Folks, it’s been a hell of a week.
As I’ve mentioned a number of times already, I’m doing my longest lecture to date (about 45 minutes) and in front of my first non-academic crowd. Of course, I am decidedly nervous. But I’m also absolutely overwhelmed by well-wishers and the creative people who have donated their various talents to my little old talk.
Peigi Robinson just showed me the labels for the beer she brewed just for our event, an Irish Red Ale we’re calling Irish REDRUM.
A gorgeous poster is hanging in the window of Machine Project.
Machine Project sent out the sweetest promo email I ever did see:
“When Megan Curran approached us with a lecture on the history of bodysnatching for educational purposes, we offered her tea, made her a poster, and told her we loved her, because we knew right away that this lecture is going to be awesome.”
I am super humbled by the ways all of these creative people have contributed to this event. I practiced my talk a few times tonight, and I feel more comfortable with the approach I’ve taken, but one person is majorly informing my lecture style.
That person is Prince.
My friend, the amazing comedian Grant Pardee, IM’d me earlier this week.
Grant: you into Prince?
Me: Duh!
I knew that Grant is majorly into Prince. Apparently he had come across VIP tickets to see Prince perform on George Lopez Tonight, and amazingly he asked me if I would want to take off work to go. Another “Duh!” was in order.
I have seen a lot of amazing shit in my life, but I have never seen a performer on the caliber of Prince. Nor have I seen the likes of this glittering golden alien god a mere 25 feet from us, and seemingly looking directly into our pleading eyes (because we were right next to the camera).
The videos do it about one-tenth of the justice of what it felt like to be there, but they’re still good enough that I’ve watched them all day long today.
http://i.cdn.turner.com/tegwebapps/tbs/tbs-www/cvp/tbs_432x243_embed.swf?context=lopez_embed_offsitevideoId=248855
“From the heart of Minnesota / Here comes the purple Yoda / Guaranteed to bring the dirty new sound”
I defy anyone to come up with a more awesome lyric than that. And besides the fact that he’s an absolute shredder on guitar, all of his little gestures — the dropping of the mic from one hand to another, the backwards walk away at the end of the song, turning around to the cockiest swagger I’ve ever seen — he was mesmerizing from the walk out. Grant and I could barely cheer, we stood with our mouths agape the whole time, sometimes laughing nervously to say something like “Oh my god” or “No fucking way!”
Grant’s favorite Prince song is “The Beautiful Ones” so you can imagine what his reaction was to find out that Prince was going to play it. And it was absolutely magical. It’s hard to talk about it, or any of the jokes we made beforehand, without getting extremely filthy, so just watch for yourself and enjoy his writhing on his purple piano. You better believe we did.
“If we got married, would that be cool?”
So what does all this Prince stuff have to do with my lecture?
Once we regained our ability to speak, we both expressed how inspired we were because of Prince’s performance. Grant said, ” He just has supreme confidence. That’s what you need for your talk.” He then immediately went out to do an open mic, feeling the same inspiration to perform. I wish I could’ve seen Grant’s set that night. I guarantee he did the mic dropping trick at least once.
So I’m going to try to channel some of that risdual energy into putting my all into giving this lecture tonight.
Any last words of wisdom from that sexy Purple Yoda?
It’s gonna be a beautiful
It’s gonna be a beautiful night
U got your world together
Everything’s lookin’ alright
Tonight there’s no tomorrow
This is gonna be the one
Tonight we’re gonna lose our sorrow
Tonight we’re gonna have some fun (come on, say it…)
Love,
The Speaker Formerly Known As Megan
Megan Rosenbloom 