Went to see Lady Gaga’s “Monster Ball Tour” last night.  What a visual feast.  It was so grandiose, so over-the-top with theatrics, a deaf person would have appreciated it.  Heck, I think Helen Keller would have appreciated it.

There was so much happening on stage and so many shiny things to distract my attention, I often found myself on the cusp of an epileptic seizure.  Gaga, herself, was amazing in a jaw-dropping, awe-inducing sort of way.  Even though our seats were crap, the diminutive Gaga was larger than life.  She’s a cross between a stripper and the Tasmanian devil.  The term “hot tranny mess” was created for her and her alone, I think.

She didn’t just bring it … she OWNED the crowd all night long.  With the exception of a brief couple ballads in the middle of the show, the 9,000+ fans were frothing at the mouth for two hours.  I lost track of the costume changes after the sixth one.

Since Gaga doesn’t have an extensive set list (uh, she’s got two albums under her belt), the crowd knew every word to every song verbatim.  I know this because I was surrounded by Gaga fan-atics who SANG at the top of their lungs for the duration.  After an hour, it became readily apparent that 20 year-olds do NOT lose their voices.  Ever.

The only drawback to the evening was that the Gaga-ster was, well, preachy.  Yes, I get that you’re about equality and peace and love and all things homo-licious.  But after the fourth or fifth soliloquy, I felt like it was overkill.  I, apparently, was the only one.  Gaga could have read off a cereal box and the crowd would have gone berserk.  For someone so petite, her voice soared to the rafters.  She screeched, wailed and whooped like a soul sister.  The crowd was completely entranced by her siren song.

The “people-watching” was of the utmost, highest-caliber.  Best I’ve ever seen.  Folks let their freak flags fly proudly.  I am not – by any stretch of the imagination – a prude.  But even I found myself gawking at the unholy array of things people substituted as fabric.  (I would use the term “apparel”, but that would be an affront to seamstresses everywhere.)

From “Just Dance” to “Teeth” to “Poker Face”, Gaga had the crowd in the palm of her hand all night long.  I was tired FOR her at the end of the night.  She is Madonna 2.0.  And she may have had one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard at a concert:

“Tonight, all the true freaks are outside this building.  And I have locked the front doors.”

I think I might embroider that on a sequined, glitter-laced pillow wrapped in duct tape and give it to myself for Xmas.

14:59, 14:58, 14:57, 14:56 …

That is the sound of my 15 minutes of fame (verb) away.

Did you know yours truly is in the Guinness Book of World Records?  Little known fact. 

Now, I’ve got another (noun) to go along with the two Emmy awards on my mantle.  Three years ago, I made it into the Guinness Book of World Records by participating in the world’s longest Mad Lib at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop at the University of Dayton.  What an accomplishment, huh?  I feel absolutely (adjective)!

Using the literary classic Moby Dick as inspiration, it took nearly 200 of us writers to accomplish the feat back in 2006.

If you’ve been living under a (noun), a Mad Lib is a story with blank spaces where words have been left out. The leader asks the other players to provide words to fill in the blanks but doesn’t tell the player what the story is about. The result is a humorous story with lines such as, “Amusement parks are wrong to visit on a hot summer swan.  You can rent an iPod and go for a swim with Tonya Harding.  And there are lots of smarmy things to eat.”

14:55, 14:54, 14:53, 14:52 … (Wait – does fame have rollover minutes?)

A typical Mad Lib has 10 to 20 blank spaces and is played with three to four players. The Moby Dick Mad Lib featured more than 1,100 blanks.  The blanks were (adverb) filled in by the conference’s 197 attendees.  It was – at the time – the longest Mad Lib ever created.  (I think the record still stands.  I hope it still stands.  Otherwise, this blog post is moot.) 

Each writer was asked to develop a list of witty words prior to the conference for use in the final piece.  My contributions to the Moby Dick Mad Lib were:

• Proper Noun: Latoya Jackson (because you can never have enough Latoya)
• Plural Noun: Hairplugs (an obvious nod to my former boss with doll hair sprouting from his melon)
• Action Verb: Canoodling (it sounded dirty)
• Verb: Chomp (again, dirty)
• Adjective: Pensive  (I was in a mood that day … and that’s what I was feeling at the time)

When the world record was announced to participants by Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist Dave Barry — children danced and angels wept.  The Guinness Book of World Records has officially reviewed the event and included it in their 2007 book of records.

 I haven’t bothered to look and see if anyone has trumped our ace in the last couple years.  Of course if they have, they can go (verb) themselves.