London Calling to the Faraway Towns

Okie dokie...

"Jerry Springer: The Opera" was a very interesting idea: set the show Jerry Springer to an opera in the first act. Then in the second act, show Jerry dying, going to hell, and doing a show for the Devil. Unfortunately, the first act was pretty much a one-joke show: it's absurdly funny to see the show sung operatically. And it just gets old hearing people sing "What the f*ck? What the f*ck? What the f*cking f*cking f*ck?" over and over again. People tend to laugh when they are shocked, and "Jerry Springer: The Opera" definitely played off shock value more than acutally funny moments. Many of the other people on the trip either found it offensive or just really stupid and left after the first act. I stayed and saw the second act, which was better, but did not save the show. Still, it's a very innovative idea, and the singers were incredibly talented, so maybe it's worth seeing just for that.

As a side note, "The Bomb-itty of Errors" was based on a similar idea (kinda sorta): they took the plot of Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors" and followed it pretty faithfully but set it to rap. The humor in this was still pretty raunchy but it was just much much funnier. I usually hate rap music, but I would've definitely bought the soundtrack to this if they had had one.

For our scenes, we broke into two groups. My group covered the first act of "Richard III." First we took three major monologues from the show, one by Richard, one by Queen Margaret, one by Lady Anne, and divided them up. I actually got to say the first few lines of Richard's monologue, including the most famous line of the show, "Now is the winter of our discontent"! Then we did a scene where Richard is trying to seduce Lady Anne (who hates him because he killed her husband). Finally, a scene between Clarence and the two people who are trying to murder him (sent by Richard). We did pretty well considering we had very little time to practice and memorize our lines. Still, the other group showed us up; they were much more comfortable with the material. We had originally thought that we would be able to perform on the actual Globe stage, but that fell through, so we performed inside on a different theater.

I'm glad I saw Parliament, but it kinda bored me. I saw some debates in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The process of the debates was pretty hard to follow. Still, it was pretty cool.

London food. As you probably don't know, I'm Jewish and keep kosher pretty strictly. I cannot eat meat in public. In restaurants, I am effectively vegetarian. And London restaurants are much more accessible to vegetarians: almost every one I visited had some kind of symbol marking which meals were vegetarian. As for my meat-eating friends, they seemed to be enjoying their meals, and so was I. London food isn't that much different from American food. I must mention two restaurants: Wagamama, an oriental noodle place that was fabulous; and Tas Restaurant, right near the Globe, which had what we think was Turkish food. Really good stuff. If you're ever in London, visit these places. Oh yeah, and by the way, Tango Apple is the greatest soft drink ever. I'm really sad they don't have it in America.

General atmosphere. I'm not really sure where I was going with this one. London is pretty dirty, but no more dirty than, say, New York or Los Angeles. I do think the people are more polite there than in New York, but not by much. My group also definitely fulfilled the stereotype of the loud, rude Americans; our large group of teenagers got plenty of stares on the tube. There is more smoking in London, despite the fact that, rather than our lame "Surgeon General Warning: blah blah blah", they have "SMOKING KILLS!" in big bold letters on cigarette packages. Other than that, London isn't that much different than any other big city.

Okay, you want trip drama, you got it. Here it is, complete with spoiler tags.

This story centers around my roommate, whom I'll refer to under the fake name of Edgar Allen Poe. Edgar has been one of my closest friends for a long time. Lately, he's been getting into drinking and drugs, which I and most of my other friends avoid. He's been hanging out more with Abby and Ann Landers (fake names), who were also on this trip. He had been going out drinking with Abby and Ann for the past few days when it happened.

On that one fateful day, Edgar asked Abby and Ann to come to a gay bar with him (yes, Edgar is gay) in the afternoon. Abby and Ann finally did something that I never had the courage to do - confront him and tell him he's going overboard. Unfortunately, Eddie had a big fight with Abby and Ann and went to the bar alone. He made a date for that night and came back to the dorm that afternoon, piss drunk. When he stopped back, the water was out for some reason. He tried to turn on the sink in our room, but it didn't work. Then he fashioned a dummy out of his dirty clothes and placed it on the bed, to fool our group leader, Officer Krupke, who would come in for bed check at 11. But this would only work if the lights were out.

Seeing "Richard II" that night, with the whole group along with our headmaster, Master Dobbins, who was staying in London just for a few days, Ed asked me if I would make sure the lights were out at 11 when Krupke came into the room. I said I would. But other people found out about this, and they all felt sorry for me. They said Ed was putting me in a horrible situation and that I should rat on him. I did want Ed to get caught, but I didn't want it to be my fault.

Ed didn't come home on the tube with us. When we got back, we saw that Ed had forgotten to turn off the faucet that afternoon. When the water came on, our rug became soaking wet, and it flooded through to the basement. Now our showers were in the basement, so that meant none of us could take showers. And the flood obviously came from our room. I was hanging out in another room when the building superintendent came in and asked if we knew anything about this. I said it was probably my roommate. He said thanks and left.

I did have those lights off during bed check at 11, but it didn't matter. Krupke turned them on and said, "Wake up, Ed." Then he pulled back the sheets, saw the dummy, and shouted, "WHAT IS THIS CRAP?!" He then interrogated me angrily and seemed to place some of the blame on me, which I didn't appreciate. I said that maybe Ann Landers knew where Ed was, but she didn't. So Krupke and another chaperone stayed up all night until Eddie came back, where they apprehended him. After a long talk, Eddie packed his bags and had an incredibly awkward ride home with Master Dobbins. I didn't get much sleep that night.

The next morning, Krupke apologized to me for giving me the third degree, and I got an e-mail from Ed apologizing for putting me in this situation. The rest of the trip went smoothly, but I'm not sure if Eddie will be coming back to my school next year.