Molly Goes To Minnesota: Part 3

Molly Goes To Minnesota: Part 3
(See also: Part 1, Part 2)

Day 2 - Late Afternoon & Evening

By the time I was able to drag myself away from the art museum, it was nearly 5pm, and I wanted to be downtown by 6. I took a bus. I could've walked, but my shoulders were killing me from carrying my bag all day.

Downtown Minneapolis was loud and crowded, and just when I was starting to feel overwhelmed and crazy, I saw it...

an oasis...

one of my favorite sights in the whole entire world...

PANERA BREAD!

So I stopped in, bought a panini & hung out there for a while. Then it was time to head to the theater for the hottest ticket in town.... Rifftrax Live!

A lot of people were already waiting in the lobby....

Well, people and robots.

Before long, they let us into the theater. I was in the third row! Amazing seats!

They had a few shark balloons around the theater. I think some had helium, and one was being remote-controlled.

Prior to the show, we got to see the joke slides ("trivia") they show before any Rifftrax Live presentation.

Then some folks came on stage and began to throw things to the audience -- T-shirts and rubber sharks. I've been to events where people get absolutely rabid about catching "free stuff" and will bring out their claws. But when a shark came towards me, and I caught it -- only to drop it --  I was able to retrieve it without being eaten alive. (Thank you, seat-neighbors... you are second to none!)

So now I have this shark. I love it!

At 7:00, the show began. Now, I've been to most of the Riffrax broadcasts that go out to theaters around the country. By the time they get to Oregon, they're not live; we're 2 hours behind. So experiencing it live was something new. Also, experiencing it with Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett -- RIGHT THERE... yeah... that was pretty amazing!

The guys introduced themselves and made some jokes, then told us we were going to watch a Short that had MST3K ties. It was A Case Of Spring Fever! COILY!! I've seen that one many times. The new jokes were great! It was obvious that a lot of people there hadn't seen the short before (or not in a very long time) because they weren't just laughing at the jokes, but laughing at the short itself. (Well, it is completely insane.)

Next they showed us a preview of the next Rifftrax Live show, which'll be the 1998 movie Godzilla. The sound didn't work on the clip at first, but the guys ad libbed like pros. (ie "Godzilla was actually a silent film!")

Then we got to the meat of the evening -- Sharknado. I had never watched it... I'd debated whether or not to do so before this performance, but ultimately decided not to. It turned out to be horrible, the movie. But the riffing was top-notch.

While the movie was playing and the riffing was happening, I didn't know where to look. Part of me wanted to watch the movie, part of me just wanted to continuously stare at the Riffers. I was in the same room as Mike, Kevin, and Bill (or Mike, Servo, and Crow, if you will.) I just... didn't know what to do with myself!

The movie -- and the riffing -- got a lot of laughs. Some of the scenes were sooo absurd. There was a guy sitting not too far from me who kept going, "WHAT?!" throughout the film... verbalizing what the rest of us were definitely thinking. There's one scene in particular where the star of the movie goes into a shark with a chainsaw... and if that's not bad enough, comes out alive... and if that's not bad enough... well, I'm going to make you watch the movie to see what happens next, because it is SO COMPLETELY NUTS. People were roaring with laughter!

When the show ended, it took quite a while to get out of the theater. The aisles were small and few, and a lot of people were standing around chatting. I worked my way out of the theater by going down several different rows to try to get around people, and as luck would have it, I ran in to someone gushing over someone else and wanting to take a photo. Who was this someone else? It took me a minute to place him, but then I realized -- it was Trace Beaulieu (Dr. Forrester, and the first Crow T. Robot!) How exciting to see an unexpected member of the MST cast at the show!

Outside, afterwards, I stood with some other fans, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Riffers as they left. Instead of Riffers, we saw a flying shark!

Apparently one of the shark balloons either got loose or was let loose. In the picture above -- see the top of that building on the right, with the light posts on top of the railing? People were eating dinner up there. I hope they were appropriately amused/frightened.

Below is the van that, I presume, broadcasts the show to the other theaters? Or at least helps with that endeavor?

It never really occurred to me how much work it probably takes to make one of these shows happen, not only live, but simultaneously around the country (and Canada!)

[Side note: Back home in Oregon, on Tuesday, 7/15, my friend and I went to the encore showing of Rifftrax Live: Sharknado! at our local theater. So I got to watch the same show I did on Thursday, yet it was a completely different experience. It was really cool! I saw myself on screen a couple of times, too. The movie and the riffs still made me laugh, and I heard a few jokes I hadn't caught the first time around. So great.]

So Thursday was a very busy, very crazy, very awesome day. After the live show, rather than trying to spend the next hour trying to make bus connections, I splurged and took a taxi back to the motel. There, I began making plans for Friday.

* * * * *

What did I end up doing? Find out in Part 4!

Molly Goes To Minnesota: Part 1

Or do I?

So. I knew I wanted to go somewhere. I just couldn't decide on where. So many places yet unvisited, so much indecision in my wacky brain. 

For months I longingly watched Rick Steves videos (Europe!) and perused cruiseline message boards (the open sea!) and considered going to at least 3 different Lego conventions sprinkled around the United States (Lego!)

But when I heard that the Rifftrax guys would be doing a live show in July, I immediately said, that. That's what I'll do. 

