I'm not going to dignify the closed airports with a post. I think we can just all agree that 10 centimetres of snow should not completely shut down one of the world's busiest airports for 48 hours, and move on. Fuck you, Heathrow airport, you are terrible, the end.
In happier news, I don't even need to go home, or even stay alive, really. I could just die right now and it would be okay, because I saw this:
Look at those gentle yet mischievous eyes. They're looking right into your sense of childlike wonder
(and love of dirty jokes about 'rodgering').
The photo doesn't make it clear what THIS is, but I think it does make it clear that this is amazing. Basically, when we heard that David Hasselhoff was starring as Captain Hook in a children's Christmas panto, we had no choice. Tickets were purchased, the train was ridden to Wimbledon in the bitter cold (a newspaper literally described it as a "bone-chilling -2 degrees", so...) and the greatest theatrical journey of my life unfolded.
I'd never seen a panto before, and that was an experience in itself- foam fingers, balloons, and popcorn in the audience, widespread adult drunkenness, hundreds of little british children heckling the incredibly over the top actors, a full-on audience sing-along to 'Rule Brittania' etc., are all apparently normal. I'm not so sure if the rest of it was normal. Things got so intense I had to start taking notes.
After some introductory flying around and general poncing about by Peter, the children (Wendy a grown up, the other two actual children) arrive in Neverland. This was explained to the audience by a trio of Supremes-esque sassy lounge singers who sang "Do you know the way to Neverland", a brilliant rewrite of the Burt Bacharach classic "Do you know the way to San Jose". This was one of a few reworkings of semi-popular cheeseball songs from the past in the show. My personal favourite was the emotional rendition of "Midnight train to Georgia" that accompanied the moment when Peter decides to let his friends fly home without him. "Midnight Flight to Childhood" is truly a song for the ages.
Basically, the first 30 minutes of the show were a waste of time (until the lounge singers came back as mermaids... who were flying? Fine.) because everyone in the audience was just waiiiiiiting for the Hoff. And when he finally arrived it was glorious. He opened with some rapidfire puns relating to his own name, and literally referred to himself as "hofferific", before breaking into his 80s classic "Hooked on a Feeling" while brandishing his hook and swiveling his hips like a pro.
The Hoff was actually really charming, and managed to balance the ridiculousness of his sidekick, some British pseudo-celebrity whose whole joke was just... being gay? He was a fancy pirate named "Jolly Roger" who basically wiggled his bum around, did a lot of suggestive rubbing of different phallic pirate-y objects (mops, swords, you know, use your imagination. "swab the decks, roger..." "the WHAT?" cue laughter), and at one point showed up for fifteen seconds onstage in a pineapple outfit and stiletto heels for no real reason. The English people were LOVING it, but they were also loving the superbly racist depiction of Tiger Lily and the other white actors playing Indians in the show, so who can say.
It was a weird experience. While legitimately one of the funniest things I've ever seen, I don't know how I feel about a so-bad-it's-good show that is live. The Hoff literally made a joke in the show about life taking a wrong turn sometimes, and I didn't know whether to laugh or hug him. Also, at the end, a great deal of the cast was "flying", which just meant swinging, pendulum-like, back and forth across the stage during a rendition of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing", while cast members dragged people out of the audience onstage to dance with them and gave them loot bags. Okay? Okay. I guess. To be honest I think I'm still digesting.
I will leave you with yet another shining star in David's oeuvre, a classic he also performed on stage with more gyrations than were probably necessary (which, in this case, is any gyrations whatsoever).
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