Recently in Cultural Events Category

Last night Kelly and I went to the Blue Man Group's How to be a Megastar 2.0 Tour.  We were originally supposed to go with Karen and her friend as well and she actually got the tickets.  However she had other plans come up.  She actually ended up selling her pair on eBay and made a profit.  The people who bought her tickets missed the opening act and showed up just before the Blue Man came on.  We were just wondering if they were going to show.

I had gone to one of the previous tours called Complex but Kelly had never really seen or heard the Blue Man.  The previous time I saw them was in a smaller venue usually used for plays and symphony's.  This time it was at a 10,000 seat arena.  The arena was 80% full, the upper deck had some seats available but nothing in lower levels.

The opening act was Mike Kelm.  He was a audio/video dj.  He was scratching and mixing using video and audio.  It was a good warmup for the Blue Man and lasted maybe 20 minutes.

The Blue Man performance was probably about 50% of stuff that I had seen before on the complex tour.  The other stuff was a mix of the Megastar stuff and other new stuff.  I really enjoyed it, even the stuff I was seeing again.  There was a fair amount of audience interaction as well.

One thing that this show had that I don't remember as much was magic or feats of skill type stuff.  They did some tricks with throwing marshmallows to each other.  They also threw marshmallows into the crowd and I ended up with one.  Didn't eat since it had bounced around before getting to me.

It was a fun show and would highly recommend it if you can make it.  One other interesting note is the age range.  There was everything from 4 to 70+ there.  It was a little wider than I was expecting.  Oh and at this show the waving of cell phones with lit up screens replaced the old waving of lighters, never seen that before.

On March 18th Kelly and I went to a Johns Hopkins Alumni event at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum.  We had both wanted to go to the museum for a while.  Kelly was actually supposed to go once earlier but couldn't make it.  I didn't realize there was anything special about this event I just figured it was a good reason to go.  Wow was that an understatement.

When we got there about 2 PM we found out the Steve Geppi himself would be giving us a personal tour.  This museum is essentially his personal collection of pop culture and entertainment memorabilia.  Having Geppi give the tour was like someone giving you a tour of their house.  It was really amazing to see how much he enjoyed the collection and how much he knew about it all.

The museum has a very large collection of rare and important comics in one section.  The comics alone are worth millions.  Not all the comics are old or unique, some are just important for being the first appearance of a character or a particular use of the comic medium.  There are also computers that you can read through scanned versions of many of the comics.

The other sections of the museum are sections of history sorted by time.  Each section is a period of time and a collection representing that time period.  The items show how cartoon and comic characters were used throughout history to advertise and sell.  Most of the items are in mint condition no matter the age.  Geppi indicated they are always looking for better versions of items that aren't in good condition.

Often the items came from the original creators or designers.  In other cases Geppi said they would purchase complete collections from people who had managed to get everything of a particular line of items.

In the hallway connecting the collections there were posters, newspaper comics and other artworks.  Some of them were 6'x6' or 6'x10', truly huge.  Other items were the original artwork from newspaper comics.  There were also some very rare animation cells from movies or cartoons.

I highly recommend visiting the museum.  It is a great history lesson as well as possibly a walk down memory lane.  Even if you aren't a comic or cartoon fan I promise you will enjoy it and learn something.

On Thursday October 5th Kelly took me to see the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's presentation of the Shostakovich Centenary Celebration.  It was at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.  Since it was a Thursday night it was not sold out as it would be on a weekend, but it was about 75% full.  One of the pieces was a piano concerto.  The rest was a normal symphony.  There were some parts of the pieces that I really liked and the rest were ok.

I am a fan of movie scores which are very similar to these symphony pieces.  I just like some other composers better.  Usually Kelly goes with others to the symphony, but maybe I will go with her more often now.