Makin' the RENT

Sorry guys, this one's pretty long.  But it features a guest appearance by Neil Patrick Harris, so if that's enticing to you read on.

Fun fact: in this month, I've watched three shows featuring Jeff Perry --  "My So-Called Life"(Mr. Katimsky), "Grey's Anatomy" (Meredith Grey's dad), and now "American Gothic" (Artie Healy, the deputy's brother).  Just felt like sharing.  (by the way, "American Gothic" is pretty darn good... like "Twin Peaks" but southern... and not quite as good as "Twin Peaks")

Anyway, as you can (probably) tell from my completely lame post title, I went to see "Rent" last night. Allegra joined me (see Allegra, now you get a whole post about you) and before the show, which was at 8:00 at The Pantages theater, we decided to hang out in Hollywood and goof around for a little while. (oh, and the picture is of Anthony Rapp, "Rent" star extraordinaire).

I got to Allegra's house and she insisted on taking a long time to change into something nicer, even though I insisted "It's not like it's an opening night or anything."  Then we left.

We parked at the Hollywood & Highland mall, since it's pretty convenient and has tons of parking, then walked out to the street.  Step one: trying on silly sunglasses and laughing at all the crazy people who dress up like Superman, Chucky, Snoopy, etc... in order to make about a buck per picture scamming tourists.  We walked to the corner and decided to grab dinner at Mel's, but not before first checking out the lobby of the "Ripley's Believe It or Not Odditorium," featuring a robotic climbing monkey, a "prehistoric cave bear," and some silly fountains I had to explain to Allegra.  Then we had delicious dinner at Mel's.

Then we walked down the street some more, stopping in the lobby of the Guinness World Records museum.  It featured a statue of the World's Tallest Man, which was perfect for Allegra since she's always complaining about how she can't find guys tall enough for her.  They also had a silly little photo booth and, since Allegra shares my obsession, we decided to go in it.  Except it was already invaded and conquered by a gaggle of giggling Jonas Brothers fans fresh from seeing the 3-D concert movie at the El Capitan.  We decided to wait for them to finish, which didn't look like it would happen in the near future, but then the machine shut itself off!

We decided to come back after visiting our favorite, Fredrick's of Hollywood, and see if the machine had been turned back on.  Fredrick's wasn't the most exciting.  It's bigger than the one we usually go to (Century City) but yeah... there were a few funny items, though.  Down the street we stopped in the lobby of the Hollywood Wax Museum to take some pictures in front of their giant postcard photo spot.  That taken care of, we crossed the street again back to the Guinness museum.  The photo booth was on!  But we only had a $10 bill, and the machine took ones and fives.  We asked the guy at the museum admissions desk if he could break our bill, but he couldn't open the register without making a sale.  So we went next door to a sketchy little tourist shop and tried to buy 3 postcards for $1.00, but the guy there said he wouldn't have change for our $10 so we didn't buy anything.  And the guy at the pizza restaurant next to that also couldn't open the register without making a sale.  But we found another hokey Hollywood tourist shop next to that and bought a blue Lake Tahoe lighter for 99 cents, the cheapest thing in the store (a Hollywood lighter was over a dollar).  On our way back to the Guinness museum we passed this little room that had a stage at one end and folding chairs set up.  This band of teenage (or young college aged) guys was playing and we stopped to take a gander.  Allegra whipped out the lighter and everything.  Then we went back and took photo booth pictures because we're awesome like that!

After that we headed back over to the Chinese theater to partake in some tourist activity.  We took some Walk of Fame pictures and in our William Shatner picture this guy handing out flyers for a "Haunted Hollywood" tour jumped into the picture.  Then he started talking about how he's an actor and he was in this movie like "American Pie" and gave us a flyer with his headshot on one side and the movie ad on the other.  Oh, and an autograph.  Then he asked me if I was an actress, and for some reason I said "Yes," since that seemed easiest.  So he whipped out a copy of his reel and signed that and handed it over, telling me to watch it and get in touch with him since he was an acting coach or something.  I looked him up on IMDb and in the message boards about him there's a post from someone with a very similar story, so clearly I was not the first.  After that little encounter we took the obligatory handprint photo and started walking back to Hollywood Boulevard to get to the car.

