resisting the urge to be a fool

I'm trying to be relatively unpredictable -- for me, at least -- and not do some stupid April Fool's trick on here today...

... so I'll head in a different direction, and this is all true.

There is a kind of funny, kind of bizarre event tonight at the Loring Theater, which is a couple of blocks from our condo (The Loring has been around since the 1920 in various incarnations and with various names and is back to its original name).  We won't be there because, first of all, we're going to be booing LeBron James tonight instead at Target Center and who knows whether we would even consider it anyway, but the event is called "Where Tammy Tied the Knot."  You see, back in 1961 the Loring Theater became for a while some sort of Evangelical Center, and it happens to be where Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who met in Minneapolis, got married 50 years ago today, April 1, 1961.

Jim and Tammy Faye were televangelists back in the '70s and '80s until they met their evangelistic Waterloo with a sex-and-fraud scandal.  Jim went to prison, but Tammy Faye, who in her televangelist days was known for her caked makeup, excessive eyeliner and loopy demeanor, went on to be some sort of pop celebrity and, despite it all, kind of likeable.  She died a couple years ago. 

So tonight is a sort of mock tribute to the Bakkers, with a showing of the documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye and some round-table discussion, followed by an anniversary celebration, with attendees encouraged to wear 1961 wedding-reception garb.  (Who thinks of these things?)  :-)