Avenue Q - Quintessentially Quotable

After over twenty years of being a regular theatre-goer, something strange and wonderful happened Saturday night.

I expect to walk home, after seeing a musical, humming the two or three most memorable tunes. And as an utterly and completly tone-deaf singer, it's a torment - if not a true torture - for my friends.

Saturday Jacob and I saw Avenue Q at Baltimore's Hippodrome and we walked home reciting the hysterically funny, rude, politically incorrect, and downright nasty lines. We were laughing like the show was still going on. For us, it was. We both agreed that you haven't really lived until you've been given the finger by a puppet. Or, watched puppets DOING IT complete with dramatic lighting and sound effects and well placed gasps.

You haven't lived until you've watched a gay puppet come out of the closet to his friends and immediately go back in his apartment for a three-way. Avenue Q is heady stuff. (I'm not giving anything away here. The plot is not complex.)

So, what exactly were we and most of the audience laughing at that evening? Here are a couple of G-Rated samples (for the really good quotes - R-Rated and X, get tickets):

[On a Missed Teaching Assignment]
Kate Monster: Hello?
Mrs. Thistletwat: Good afternoon, Katherine. If you may recall, you were supposed to teach my class this morning while I got my heart replaced. You left the children unattended for three hours! They created their own tribal society and were about to sacrifice poor little Brittany! Where were you?
Kate Monster: I overslept! I'm so sorry!
Mrs. Thistletwat: I should never have hired a monster.
Kate Monster: What?
Mrs. Thistletwat: Your race is notoriously lazy!
Kate Monster: Well, better a monster than a crabby old bitch!
Mrs. Thistletwat: Crabby old bitches are the backbone of this nation!

[On Schadenfreude]
Nicky: How 'bout straight A students getting B's?
Gary: Exes getting STDs!
Nicky: Waking doormen from their naps!
Gary: Watching tourists reading maps!
Nicky: Football players getting tackled!
Gary: CEOs getting shackled!
Nicky: Watching actors never reach
Both: The ending of their Oscar speech!

[On Gift-giving & Investments]
Trekkie Monster: Me give you ten million dollars!
Princeton: Trekkie! Where did you get all that money?!?
Trekkie Monster: In volatile market, only stable investment is porn!

NOTICE: As advertised, the Tony award winning, Avenue Q is "Not Fur the Kiddies"... It's apparently not FUR most grandparents either. The ladies on either side of us looked Queasier and Queasier with each drop of the F-Bomb. But hey, they should have known that they - for about two fun hours - were going to live on Avenue Q!