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 2

(Part 1)

Molly Goes To Minnesota: Part 2

Day 2 In Minneapolis - Late Morning

It took me a while to find it (third floor, southeast corner of the Mall) but finally I reached it... and by it, mean....

Heck yeah, Barbie!

Now, I fully knew going in that this exhibit was probably intended for children, but I also knew that they weren't keeping paying adults out. So I paid and they loaned me this groovy bracelet, which could interact with some of the kiosks and computers inside the Dreamhouse.

 Such as this one...

We started out by registering ourselves (hi I'm a girl and I like ponies!) and gazing around a very pink room (the first of many.)

Then our tour guide took us (and by us I mean me and about five adults, five little girls, and a baby boy) on a pretend elevator.

At this point, our tour guide told us some Barbie facts. Annnnd then she was done telling us facts for the rest of the tour. Seriously... her job after this was just to escort our group from room to room and make sure nobody fell into Barbie's dreamtub.

The first room we visited was Barbie's kitchen.

The kitchen wasn't very impressive. Some of the drawers could open, and some of the knobs on the appliances turned, but a lot of stuff did nothing at all.

There was a one-minute cupcake decorating game...

...which was only amusing because I used it to create the most hideous cupcake I could.

However, there were no dishes or toy food we could actually play with. Kind of disappointing, the kitchen.

Next, we visited... the ice room?

My Barbie House never had an ice room!

Of course Barbie owns a sleigh!

Just when I was thinking this felt a lot like Frozen, two of the little girls climbed into the sleigh and began acting out scenes from said film. ("You can be Kristoff!") But that only lasted about fifteen seconds, because we were then ushered into the next room...

I guess this is Barbie's Media Room. There wasn't much to do in here. You could touch buttons on the piano to initiate 1 of 3 get-stuck-in-your-head Barbie songs, and there was another interactive game on the computer screens, and but mostly there were just things to look at. Pink things to look at.

Next we went into a kind of Beach room. 

This room had some neat interactive elements. There were buttons that would make the flowers in the flowerbeds "grow". You could look into the 3 different telescope/projectors and turn a dial to see half a dozen photos of Barbie & Ken & their friends. They also had a little ice cream stand with play ice cream cones/icecream that was popular with the little girls.

Onward to Barbie's bedroom!

I thought this bed was pretty funny. One, because it's so huge -- you could fit about twelve people on it, and two, because when I was a kid, Barbie beds were notoriously thin, as if to make sure she never could have Ken sleep over (comfortably). Well, that's changed!

Barbie's bathroom was a little strange. I mean, I remember my cousins used to have a tiny Barbie toilet that you could fill with water, and when you opened (or closed?) the lid, the water would whoosh away, and we all thought that was great.

This is... different....

 Save me!!

You could push a button on the wall that made the toilet seat rise and a little dolphiny thing popped out and made sounds.

I'm a little disturbed.

Then there were Barbie's closets....

"I say closetS... because there are several." -- Mr. Collins.

There was a particularly cool activity in one of the closet rooms, where kids could stand in front of a video screen and it would capture their image and then digitally put a dress or outfit on them. If they raised their arms, sparkles would appear on the screen and the outfit would change. The little girls in my group really seemed to love this.

The last stop on our tour was a gigantic room with several different stations & activities. You could dress up, "perform" on a stage, walk down a runway, get your make-up done, color a Barbie picture, play with an actual toy Dreamhouse, and basically just... play! At this point, our tour guide (such as she was) left us to our own devices and told us we could stay as long as we wanted and leave when we were ready.

Meanwhile, the same three Barbie songs kept playing over the loudspeakers. Enough to drive anyone nuts!

Upon exiting Barbie's house of dreams, I came upon a store selling -- what else?

If I had visited this when I was 10 or 11, I would have simply dropped dead from happiness. They'd have had to bury me in the sand in Barbie's Beach room.

Mega Bloks, the bane of any true Lego fan's existence...

In the end, I enjoyed the Barbie Dreamhouse Experience. Even though it seems to have been designed for 4-to-12-year-old girls, it was still a fun tour. I liked seeing all the different rooms and seeing the kids' faces light up when they encountered something extra special. All in all, not a bad way to spend an hour.

Day 2 - Afternoon

I had a vague idea of how I wanted to spend Thursday afternoon. Since I would need to go downtown for Rifftrax that evening anyway, I thought I may as well visit some other sights that are near downtown. There was the Minneapolis Institute Of Arts, a sculpture park, and a few other little things that I'd marked on my map.

From the Mall Of America, I took the blue line light rail to Franklin Street, where I caught a bus to 1st street, and walked about four blocks to to the Minneapolis Institute Of Arts.

And that ended up being the only place I went that afternoon because IT. WAS. AMAZING!

I spent three hours there, and it wasn't enough. So much beauty, art, history. I saw works by Monet, Picasso, O'Keefe, Matisse, and many more. And the place is so big! Plus it was virtually devoid of people that afternoon. I could have just gone here and the whole trip to Minneapolis would've been worth it. Crazy? Maybe. Don't care.

That said, by the time I was able to drag myself away, it was too late to try to go to the sculpture park or anywhere else. It was time to head downtown for some dinner & a movie. (A really, really terrible movie.)

* * * * *

Next up -- Part 3, in which I finally make it to the main event -- Rifftrax Live!