last night i went out on a rare excursion to the calgary centre for performing arts, jack singer concert hall, to see five hole: tales of hockey erotica. the stage show was adapted from musician/author dave bidini's book of short stories (with the same title), collaboratively, with the one yellow rabbit theatre group, for their 2007 high performance rodeo.
i actually remember the culmination of their writing process, when i ran into bidini, martin tielli & selina martin at the broken city social club on my birthday in december of '06... they were celebrating the completion of their work, and to be honest: they were all pretty hammered.... bidini's a nice guy and very easy to engage in any sort of conversation about our sport of choice: dude's a hockey story sponge.
as i watched the theatre fill up, just prior to 8pm on a holiday monday night, i saw a few notables walk in: the globe & mail's sportswriter eric duhatschek, the lead vocalist of legendary calgary punk band chixdiggit, kj jansen, and calgary flames stay-at-home blueliner, robyn regehr...
the performance itself was much how i expected it to be; a handful of anectodal takes on classic lockerroom situations. i think i laughed the hardest at the parts that seemed so effortlessly likely: for example, a big-named NHL'er on a roadtrip who's chatting with his cab driver, where the cabbie realizes (with both excitement and hatred) the identity of his fare. there was a little girl-on-girl action here, a good ol'fashioned puck bunny tale there, a rather ....*ahem* interesting take on the passion involved in a brawl (if you know what i'm sayin'....), and a hella long monologue about the definition of five-hole (delivered superbly by OYR staple, denise clarke, in goalie pads, fishnets & high heels)....
[note: one of the characters' nicknames was SQUID and i couldn't help but imagine the actor to be portraying mike cammalleri.... thanks for that, awildermode :) ]
in the theatre's semi-darkness, i took the occasional glance towards regehr, who didn't seem to really dig the homo-erotic stuff, but appeared to appreciate a good political crack or low-end poopy-humour type of gag... i wonder if he'll talk to jarome today about the last scene of the show: the one where bigshot character bobby wolf (apparently loosely based on bobby hull) acquires a magic salve to relieve him of a scoring slump... iggy could use some of that salve... i just won't tell you where bobby wolf had to put the fictional stuff....
it was an enjoyable production, one which made me nostalgic for the era where i would see the rheostatics play live as often as possible, in as many cities as i could. damn, can martin tielli ever rawk that double-necked guitar with the blue-and-red maple leaf motif....
and damn, can bidini ever spin a yarn about hockey....
:)
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4 comments:
Didn't mention it, but I too was thinking of "Calamari" when they threw out Squid. Actually, I was racking my brain to think if I'd ever heard any rumours about Semenko being gay. Yeah, you heard it right... I just opened myself up to a potential Semenko beat down.
Also, let me know if you have someone in Calgary that will teach me to play the saw.
P.s. That salve your grandma gave me is working great. Its really perked up my "confidence".
hahahahaha.... awesome....
thanks again.
:)
Two Things to say about the 1st period...
1) BOOTUZZI?!?
First there was the tennis style overhead-smash attempt when the puck flew overhead...??? (I won't comment.)
As for the Nucks goal at the end of the first; Bootuzzi should definitely get the assist after turning over the puck when he could have cleared it then kicking it back to Nucks for the second (and scoring) shot that resulted from his pathetic turnover!
2) I'm really hoping that Iggy got that magic salve and put where it belongs. It's good to see him put one between the posts.
dan:
bootuzzi is infuriating.... partly because of what you pointed out, and partly because keenan will give him just as much icetime cause he's totally blind to his deficiencies (it seems)...
like i said to duncan just now on the phone: if bootuzzi plays 20 minutes in a night, he'll spend 16 minutes looking TERRIBLE or taking penalties, 3 minutes floating around doing nothing, and 1 minute with an amazing play that somehow cancels the other 19 minutes out.
it's painful.
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