Have you ever seen The Room?

If not, do yourself a favor and watch it when you don’t care about losing a few hours of your life. It is on several “Worst Movies Ever” lists and is definitely a terrible movie. The director, writer and lead actor is a bizarre man. Tommy Wiseau travels the country making appearances at showings of the films. When we found out that he was coming to Houston, we bought our tickets immediately and were so pumped to see the crazy live. We had no idea what we were in store for. The movie has gained quite the cult following and the experience was unlike any other I’ve had at the movies. It definitely qualifies as a Myriadventure, but getting there proved to be one too.

Here’s what happened:

After spending a lovely evening at a housewarming party for a friend, we realized we were cutting it close for the midnight showing. We got in the car and realized that we had forgotten that the car was in dire need of gas. We make it out of the parking garage and David says, “If it starts to lurch when we turn, then we are in trouble.” At that point, we turned onto the street and the car ran out of gas. We coasted down the road and were bursting with pride as we coasted into a gas station. What we failed to notice until we were done high-fiving each other was that the gas station we had so beautifully coasted to was closed.

We pushed the car down the street toward another gas station that is about a mile away. We make it into the parking lot to find that this gas station is also closed. At this point, two people have stopped and gotten out of their cars to help us. The only open gas station on the area is across the street from where we are. In order to get the car there, we would have had to make our way through a busy intersection and perform a U-Turn. David went across the street to buy a gas can, but they don’t sell them. Naturally. I headed to the CVS across the street to buy some gallon water jugs. When I make it back, David has done the same thing from the gas station and is filling a jug with gas. We make a paper funnel and sloppily pour the gallon into the car. After deciding this is good enough, we head to the theatre, reeking of gasoline. We were supposed to be there at midnight and we arrive at the theatre 30 minutes late.

The movie hadn’t even started. Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero(an actor in the movie) were in the lobby signing autographs and taking photos when we walked in. We got some great seats and the pre-show Q & A session started. Tommy was delightfully awkward and we were highly amused by him.

The theatre was packed with people yelling and laughing and from the minute the movie began, people were quoting along and throwing spoons at the screen. There were chants and cheers and lots of howling. We had the chance to sneak out of the movie and wait in line to meet Tommy and Greg. They took pictures with us and we asked Greg a question about our favorite part in the movie and got their autographs on a GIANT poster and some DVDs.

After hob knobbing with the celebrities, we made it back into the theatre to finish the movie. We noticed a very strong and specific aroma around us. Someone was smoking weed in the theatre. It did not take very long for us to realize that that someone was a kid right in front of us. I can only assume he was using a small portable vaporizing pipe because there was no smoke. It was obnoxious. After a few minutes of this, David tapped the guy on the shoulder and said, “Would you mind?” To which the kid responded, “Oh, sorry bro, did you want some?”

The whole thing was kind of awesome.

If you heard of something called a “Ten Day Salute to Sausage,” what would you do?

The correct answer is to drive there so fast that you get a ticket from a state trooper.

We did that. In an effort to make it in time to see the Jimmy Sturr Orchestra, David got a ticket in Gonzales, TX. The state trooper was uninterested in our plans to make it to Wurstfest in time to see the Jimmy Sturr Orchestra and eat sausage. He was more interested in the fact that David was driving well above the speed limit and did not have a license plate on the front of his car. “You’re in violation of the law,” was all he kept saying.

After our encounter with the law, we made it to the fairgrounds and realized that there was no need for the hurry since Jimmy Sturr was not on for another hour. We walked the grounds and saw a slice of life. There were lots of people in lederhosen with personal pitchers of beer. Every tent surrounding the food pavilion (yes, an entire pavilion just for food) housed different polka bands. There were oom-pah-pahs overlapping each other and lots of yelling and laughter. It was delightful to walk through the quaint booths and see the little old German ladies serving sausage-on-a-stick and potato pancakes.

We each got a sausage on a stick and sat down at a picnic table. When we were done, I got up, but got my foot stuck behind the table leg. I fell over on my side, and with my foot stuck, I couldn’t throw my leg out to catch myself. I fell pretty hard and sent our now-empty sausage sticks clattering across the ground. Ashley laughed so hard that she hurt herself. I can’t believe that she forgot to put this part in.

— David

We made the rounds and listened to polka bands and waltzed. We grabbed a sausage plate or two and sat in the big concert hall, waiting for the next big band. We made the rounds and listened to polka bands and waltzed. Everyone was walking around with giant stacks of Wurstfest cups and pitchers. We were looking for the booth handing out these

cups and then realized that these people had a cup for each beer they had bought and consumed. Similarly, they had also consumed multiple pitchers of beer.

I only wanted one beer, and so we only had one cup. David couldn’t be bothered to drink any beer, so we had to get creative if we wanted cups and pitchers of our own. We noticed that there were cups lying on the ground all over the place. We picked those up. Then we noticed that every trash can we walked by had both pitchers and cups in them. It didn’t take us long to resort to dumpster diving. We shamelessly grabbed stacks upon stacks of cups and carried them around for the rest of the evening. When things were dying down and we decided to leave, David went crazy and ransacked every garbage can.

We collected at least 40 cups and 4 pitchers. We use them on game nights and have let our friends write their names on them so they have their own cup when they come over.

It’s pretty cute.

The funniest thing at Wurstfest was a show called Harry Potter and the Order of the Opas. It was a melodrama parody. It was community theater. It was amazing. The cast was hilarious. The wands were sausages on sticks and the characters talked about various goings on at Wurstfest. Audience participation was encouraged. There was lots of laughing.

We stayed the night in Boerne and took our time on the way home. We explored Schulenberg and saw lots of interesting things. One of my favorites was an anti-abortion sculpture at the Knights of Colombus that we found during our trip back from Czhilispiel. After that we stopped at a park and played a game of Rummikub. Near the end of the game a GIANT spider let itself down onto the table inches from my face. We finished the game standing up and decided to go talk to the cows next to the park. It took a while to realize how close we were to the biggest spider I’ve ever seen. As we got into the car, I noticed that the spider from the table had made its way onto David’s hoodie. I refused to let him into the car until he got rid of it. He ripped off his jacket and ran away. The spider probably made it back into the car, but we never saw it again.

I can’t wait for the next Wurstfest!