>At least three people hadn't seen it at all, and
>Dave and Stephen (at least) hadn't seen it in the
>four years since RinkUnion III. It's astonishing
>how enduringly entertaining that movie is, no
>matter how many times you've seen it.

The best part for me was that it had been long enough since I'd seen it that I'd forgotton all the "standard" MST3K-style comments to make (except for a few--nobody can forget "MORE GUARDS!") so I got to amuse myself by thinking up new ones. I tried to go with only ones I felt were winners, while Stephen took the opposite route and threw a whole bunch of stuff against the wall in the hopes something would stick. Sadly, he got way more laughs than I did.


>Brunnen-G had called ahead for us and made a
>reservation.

Technically, she didn't make a reservation, as they don't take reservations. However, she was assured that we would be "taken care of." Sadly, it turns out that Casa Bonita's idea of "taking care of" people is sticking them in the Amazing Jimbo room, which is as far away from the actual fun entertainment as possible. Oh well.


> At other times, so I'm told, there are other
>sketches that take place there, including one
>involving a guy dressed up in a gorilla suit.
>You can't hear the dialogue of the skits over the
>noise of the waterfall and the mariachi band
>music down the hall, but the diving is cool.

Seeing the guy in the monkey suit run through the restaurant with a train of kids yelling and screaming along behind him is even cooler than the diving. Alas, I'm not sure anyone at the RU got to see that.

>
> The food, to my eternal amusement, was
>absolutely terrible.

Yeah, but you can't say you weren't warned. Nobody goes to Casa Bonita for the food. :-)

> At the first checkpoint, you get a menu.
>Inexplicably, the 15 of us were only given one
>menu, although everybody else in every other
>group got one menu per person.

There's a thingy stuck to a post along the way that holds menus. You probably just missed it. Or else they don't have it filled up at dinner time. *shrug*

The menu basically boils down to "beef or chicken?" anyway.


> = Dave =

Wow, my own section? Sweeet.

> Dave had us all in stitches, telling
>WHAMMO!-type stories. PenaltyShot remarked that
>the "Dave story" archives were her favorites
>anyway, but now they were even better now that
>she could picture his tone and manner in telling
>them.

Also, I apparently insulted her by implying she wasn't as hot as Miranda Otto. I was misunderstood. I meant that she was *hotter* than Miranda Otto.

> Something is lost in text. He told the story of
>how his mother used to hide when he came home
>from school and jump out and scare him. This
>despite, he said, the fact that he used to go
>into trance-like seizures whenever he got
>startled or shocked. (Later he confessed that
>his Mom scaring him and his seizure phase
>occurred at different times, but so what?)

I'm still unsure about that. I only know about the seizure phase because my sisters and my parents have told me about it. I'm not sure exactly what age I was when I stopped having them. I'd like to think my mother would not intentionally induce siezures in her only son, but I really have no proof of that either way.

> But that's how it is, and I reflected that Dave
>has changed a lot in all those years, despite
>also still being the exact same guy. Those of
>you who were there at the RinkUnion saw him
>gravitating naturally to the center of attention
>and working the room like an accomplished
>performer. Would you believe that 13 years ago,
>a room full of more than about three other people
>-- even if they were all his friends -- scared
>the crap out of him?

True story. I can still remember looking around a room and seeing it "filled" with five people I knew and was friends with, and just wanting to just go hide somewhere.

Inhibitions are one of the few things in life that you actually gain something from losing them.

-- Dave