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| - I have this reoccurring nightmare that I'm trapped on a cruise ship that sets sail but never seems to stop in a port anywhere. It is sort of like a floating Hotel California where you can check out but you can never leave. I'm surrounded by mawkish middle aged people dressed like extras in Saturday Night Fever (or Priscilla Queen of the Desert except they aren't doing drag, it's for real) and the DJ just keeps playing K.C. and the Sunshine Band over and over and over again. That's the way I like it, uh huh uh huh.....oh God, please just kill me now. Then I wake up, in a cold sweat and there is a flood of relief as I realize that it was in fact just a dream. At least it was.....until a few days ago.
My husband's company opted to celebrate their company Christmas party a little bit differently this year so they hosted it at Stage West in Mississauga. SW is your basic dinner theatre. The trough opens up at 6:30 p.m. so you have 96 minutes to do your best Caligula imitation, literally shovelling food into your gullet to be follow by an array of edible oil products for dessert. Then right on the nose at 8:06 p.m. you get spend the next two hours being subjected to a dinner show that is tantamount to a bad cabaret show that appears nightly on that Love Boat Cruise ship nightmare of mine.
The buffet reminded me of one of those buffets you'd find in Bumfuck, Idaho with an AYCE for $3.99 sign out front but the food is so bad that all you can stand is about a buck's worth. You can tell they are catering to an older demographic because you need no teeth to eat any of the food at this buffet. Turkey roll smothered in beige paste (aka turkey gravy), instant scalloped potatoes, clams casino and a myriad of salads that are so shredded and pulped you could suck them up through a straw. This is all good news if you've forgotten to use your Polident.
I'm convinced that the actual buffet steam table is used during the daytime hours for the spa services because after standing over it for a few minutes I'd swear I just had a facial. Even my glasses were fogged up. It's a two for one service at this trough.....supper & spa all at the same time.
Then the real fun begins. It's show time. The featured show this holiday season is called "One Hit Wonders". Half way through it I'm thinking to myself that I like to hit the guy who came up with this show just one time, now that would truly be my idea of a one hit wonder. Do you know how hard it is to sit and listen to songs like My Sharona, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Tainted Love, Torn Between Two Lovers and Hooked On A Feeling? Hell, it's tough enough just to hear those songs but have someone sing them an octave off key and you'll be begging to be euthanized. They should ship this crew off to Libya where they could teach torture tactics with this song lineup. Someone please wake me up out of this fuck-a-delic crap-tastic show from hell and tell me this isn't for real and that people haven't actually paid their hard earned money for this shite. There isn't enough alcohol on the premises to make this song and dance troupe look or sound good.
The grand finale icing on this nightmare in real time comes after the show when the DJ fires up the disco songs and the stage gets turned into a dance floor, replete with lasers and disco lights. The 70's & the 80's are alive and well on Dixie Road. Can someone please tell me why a middle aged woman would possibly wear a shimmery halter dress that is two sizes too small with absolutely no support and then proceed to shake her booty (and a whole lot of other stuff) and think it actually looks attractive. I felt nauseous and embarrassed just watching it. Not to be outdone, the comb over crowd joined in, with shirts unbuttoned to their navels as they reminded us that they were Staying Alive while jiggling their over the hill hairy man boobs. I need Gravol. Please let this ship be the Titanic.
An evening at Stage West will set you back an unbelievable $75 plus taxes per person. Bar prices are ridiculous. A couple glasses of really crappy, shitty, lip puckering wine would set you back twenty bucks. The one consolation I took out of all this was knowing that on the Monday following this Friday night of funkadelic fun-tastic-mess there would be a Christmas bonus cheque for my husband from his employer.
A small consolation for the nightmare on Dixie Road that is Stage West. That's the way I like it....uh huh uh huh....
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