rows ahead of us when he looked beyond us looking quite startled. I turned around and noticed three or four girls practically squealing and cowering in fear. I don't think Matt ended up heading in their direction, haha... He walked over Gee and I, though, and I gave him my usual big smile back to his stare. Chair-climbing must be tricky in New York, because the seats lean back and give when they're stepped on... I noticed John pretty much bounce off the last chair he was on before the aisle came up.
--After Pete caught the Toblerone in the balcony (the thrower was a huge tease and trying to throw Pete off and fake him out, but Pete didn't miss a beat), John wandered over to this box on the wall that said something like "CAUTION: HIGH VOLTAGE"--I'd noticed it before the show, but hadn't thought anything of it... He pulled Jason (BlueRiddler) on his feet, and Jason did the honors of shutting down all the electricity in the theatre for a moment. It was black for a good 10-15 seconds before John powered the house up again... Hm. Anywho, it seemed like the time in the audience was longer than I remember it... but maybe that's partly because they have less people to visit in New York, so they're able to linger in any one spot longer than in Boston...
--The Twinkie girl wasn't fabulous, but the blue men made up for it... Matt brought out a candle and pulled out a lighter to light it, but before he could get anywhere, John whipped out a fire extinguisher in something like half a second and blasted across Pete to put out the flame. The look on his face was like some stern paranoia: "NO! NO FIRE!!!!" and of course Matt looked completely stunned, as if to say "whoa...sorry man... 0_0" When Pete brought out the clap-on/off light, the lamphead wouldn't stay up--when he set it out, it drooped, so Matt drooped his head along with it, lol. Later, when Matt had given his Twinkie to the girl to be opened, Pete and John sat contemplatively, not really fiddling with the wrappers as much as just staring in focused confusion. At one point, John started gazing at his bug zapper lamp and holding up his Twinkie to it... He was so hilarious because he is incredibly straight-faced, yet he came off as extremely expressive and perhaps even abnormally brainy. He reminded me of someone who's brilliant, but quite an oddity otherwise... like... oh, like Monk! John was like Monk. LOL. Oh, and when Matt's banana hole burst, he turned in such a way that the gunk spewed wall/vortex, where it bounced off and shot back at the feast table, hehe... And when Pete readied the take-out box, he topped it off with a pink bow! Haha.
--When the rock star manual was introduced, the sound vibes visual showed up on the video screen, and I have to admit I was as distracted by the moving "electric" lines as the blue men were at first. LOL. Before long, the pelvic exercise made its appearance, and found a home in "Tubes" quite nicely... John was the first to try it out, and added the head motion exACTLY in time with the words "now extend your movement to include your entire body"... Pete and Matt joined in and the three went on for what seemed like a long time, pulling fancy moves like all turning to the side in time, haha.
--"Time to Start" was held together by John on the bass PVC, while the other two led us in the movements (1, 2, and 6)... Having 6 in there definitely made things pretty loud and energetic compared to old-style "Tubes" show (although some of the "new" high-energy was due to the fact that there was a large group of crazy fans in teh audience). Matt pulled off RCM #4 quite nicely, at first with John's help, haha. Also, throat cam was moved to this section, as a "exploring the audience" RCM, and I MUCH preferred having it during this set because I could completely ignore the video and watch John play instead, hehe.
--howtobearockstar.com (or something simliar... I may have the address wrong because that site exists, and it's not BMG) suggested that the blue men take a minute to play some of the great songs that had come before them... Someone from our group (Molly's dad, perhaps) yelled out "FREEBIRD!" but nothing happened... They instead played (with the drummer) Devo's "Whip It," Ozzy's "Crazy Train" (complete with the everlasting vibraslap and numerous "AI AI AI"s! from the fanmeet group, lol), and "Like a Virgin." On the last, Pete and Matt hammered out the melody, while John pulled out a white veil and carefully put it on, looking to the others. Again, completely straight-faced, which made him look even more ridiculous than you might imagine a Blue Man in a wedding veil. Haha! After these tributes, someone (not our group) yelled "FREEBIRD" and the band kicked in with the song; Matt pulled out his lighter again and lit it, only to be stifled by Mr. Fire Safety, John, who gave the same adamant and slightly paranoid look.
--And then it was time for the rap karaoke. LOL. After a brief introduction, the words to Eminem's "Lose Yourself" flashed by on all the screens in quick succession... I sort of knew the song but not well enough to follow at ALL, and I think that was the case with most of the audience because it sounded like one horribly confused mess. For a second I was really scared that it was going to be a loooooooong skit/set, but fortunately the karaoke was cut short, hehe.
--"PVC IV" was awesome... I always prefer the live version to the CD version because there are so many extra accents and improvisations... and also, the tempo always gets pushed at the end section with the band's entrance. Pete's drumming style was fun to watch--he drums like he's dancing! He checked in with the other two guys an awful lot, too. I love it when Center gets this look like, "all right guys. let's go." and they all whip into a frenzy...
