Carol Burnett! AND MORE.
So Tuesday was the Carol Burnett book event, where she was interviewed by Tim Conway! Firstly, though, I went to dinner with aud_woman_in and my friend J at Pizzeria Mozza. Nice place and my pizza was good - I liked the crust, which was obviously made on the spot and super-thin except for the edges. We all got pizzas, and here they are:
Audrey's pizza: Prosciutto di Parma, rucola (aka arugula, you posers), tomato & mozzarella $16
J's pizza: Bacon, salami, fennel sausage, guanciale, & mozzarella (minus tomato pieces) $18
My pizza: Bianca with fontina, mozzarella, sottocenere (minus sage) $18
So anyway. While the place was nice and upscale, it was a little *too* upscale, if you know what I mean. Like, they serve soft drinks from bottles (no refills, obviously) and they're $4-5 each. For a bottle of Bubble Up(!) or weird Empire cola (Empire also makes that orange soda I got at Rocket Fizz which I had to pour down the sink because it was super creepy.) However, I think J and I were just a little too middle class for the place, though it's nothing I can put my finger on. Like, the employees were nice yet snooty, and totally helpful but I had the feeling they were like, what is Ropo even doing here? (What'd you think, aud_woman_in?)
After our pizza we said no to their expensive desserts and went to Baskin Robbins. Then it was off to see Carol and Tim! They really need to find a better way to organize these events, such as, oh, I don't know, let people print out tickets at home rather than every single person having to pick tickets up at Will Call, which makes for very crowded long lines. Finally after sitting in our seats for an hour (no kidding) Carol and Tim came on to entertain us. It was very fun and they were very funny, but I wish Tim had let Carol do more of the talking. Don't get me wrong. Tim Conway = high-larity, but he was just telling random funny stories about himself that didn't even have anything to do with The Carol Burnett Show while Carol could've been telling stories from her book or whatever. A good interviewer, Tim Conway is NOT. We literally got at least as much from Tim as from Carol. Things we did learn, mostly because there was an audience Q&A and most of the Qs were for Carol:
-- She wrote this book -- "This Time Together: Laughter & Reflection" as a follow-up to her first book, "One More Time: A Memoir", which came out in 2003. Someone asked what she'd want to do if she didn't have the job she has, and she said she always wanted to be a writer and studied Journalism at UCLA (she eventually wanted to be a playwright and switched majors and ended up in an acting class and there you go, though I only found that out on Wikipedia just now). So it looks like these books weren't ghost-written.
-- She and her grandmother would steal toilet paper from theaters to stock up for the month.
-- Lucille Ball was awesome to her, first sitting and gabbing with Young Carol in C's ratty dressing room after Carol's play "Once Upon a Mattress," and said, "If you need anything, kid, call me." So years later, Carol was told she could have a TV special on the condition that she get a big star to be in it, and she didn't really want to, but she was forced to call Lucy, and Carol was hemming and hawing and Lucy interrupted and said "When do you need me?" and that was that and the show went on.
-- Carol said that they were there at the right time for a variety show and that nobody can do one now because of the cost and it's just the way things are, and that we should look forward, not back, even though audience members were all lamenting the lack of shows people can watch with their kids, and how fun her show was. Shows she likes now include "Modern Family" and "Glee" and she gave a shout-out to Jane Lynch for being super funny.
-- Carol seems genuinely nice.
During the event, actually before it even started, I got a headache which didn't go away until long after I got home to a bottle of Tylenol. Right in the middle of my forehead, OMG the pain. I didn't get very far into "HP:OotP" during my bedtime reading because I just had to close my eyes and lie down. :-(
Tomorrow (aka today, Thursday) I get my permanent crown put in and my dad gets all his top teeth pulled (all seven of them) and gets his new dentures. Fingers crossed for all of it. My dad is notoriously Scottish and hates going to the dentist, and my temp crown has annoyed me, so the real one had better work. Last time I had to get a root canal on top of the crown, so ... yeah.
