Getting Ready For Penn & Teller At Foxwoods, My Gram, And My Sis
My Gram decided she didn't want to go because of the distance (an hour and a half drive one way) and she feels uncomfortable about the theatre (1400 seater, she gets a little freaked out in closed places with a lot of people now) and she doesn't like casinos.
I told her P&T weren't actually playing in the casino but I couldn’t seem to budge her.
When I called for tickets, about two minutes before they went on sale, I thought about buying her a ticket anyway. I think she'd go if I already had a ticket for her. Then the Foxwoods MGM rep told me that the first 20 rows were set aside for promotions and reservations.
If it weren't for my sister going, whose eyes are a bit better than mine, I don't think I'd be going. At that distance all I'm going to see are two blurs. My grandmother wouldn't be able to see anything so I didn't get her a ticket.
My sister is worried about the distance but is excited to see P&T. She's only recently gotten hooked on them. It took a bit of deviousness on my part. She had seen the Creationism, the Signs from Heaven, and the 12 Stepping episodes. I had also given her a couple of articles from Skeptic Magazine and Skeptical Inquiry Magazine, which had nothing to do with P&T but she equated them, as I found out when Gram told me Darlo told her she wasn’t going to watch or read anything more on P&T because “Tressa and they are going to take everything I love and destroy it.”
I told Darlo that P&T didn’t write for Skeptic or Skeptical Inquiry Magazines (thankfully she didn’t see the Scientific American magazine with P&T on the cover that had just come out). I also told her about how P&T had dragged large chunks of my childhood through the BS.
She actually has an affinity for old people, having worked in a nursing home as an aide for a while, so I ultimately got her hooked on P&T by introducing her to Randi first. I have some old clips of Randi on Carson (Popoff and psychic surgery) and had her watch them. I also got the Nova special on Randi from the library for us to watch.
Darlo was surprised that Randi was still going strong (“That’s the guy who runs TAM? How old is he!?”).
She also watched the documentary “The God Who Wasn’t There” with me.
After that she asked for all the seasons of BS that I had (all 5). She’s just recently rewatched season 3 and is going through 4 again. She’s also about half way through Sin City Spectacular.
My sister's already dreamt about meeting Penn after the show. She said, in her dream, she introduced herself and said, "I'll rub butts with you to say hello, I'd say hello the other way you suggested (at the end of the Abstinence episode) but my sister told me your married." Then she got so embarrassed in the dream she woke herself up!
Jokingly, she said the show wouldn't really be complete unless Penn said, "That's sexy." I told her that if she asked Penn (afterwards, when we get pictures) he would most likely say it for her. She said she would probably be too shy to ask. I said, not to worry because I would ask for her.
She also said that it would ruin it for her if Teller talked. I'm not sure were this came from as she's done some theatre herself when she was younger. I don't know if she still feels that way as she has seen him talk since (The Magic & Mystery Tour, we both joked that in the scene where Teller is on the phone describing the sphinx, "it's enormous...it's big...it's really big" is like he's talking to Gram).
I was thinking of making up a small, 8x10 sign that says “Hi Gram” and seeing if we can get pictures with both Penn and Teller with them holding the sign and Darlo (my sister) and I on each side of them. Gram watches Penn when he’s on Beck and she’s called me when she’s found them on some show while flipping through stations. She loved Teller’s book on his parents. I think she’d get a kick out of a “Hi Gram” picture with each of them.
March 8, 2009
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