Book of Mormon

I saw that there was a lottery for $40 tickets to Book of Mormon, which Pharmacist also wanted to see, so I thought it'd be fun to enter that. How it works: 2 hours before the show, they draw cards out of a barrel with the names of people who want to see the show that night. There are 24 tickets available (more if there happen to be unsold tickets that night), and you request up to 2 tickets.

Pharmacist says a lot of shows do it so that people who can't normally afford to see the show can still see it.

You can enter 30 minutes before the draw, so I showed up at 4:30pm (for a 7pm show). Big mistake. You can enter up to 30 minutes early, but the draw really doesn't happen until 2 hours before the show, so you're left waiting around for 30 minutes. And you had to be present at the draw to win, so there wasn't enough time for me to get back to the office, do some work, and travel back. Fortunately, I had my Kindle. Pro tip: enter about 5 minutes before the draw. They really do accept entries up until 2 hours before, but the time is based on the phone of whoever is running the draw that day, so you want to get there a bit early just to be safe.

The staff members were pretty enthusiastic about the draw, encouraging people to clap for the winners and keeping everyone entertained. The draw itself took a long time. The interesting thing I wanted to see was what the called Ditch the Date. There are an even number of tickets available, but some of the people entering only wanted 1 ticket, which could mean an odd number. When there's 1 ticket left, and a card is drawn for a person who wants 2, the person is given the option to ditch their date, or pass on the tickets.

We didn't end up winning the first Tuesday that I went. Or the Friday. Or the Wednesday after that. I had learned by lesson by second time, and didn't show up nearly as early. In the end, we decided we were just going to buy the tickets, so Pharmacist bought some resale ones. Didn't get to see any date ditching, unfortunately. There was one night where it did happen, except the person who won had already seen it, so she just gave the ticket to her friend.

I really didn't know what to expect from the show. I didn't want to read anything about it in order to avoid spoilers, but Pharmacist gave me a brief rundown on Mormonism (all I knew was that they're the people that go to your house, ring your doorbell and ask if you've heard about Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints), which I think made it more enjoyable. So here's what I knew going into the show:

Some guy found a gold-plated book in his backyard that only he was able to read and translated it into The Book of Mormon about Jesus' adventures in America. He started his own splinter religion based on his translation of the book, but nobody else was allowed to see the original book.

And you really didn't even need to know that before seeing the show, as I think it could stand on its own perfectly fine.

I think it started a bit slow, made a few funny cracks, but really picked up its pace after that. I think towards the end, I didn't stop laughing. It's definitely a R-rated show though, so I wouldn't dream of bringing kids, or trying to repeat some of the jokes at work - it's racist, violent (though not really graphic, mostly descriptive), makes fun of religion, and is just full of inappropriate humour. For something written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, there wasn't that much potty humour, which I really liked. I think my favourite kind of humour is when someone starts saying something, and the punchline is an unexpected twist, and there was a lot of that.

I really enjoyed it, but it's definitely not for someone who is oversensitive. It does mock religion, but I think it had a positive overall message in the end.