And now for something completely different: an awesome ukelele version of MGMT's "Kids" -- no, really, I swear!
Audrey's pizza: Prosciutto di Parma, rucola (aka arugula, you posers), tomato & mozzarella $16
J's pizza: Bacon, salami, fennel sausage, guanciale, & mozzarella (minus tomato pieces) $18
My pizza: Bianca with fontina, mozzarella, sottocenere (minus sage) $18
So anyway. While the place was nice and upscale, it was a little *too* upscale, if you know what I mean. Like, they serve soft drinks from bottles (no refills, obviously) and they're $4-5 each. For a bottle of Bubble Up(!) or weird Empire cola (Empire also makes that orange soda I got at Rocket Fizz which I had to pour down the sink because it was super creepy.) However, I think J and I were just a little too middle class for the place, though it's nothing I can put my finger on. Like, the employees were nice yet snooty, and totally helpful but I had the feeling they were like, what is Ropo even doing here? (What'd you think, aud_woman_in?)
After our pizza we said no to their expensive desserts and went to Baskin Robbins. Then it was off to see Carol and Tim! They really need to find a better way to organize these events, such as, oh, I don't know, let people print out tickets at home rather than every single person having to pick tickets up at Will Call, which makes for very crowded long lines. Finally after sitting in our seats for an hour (no kidding) Carol and Tim came on to entertain us. It was very fun and they were very funny, but I wish Tim had let Carol do more of the talking. Don't get me wrong. Tim Conway = high-larity, but he was just telling random funny stories about himself that didn't even have anything to do with The Carol Burnett Show while Carol could've been telling stories from her book or whatever. A good interviewer, Tim Conway is NOT. We literally got at least as much from Tim as from Carol. Things we did learn, mostly because there was an audience Q&A and most of the Qs were for Carol:
-- She wrote this book -- "This Time Together: Laughter & Reflection" as a follow-up to her first book, "One More Time: A Memoir", which came out in 2003. Someone asked what she'd want to do if she didn't have the job she has, and she said she always wanted to be a writer and studied Journalism at UCLA (she eventually wanted to be a playwright and switched majors and ended up in an acting class and there you go, though I only found that out on Wikipedia just now). So it looks like these books weren't ghost-written.
-- She and her grandmother would steal toilet paper from theaters to stock up for the month.
-- Lucille Ball was awesome to her, first sitting and gabbing with Young Carol in C's ratty dressing room after Carol's play "Once Upon a Mattress," and said, "If you need anything, kid, call me." So years later, Carol was told she could have a TV special on the condition that she get a big star to be in it, and she didn't really want to, but she was forced to call Lucy, and Carol was hemming and hawing and Lucy interrupted and said "When do you need me?" and that was that and the show went on.
-- Carol said that they were there at the right time for a variety show and that nobody can do one now because of the cost and it's just the way things are, and that we should look forward, not back, even though audience members were all lamenting the lack of shows people can watch with their kids, and how fun her show was. Shows she likes now include "Modern Family" and "Glee" and she gave a shout-out to Jane Lynch for being super funny.
-- Carol seems genuinely nice.
During the event, actually before it even started, I got a headache which didn't go away until long after I got home to a bottle of Tylenol. Right in the middle of my forehead, OMG the pain. I didn't get very far into "HP:OotP" during my bedtime reading because I just had to close my eyes and lie down. :-(
Tomorrow (aka today, Thursday) I get my permanent crown put in and my dad gets all his top teeth pulled (all seven of them) and gets his new dentures. Fingers crossed for all of it. My dad is notoriously Scottish and hates going to the dentist, and my temp crown has annoyed me, so the real one had better work. Last time I had to get a root canal on top of the crown, so ... yeah.
And now for something completely different: an awesome ukelele version of MGMT's "Kids" -- no, really, I swear!
Click to view