| This one starts out in a very large auditorium. It’s half dark already, and I start to chat with the people sitting next to me while we're waiting for the show to start. The stage-which is really enormous-is liberally coated with white Christmas lights. Icicle lights, net lights, single strand, you name it, it’s hung on the back curtain. (Which is made of black velvet-very pretty.) The lights go down, and we see a spotlight hit the man, the one we’ve come to see, the one we’ve been waiting for- and it’s not Al! It is, in fact, a horrible replacement-the “Bad Hair”ed Coolio! He starts in on his song-Gangsta’s Paradise-and the audience, as one, stand up and begins hurling doughnuts at him. (What? Where’d we get doughnuts?) We’re throwing doughnut after doughnut at him, and he’s still singing!(If you can call it that...) We start chanting “Amish, Amish, AM-ISH!” until the rapper retreats to the back of the stage, mumbling his lyrics and looking for an exit. The crowd rushes the stage and surrounds him. “He’s gonna sing this right, or we’re not leaving!” Coolio suddenly realizes he’s surrounded by a rabid pack of Al fans, who didn’t care too much for him after his little backstage hissy fit at that awards show, but are now furious because he’s taking up time that could be used in better ways (like shaving one’s tongue.) The crowd starts chanting the lyrics to “Amish Paradise”, line by line, until, defeated, Coolio begins singing them back. At the end of the last verse, he looks at the crowd, spins around and implodes in a puff of green icky smoke. The crowd cheers and rushes in to the gap he’s left. Somehow, the group I’m with get shoved out the front exits and into a long hallway. We walk down it, to appear in the MHS choir room. (So now the choir room has a secret hallway leading to a huge auditorium...) And there’s a few more changes to the room. The yellow chairs have turned blue. The closed circuit TV is turned on full blast. And Al Yankovic is seated in the center of the tenor/bass section, laughing. This is all out hysterical laughter. He is turning purple, tears running down his face, holding his sides, looking at the TV and laughing even harder (if that was possible.) I look up at the TV and realize what he was watching-the Coolio fiasco down the hallway. That makes me start to laugh, setting off the whole rest of the room (all twenty five of us) into laughter much like Al’s. Pretty soon, Al calms down a bit and realizes we’re standing there. He gets up and hugs each of us-individually-and leaves out the door. We sneak after him. (Remember the old cartoons, where someone would sneak away hidden under someone else’s coat or dress?) All twenty-five of us were stashed under Al’s shirt-(I didn’t know Hawaiian print elastic shirts existed...)and we sneak right onto the tour bus (which resembled a school bus.) We slip out from under the shirt and hide under the seats. We hear the band getting on, whispering, and a giggle (possibly Ruben’s). And then I woke up. My Take On It Next Dream |
| Living In A Gangst-Amish Paradise 11/27/2000 |