Happy Gay Christmas
Right about now, the crowds should be taking their seats in the Grand Old Lady of Dame Street, and in a few minute’s time, the curtain will go up on the Alternative Miss Ireland 2011. This is the first year that I haven’t gone to the AMI; I’ve gone every year since starting college six years ago. I even entered an act when I was in third year. (Miss Information; a secondary school teacher specialising in Sex Ed and Singing).
Anyway, this year I didn’t buy a ticket. Partly because they were expensive and money is tight. Also I wasn’t going out on the gay scene anymore, so my peer group weren’t going either. Granted, I had mooted the idea with several friends and toyed with the idea of going, but the consensus this year was that uptake was smaller than other years and it didn’t seem to have any of the momentum that it had had previously, so these efforts came to nothing. A group of us went last year, and whereas it was an enjoyable evening, it didn’t have the wow factor of previous shows and it worked out to be a very expensive night out.
This year, for the first time since I’ve started attending, it didn’t sell out. Tickets are still available, and on that basis I decided to rally at the eleventh hour and get a cheap seat in the gods. Granted a cheap seat is still 30 euro, which isn’t cheap. This evening at 6pm, I managed to convince my housemate to abandon her plans for the evening in order to go, but that fell through and so it was finally decided that I would not be going to this year’s AMI. Maybe the break will do me good, maybe the hordes will be back for Gay Christmas with renewed vigour next March. Or perhaps, I will wake up tomorrow with the feeling that I’ve missed something special. However, there’s absolutely no point in fretting about it, so in the meantime let us celebrate Gay Christmas with this wonderful video of the Muppets doing Bohemian Rhapsody. (It’s a HD version, so go on, sit back, and put it on Full Screen. Treat yourself!)
Anyway, all that remains to be said is may the best queen win. The Queen is dead! Long live the queen!