On the way we were accosted by a pair of Heath Ledger-style Jokers and they coerced us into taking some pictures with them, then (of course) demanding a tip.  After that we realized that we should have been on our way already (the theater was only a few blocks away, but there was the possibility of traffic and a bad parking situation), so we scrambled down into the parking structure.  We stopped by a snack cart, hoping they'd believe our story that we'd had dinner at the mall and give us a parking validation, but the lady said we had to buy something there for her to validate our ticket.  So we bought a little piece of chocolate, the smallest thing there.

On our way to the theater my mom called to tell us that she'd seen Neil Patrick Harris in the lobby.  We were both extremely excited by this news!  And it turns out that it was opening night, so Allegra was very glad that she'd insisted on changing.  We were practically sprinting from the parking lot now that NPH was a possibility!

In the lobby we didn't see him, so we headed into the theater and found my family.  And then Neil Patrick Harris walks in and sits across the aisle and two rows down from us.  We immediately start freaking out and planning an approach involving saying "hi" from our friend Stacy who played one of the fangirls in "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog."  But I was too freaked out to do it before the show so we decided to do it during intermission.  When intermission finally came we ran out of the theater in the dark to get to the bathroom before a line formed.  So did NPH and his boyfriend, although they were headed to the drink stand.  In the dark I was looking for Allegra and as I turned my fist bumped NPH's shoulder, so basically I've punched NPH.  Which is kinda tight and kinda SO embarrassing, although he definitely didn't see me in the dark and possibly didn't even notice the punch/fist bump.

After our bathroom break we returned to the theater and waited for NPH to come back.  Eventually he did, pretty shortly before Act II was about to start.  It was now or never.  Calming my RAPIDLY beating heart, I approached.  He was wearing a nice white button-down shirt, a skinny black tie and a black leather jacket.  He looked amazing.  I managed to get out, "Hi, I went to high school with Stacy Shirk from Dr. Horrible, and she wanted me to say 'hi' to you from her."  He responded "Oh yeah, Stacy, how is Stacy?" 

"She's good."

"Yeah, she was hilarious.  She had a great part."

(blushing) "I actually haven't watched the commentary yet, she's mad at me" (not true but if she knew I'm sure she'd be disappointed since her big solo/duet with Neil is in the commentary... which I really need to watch)

"She should be!  You need to buy it and watch that!"

And then someone he actually seemed to know walked up and they hugged and Allegra and I retreated back to our seats.

Oh, and the show.  I've seen it a few times on Broadway, including with Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal (the original stars), but this was definitely the best performance of Rent I've ever seen.  The performances are really well done and the staging is super tight now that the show's existed for over 10 years.  So if you're in L.A. while it's playing and that kind of thing rings your bell you should go check it out.

After the show we decided to wait outside the stage door for the cast to come out.  It was way more organized than any stage door I've ever been to in New York.  Some guys (security or something) had us all line up along a metal fence and down the outside wall of the theater.  The cast came out pretty much one by one and went down the line signing autographs.  First came the woman who played Maureen, then Mimi, and then Anthony Rapp (Mark).  He seemed pretty subdued.  We congratulated him on the great performance, then, since he was still signing our playbills and I wanted to say something else, I said "You know Deborah B[.], right?" and he said, "Yeah," and I said, "Yeah, I worked with her in New York," and he was like "Oh, cool," to which I responded "uh, yeah... she says 'hi'" (clearly I had a lot of fake "saying hi" going on that night), and he was like "oh yeah, uh, I guess I say 'hi' too." (or something like that...)

After that we waited for a while and then word came down the line that the rest of the cast was gone.  Apparently Adam Pascal really hates doing the stage door thing.  So yeah, then we headed home for the night.

THE END.