Mimes in the Mist

I took a break from holiday baking on Saturday to sneak out and see New Moon. I haven't read any of the books, and only watched half of the first movie, without sound and through the gap between airline seats, as we flew to New Zealand last spring. (What? There were 80 channels and one of them had a Neil Finn retrospective, as if I'm going to choose vampires over THAT.)

But the Stephanie Meyer books and related movies have entered the American pop culture landscape with such a whooooosh that I felt like I should at least see one of them, just to know what everyone is talking about.

Have you ever seen Mystery Science Theater 3000? It's an old TV program where they play old sci-fi movies and three characters sit in the front of the theater, cracking wise over the actual dialog, and from 1988-1999 it was one of the funniest things on TV. Well if you were in the Orinda Theater last Saturday afternoon (and you weren't, because I took a headcount) my friend Andrea and I played our own version during the angst-y, dopey, dorky movie that is New Moon.

Where do I even start? The fact that the vampires are so ghastly pale they look like Marcel Marceau - or, as Andrea reminded me, like HER the time she tried the wrong color foundation at a Mary Kay home party and immediately began moonwalking? The fact that Bella Swan, the extremely average girl in the dank and moldy Washington town over whom werewolves and vampires are ready to slash each other to pieces, looks like most "before" pictures in fashion magazines? The fact that all around her, ripped men are taking their shirts off, and she can't even get anyone to touch her boob until she crashes her motorcycle? THE SIZE OF THE MUFFIN TRAY THAT THE HEAD WEREWOLVES' GIRLFRIEND CARRIES OUT?

I mean, seriously, we could not stop laughing, and the one guy who was in the theater with us - how do I say this in a P.C. way, he really looked as though he'd mistaken New Moon for a Boyz In the Hood remake - was busting on it as much as we were.

Just read Mick LaSalle's brilliant review of the film in the Chron.(oops, I see he went with the French mime reference too, well, it's an obvious one.) He was right, every word of it. I cannot wait until Number Three comes out, it's a super way to brush up on my comedy improv skills.