100 Movies to Miss Before You Die

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Not much to say; it was rather shortfused to begin with. Couple of very literary fans with some novels to their credit wanted to do a Cthulhu-related dramatic presentation for the brunch crowd and their regular cast couldn't make the gig that day, so these fellows cast around and found the wife and me to play robed and hooded acolytes. We started with a selection of well-filked Cthulhu cult hymns and a sing-along... let's just say Ein Feste Burg got really perverted. The drama involved a soap bubble machine as an invocation of Yog-Sothoth -- "I [devotee of Cthulhu] declare a schism!!" And those daisy-wand bubble wands to make more bubbles, one for each hooded acolyte -- a good thing, because the center-stage bubble machine failed to work. It don't go so good even when you've filled up its solution reservoir according to directions, if you stumble and spill most of it getting it up to the lectern ten seconds before you start the show.

I hung out stage left, plied my bubble wand, chanted cultishly, wagged my head like a Muppet a lot. When they got round to the "Ia! Ias!" of ritual import, I weighed in with "Ia! Ia! You betcha!" and got a laugh.

We were there a couple-three hours total, what with everything. Admired lots of steampunk outfits -- figure late Victorian and Edwardian, gone Jules Verne on a modest dose of acid -- but didn't put foot in the huckster room at all.