In the past, I'd briefly considered going to one of their live shows (typically held in Nashville) but they were often during the school year. Now, here they were doing one in the summer, when I could totally go. Problem: for the longest time, they weren't saying where it was going to be held. It was this big secret. But I decided that once they finally revealed the location, I'd buy plane tickets for that city and visit. Wherever that happened to be. (Crossing my fingers for somewhere nice? And not hot? And not Texas?)

So then they did the big reveal, and it was Minneapolis! Cue the Googling of "Things to do in Minneapolis," and soon I was sold. I bought the plane tickets, booked a motel that was kind of central to all the things I wanted to do, made one of those Countdown memes and stuck it on my blog, and then started planning.

My main attractions

I decided to stay at the La Quinta Inn on Nicollet Avenue, because it is central to the Rifftrax theater and the Minnesota Zoo (which I decided was a must-see), it's near the Mall of America (MoA) and the airport, and LQs have free breakfast. Plus, I've stayed at La Quintas before, and their prices are reasonable.

Looking at MoA's website, I got excited about several attractions, including the Lego Store, Aquarium, Mirror Maze, and the special exhibit Barbie's Dreamhouse Experience. (I am a former Barbie Girl, tyvm.) I concluded I could probably spend a day at the mall. Then a day at the zoo. And a course a day for Rifftrax in the evening, and...? Something. But what?

I jotted a few things that looked interesting: tours on the Mississippi via showboat, a sculpture garden, tours of old houses, a couple of museums... and decided to just wake up each day of my trip and just do whatever I felt like doing.

Was it a good plan? Well....

Day 1

My trip began on Wednesday, July 9th. I had a mid-afternoon flight, and a whole lot of anxiety. I always freak out right before trips. Why? I don't even know. Once the plane is in the air, I'm good, but that 24 hours before I leave for the airport? I'm hugging my cats like I'll never see them again and asking myself WHYYYY DID YOU DO THIS???

My first flight was okay. Delta has communal video screens, and at one point they played an old episode of Community. Sadly, my headphone port was faulty. Still, I vaguely remembered the episode's plot and was able to sort of follow along.

Troy and Abed on an aaaaiiiirplane!

My plane landed in Minneapolis around 9pm midwest time, and I called to make sure a shuttle from LQ was on its way (it was! Hurray for free shuttles!) By 9:30, I was checked in to the motel and standing in my room.

Which reeked of stale smoke.

(Side note: my new camera is awesome, except sometimes it turns indoor shots a weird yellowish shade. I'm working on figuring out why. So just... pardon the yellow.)

Still, the room was clean, as Mary Poppins would note, and after opening the window as far as it would go (8 inches) and turning on the AC, the smell seemed to eventually clear, and by my second night there, I wasn't bothered by it at all.

The AC unit, however, proved to be a bit of a problem. It was so hot & humid in Minneapolis that turning on the AC was necessary -- but it kept going off, then on, then off, then on, and it was loud! During the night, whenever it would switch off/on, I'd wake up. (The next three nights I turned my Kindle into a sound machine (thanks free LQ wifi + youtube!) and that helped. I know you care about my sleeping patterns.)

Day 2 (Morning)

On Thursday, I got up, had the LQ breakfast, then caught the first Mall Of America shuttle from the motel at 10am (it goes to the mall every 2 hours starting at 10; it goes to the airport every hour starting at dawn; now you know.) 

Now, let me start by saying I was prepared to not be blown away by the Mall Of America, mostly because I'd already visited the West Edmonton Mall (North America's largest mall, about 25% bigger than the MoA), and had only been mildly impressed by that. But, like I said, I was interested in seeing some of their exclusive attractions, so to the mall I went. And first up? Oh, what do you think??

Yep. I went to the Lego Store. And while I was impressed by the sheer size of the pick-a-brick wall, and I enjoyed seeing the large-scale models, when it comes right down to it -- it's just a Lego store. Bigger than the one at our mall, but still, just a Lego Store. They didn't sell anything that you couldn't find at our Lego Store -- they just had more of everything.

So because they had nothing I hadn't seen before, and because Minnesota charges sales tax, and because I knew I'd have to schlep whatever I bought home on a plane, I bought absolutely nothing. Miracle?

* * * * *

So! That was my first day & first morning. Stay tuned for Part 2, in which I visit Barbie's Dreamhouse, go somewhere even cooler than Barbie's Dreamhouse (is that even possible?), and get ready to head toward Downtown Minneapolis for some shark & snark....

indiana jones and the adventures of the holy sippy cup

I love Rifftrax, and I love Indiana Jones (well, Last Crusade, at least. Okay, the others are all right. Except for... oh, nevermind.)  So when the folks at Riffrax decided to run a contest for a remixed riff of... well, something, I decided to bask in the awesomeness that IS the "finding the grail" scene.  Once I had picked out the scene, I had to extract Riffs from various... uh, tracks... which meant I had to listen to them first, to decide what bits of audio would work for my project.  I ended up listening (or, in most cases, re-listening) to the audio tracks for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Titanic, Spider-Man, The Dark Knight, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Twilight, 300, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Heroes: Episode 1-2, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  All within the span of about 10 days.  Even after all that, I still didn't feel like I had enough, so I downloaded The Sixth Sense and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and listened to those as well.  I'm not saying I'm not psychotic.  I'm just asking you not to judge.  I mean, it was for a contest, okay?  I could win.  Not that I even care anymore, now that my frain is bried.

Oh yeah, here's the video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7n2zKeQBYc
Enjoy, please.