Normally, I try not to be blue, but when offered the opportunity to visit and write about the famous Blue Man Group, I re-evaluated the situation.
First and foremost, as a reporter I would be paid for my trouble, and I could hang out in Las Vegas. But I also figured that because Vegas is a town where anything goes, it couldn't hurt to learn the proper technique for placing a latex ball of paint in your mouth, bursting it with your teeth and creating a work of art by spitting the paint onto a canvas, a technique that Matthew Banks of the Blue Man Group promised to show me.
Never let it be said that I am above risking my well-being for a story. When I posed the idea that I would actually become a Blue Man -- makeup, bald head and all -- and the Blue Man Group bought it, the deal was sealed.
And so I traversed the wilds of Las Vegas, seeking to become one with a small, elusive tribe of strange, hairless/earless hominids known for stuffing their blue faces full of marshmallows, Twinkies and Cap'n Crunch cereal and pounding out infectious rhythms on PVC pipe.
What was I getting myself into? What would it feel like to be inside their skin? What could I learn from being blue? The questions were daunting.
I was not afraid. After all, I was still eating crayons in the third grade.
Bring it on, Blue Man Group.
Roots of the blues
The original Blue Man Group was born around 1987 in New York. Three friends -- Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton and Chris Wink -- donned bald caps and slapped blue greasepaint on their faces, and a surprisingly complex character was born.
"An element of the character just happened once we put on the makeup," Wink said. "It erases your daily mask. The color blue felt a certain way, being bald felt a certain way, not speaking felt a certain way."
In 1991, "Blue Man Group: Tubes" opened off-Broadway to critical acclaim. The feeling Goldman, Stanton and Wink got from the blue makeup was contagious. The shows were electric, full of outrageous contraptions and pounding rhythms and otherworldly, irreverent gags, and people got it.
The show's popularity has not waned. Today, no less than 50 blue men perform in Blue Man Group productions in five major cities throughout North America and Europe.
The original trio has released two critically acclaimed albums as the Blue Man Group.
The Blue Man Group has hawked computer chips for Intel, scored the animated film "Robots" and made numerous appearances on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."
The show opened in Las Vegas in March 2000 and enjoyed a wildly successful, five-year stint at the Luxor.
In October 2005, the Blue Man Group moved to a new home at the Venetian, a 1,750-seat, state-of-the-art theater created just for the trio.
Though the theater contains more seats than the previous space, the room is smaller.
"This is a very intimate theater, and I think it works a lot better for the show," said Stanton.
Onstage at the Venetian
Today, Blue Man Group at the Venetian is more popular than ever, with performances seven nights a week.
But what's behind the intimate connection audience members feel with the Blue Man Group, the energy that has sustained the show all these years?
That's what I hoped to discover when I put on the makeup.
"The Blue Man is someone that's inside of us, it's the human part of us that connects everything," Las Vegas Blue Man Matthew Banks told me as he shaved the back of my neck.
A few minutes later a bald cap was applied to cover my hair and ears. A strong glue was used to hold it in place.
The paint went on thick, covering my entire head. Nearly a quarter-inch of blue greasepaint was slathered all over the bald cap, around my eyes, in my eyebrows, in my nose -- everywhere.
The paint has a tendency to melt and run when the performers get hot. Blue Men often apply more of the goop throughout the show. I couldn't imagine needing any more; I felt like a ballpoint pen already.
"The Blue Man walks like he's walking though peanut butter," Banks said, by way of instruction, as we walked on stage in an empty theater.
Banks continued to describe the essence of being blue. When you're walking, he said, keep your arms by your side, your feet parallel. "Stand like a gunslinger," he said. My stance was a little more Frankenstein than John Wayne, but I obliged.
Next we explored the stage. "Everything around them is an amazing, deep and important thing that they're absolutely bewildered by," Banks said.
The character is part superhero, part dog and part baby, he explained. The superhero supplies the intention to feel and help. Blue Man has the reflexes of a dog and the naivete and bewilderment of a baby.
We walked to a corner of the stage, both in Blue Man mode, until we reached a prop from the show, a series of framed posters leaning against the wall.
"What do you want to do with it?" Banks asked.
My eyes grew wide. Suddenly, I was feeling the part. I reached out and knocked one of the posters to the floor. It landed with a thud, and I instinctively struck the gunslinger pose.
This felt great. I knocked over another poster.
But one can't be a true Blue Man without getting messy.
Spin Art is a trick from the show where a Blue Man catches a ball of paint in his mouth, bursts it with his teeth and spits the paint onto a spinning canvas.
If done correctly, it makes mighty fine modern art. The real Blue Men actually sell their Spin Art creations in the Blue Man gift shop after the show.
I wore Tyvek coveralls to keep the paint off my clothes, but it does nothing for the shoes. Next, I placed a gumball-size ball of hot-pink paint into my mouth; it tasted like rubber.
"Bite it," Matthew said. "Sometimes you have to chew it if it doesn't break right away.
"When your mouth fills with paint, it's best to swish it around a little bit. Let it mix with the saliva in your mouth and get nice and fluid."
No turning back now. This is what separated the Blue Men from the boys.
I bit hard. The paint was real, and it did not taste like cherries or bubble gum; it tasted like paint. But for my readers and for Blue Men everywhere, I took a deep breath, swished the thick liquid around in my mouth and sprayed hot-pink paint across a clean, white canvas.
Finally, my third-grade crayon-eating had paid some dividends.