Strung Along by Puppets

Over at Hyphen, I wrote down a few thoughts about Avenue Q, which I watched last night at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. But let's face it, I wasn't doing much thinking after walking out the theatre doors. Mimicking the Bad Idea Bears was all my friends and I could do--with their open-armed gesticulations and brightly-sinister voices. I've been humming "It Sucks to Be Me" and "The Internet is for Porn" for a day now, with vocal back-up.

More than anything, it was a fantastic show. I was impressed by the sophistication of the humor, the wit of its currency and the timeless of its irony. Those puppets (with human hands up their asses) sometimes shocked me into good sense. It's so irreverent and honest for the sake of humor that it's been more effective in describing human relationships, social striving, and personal desires than most modern accounts I've come across-- fiction or nonfiction.

I hate to be over-exuberant especially since I know that catchy "da-da da-da-daAH!" sequence from "It Sucks to Be Me" is still rolling around my head-- but if you take some Brothers Karamazov, pull out the religion, throw in some puppets, excise the turgid criminality and add a little musical number-- I think you have something approaching the way Avenue Q has captured our modern human drama.

OK. Now go use the internet for what monsters intended....