Ha ha, snorfle, guffaw!

You guys are such awesome blog participants this week. It makes my heart happyhappyhappy. But I REALLY have to demand participation today because I'm already envisioning all the horrified unladylike laughter I'll spew when I read some of your comments. You know the drill: seven comments to move on.

Today's Friday Favorites is about the unintentional hilarity I've witnessed at "cultural events". It's a rundown of stuff I've seen that killed me, sometimes on the stage and sometimes not, but it's been dang funny.

It's inspired by the crazy week Kenny and I had. Are still having. Wednesday night we saw the So You Think You Can Dance Tour and last night we saw Neil Diamond in concert (so fun). And tomorrow night we're going to a Fall Dance Spectacular. What a week. We love our fun, and normally we go to a couple of things every month because we love theater and dance and all that good stuff. But we've never had so many things crammed into one week before.

Well, unless it's vacation and we're supposed to be relaxing which means doing even more stuff than usual. But that's another story.

So on to my favorite unintentionally funny stuff from the stage (and the audience).

1. Last night at the Neil Diamond concert, this guy about six rows in front of us stood while everyone else sat and did interpretive dances to a number of Neil's songs that expressed all the love he had in his heart for Neil Diamond's music. Or maybe just Neil. He reminded me of that tanorexic Blake guy that got voted off of Project Runway. Apparently, though, Neil's magic doesn't work on the fast songs like "Sweet Caroline". It was just the slow ones that brought him to his feet with his joyous, uninhibited hand waving and head weaving.

2. My high school's production of Cinderella. My best friend Anna played one of the stepsisters and at one point when she did a curtsy at the ball, her costume slipped down her arms while she bowed and she flashed half the audience.

3. A local ballet company's production of Giselle. They had a short, plump prima ballerina and her partner was channeling Ichabod Crane and it was just a hilarious visual the whole time.

4. Fifteen years ago, the ward Christmas choral performance. The soloist was chosen because she was pushy rather than good. When she hit the soaring section of "O, Holy Night" ("Oh, fallllllll on your kneeeeeees.....), the little kid in front of me on the second row decided he couldn't take it anymore and when the singer hit her fifth powerful but off-key high note, he clapped his hands over his ears and howled, "Nooooooooo!"

5. A folk singer opened for a musician we like (Martin Sexton, check him out), and he was Scottish or some such and no one in the audience could understand him really, except Kenny and I kind of could because we'd been in Scotland recently. So the audience tried to be supportive by cheering and whatnot when they thought it was appropriate based on the meter of the music, but it ended up being at all the wrong lyrical points of the social protest songs. But it was good fun watching the folk singer growing increasingly miffed in proportion to the audience's confusion.

6. The playback of my nephews' dance recital. They're four-year-old twins and the only boys in their dance class and right in the middle of their performance, they lost their minds and started chasing one of their little friends around the stage. Good times.

7. The Argentine tango show. I got in a shh-shhhhing match with a guy four seats down because he wouldn't quit crackling his cookie wrapper after the intermission and it made me cranky. But it turns out I had gone into labor so I think I had a good excuse.

Come on, readers. Spill the goods. I know there are good train wreck stories lurking among the lurkers.