"I wish every day could be Negro day!"

Another surprise date! On Thursday, David told me not to make any plans for Saturday night because he had a surprise for me. I love his surprises. He told me that the surprise was something relevant to the early days of our relationship, that I was familiar with the venue, and that he wasn't sure how to get there and had no idea where it was. The first two clues led me to strongly suspect that we were going to see Hairspray at the Jubilee Auditorium; The 2007 film version was the first DVD we never finished watching together. Twice. I've also been to a few plays at the Jube. However, David has been to the Jube with me twice before so that didn't fit the last clue. Turns out he just hadn't connected that he'd seen HMS Pinafore and Spamalot at the same place.

Hairspray was great. As much as I loved Spamalot, this may be my new favorite. I loved the music and the dancing, David liked the racist tones and sexual innuendo. Part of why I may have enjoyed it so much was that I didn't really go in with any expectations. For many plays I go in with high expectations and preconceived notions, but that wasn't the case with this one. I didn't know enough about the play, nor was I sure I was even going, nor did I have a lot of time to mull it over. This play had nothing to live up to so it was able to set its own bar.

Because of the positive themes of being happy with who you are and good race relations it's a really popular play to take kids to, but I bet a lot of those parents didn't go in really being aware of the innuendo. The mom sitting next to me gave a surprised laugh at a "stiffy" joke and then faced awkwardness when her tweenage daughter asked why it was funny.

The black mark on the evening: Parking at the Jube was a mess. They finally have the new multi-level parkade open, but there's only one road leading out because of all of the construction still going on. We were on the second level and got to our car fairly quickly, but it was still a total clusterfuck. We had to wait for 20 minutes not moving at all.

David said that next time we're going to the Jube, we'll park in his downtown parkade spot and take the LRT. It's really nice to not have to mentally add "if there is a next time." I have the best boyfriend.