--At some point, Pete broke out the airport wands and played with turning the band on and off, and then directed us to stand... he coaxed Matt and John onstage, and first concentrated on Matt, who he got to jump around a little. Then he turned to work on John, and found him only two inches away. John had snuck up, with that odd straight-faced wise-aleck look, and got all up in Pete's face, smirking (without really smirking) into Pete's surprised countenance. Pete stared for a second before gingerly directing John to back off, hahahah. Eventually Pete directed the two other blue men offstage, and he followed... Once they'd left the stage, the video screen showed a backstage video with the three blue men walking through the theatre. The last one had the wands and every so often reminded the audience to keep clapping (as we were before directed to do)... they ended up on the street outside the Astor, where the wand-holding blue man (Chris) used his skills to hail a cab. The first two blue men got in, and wand-man turned back to the camera to sit us down and turn off the band... but by the time he'd done that, the cab had left, and he was left frantically trying to hail it back with all sorts of crazy movements (classic Chris Wink style, lol). Finally he got the cab to come back and he jumped on top to ride it away, haha.
--"Utne Wire Man" had the same sort of idea as before, but was elaborated... a single wire man at stage left sat at a computer typing and drinking coffee in the "Internet Cafe," while the LED's welcomed us to a place where (something like) "you sit next to other people that you don't talk to, while you talk to other people that aren't there," and advertised the new coffee sizes of "Colossal, Epic, and 'The Shiz-nit.'" I can never really remember much of what the LED signs say (until I've seen them multiple times) because I get distracted by the scrolling text. Oooooh pretty red letters! And then, and then!! The wireman got up and performed his airpole solo (it was actually Chapman Stick player Tom, W00T!), and he totally ruled. I have seen the airpole part of "Utne" live in Vegas, but this was so much closer and thus entirely mesmerizing. AWESOME addition to the show.
--Before the traditional "Klein" sequence showed up, three canvases were lowered with LED screens above them... the right canvas had an LED screen with the word "FISH," the middle one had the classic "artfish," and the left one had a blue paint imprint of a fish. The right LED sign remarked how the medium used on the canvas below allowed artists to create without wasting their time learning an actual skill to make art by hand, haha. The middle screen said something about the rotting fish's stench keeping viewers at arm's-length... and the left screen introduced the work of Yves Klein. All the while, "Cat Video" played in the background. I was glad to hear that even though that video's gone, the music lives on... It made the absence of the old material more bearable to hear the familiar tunes.
--The guy they picked for the human paintbrush appeared to me suspicious... he seemed to know exactly what was going on, and hardly cracked a smile. When the blue man marked his face, he (the Blue Man) dragged the print down his cheek as the guy lowered his face in an exaggerated puppy dog face... hmm. But maybe I am just always suspicious of the guys they pick for Klein, lol.
--The show was coming to a close, but KLF was so much fun! At the start of it, Pete grabbed the ends of a few rolls hanging off the center of the balcony, and proceeded to twist them up and make the giant rope-thingy which he threw around in the blacklights and strobe lights (oooooh ahhhhh)... once he was done with that for a while, he gathered a huge armful of paper and strode up the aisle, right towards Sonia. Even from several feet away I could see the hidden grin on his face as he dumped the entire pile on top of her, hahah. Throughout the frenzy, I kept my eye out for the blue men, but found myself buried in paper (and unable to see) more than a few times (thanks Gee). At one point, I felt a breeze coming in rhythmic waves, and I looked towards the aisle to see John flinging a bunch of paper at Mere--she must have been getting nailed because I was getting hit by some of it and I was 3 seats away from him! Later, Mere got her revenge, but on the wrong blue man (lol), by throwing a big wad of paper at Matt. He turned and stared at her for a minute before busting out into some random blue man dancing on his way back up to the stage. Haha YEAH for random dancing! lol.
--During the salutes, I think I jumped the gun once again and saluted back when they were really meaning the people in the back, but oh well, haha. As Pete backed away, he seemed to look right at me and give an extra salute, but he very well might have just targeted our group in general... either way, very cool. =) After Pete and Matt made their way behind the DNA screen, John followed, but popped out a couple times to give a last couple one-handed salutes, ahah. He rules.

meet and greet time!
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! As I headed into the lobby, I found myself surrounded by fans from our group, which was pretty funny... We totally took over, simply because there were so many of us, and of course none of us were going to just walk out the door like most show-goers usually do. I headed for Pete first, since I'd met him before the show and all. I gave him the trademark unasked-for hug, which he returned. "Awesome show!" I said... man, I hate how generic I get around them, lol... He was a really sweet Center... and if I'd remembered I would have teased him for that huge-ass grin he had on during Crunch, lol. Anyways, I asked if I could get a picture with him... I'm a fan of the long-arm shot, even if it isn't entirely necessary, so I asked if he minded, and when he seemed ok with it, handed him the camera and showed him where the shutter button was. I sidled up to him and he put his arm around me for the picture, like usual... but as he held the camera out and positioned it, he turned his face and stared at me, getting right up close. I decided to be stubborn and just kept smiling at the camera, thinking "I'm ignoring you, Blue Man!" hahahhaa... He held the stare for what seemed like a pretty long time, and perhaps finally gave up on me and just took the picture. After that picture, I smiled at him and thanked him, and backed off so the rest of the fans could have their turns. He gave a small smile back before turning his attention to giving out signatures and posing for pictures... Before running away though, I hung around and took snaps of him until he saw me doing it and posed for me.

aftermath with the fans
We had just too much damn fun, and none of us wanted to leave... So the Astor staff let us mooch around in the lobby, at least until we started to get in the way, haha.