Last night we went to a Flight of the Conchords concert. FotC is a New Zealand band who also does comedy and has a show on HBO that we love. The concert itself was very good, but not fantastic. It was clear the duo was tired (they had performed another concert earlier that evening) and many of the songs were rushed. Also, their patter was better suited to a smaller venue than the Orpheum in Los Angeles. But overall it was a very enjoyable concert.
Arguably the funniest part of the evening was before the FotC took the stage. But I have to tell you about something that happened before the show started first. We were seated in the balcony looking down at an angle on two of the box seats on the side. There was a guy there with long hair and it became apparent that he was a celebrity of some kind, as various people made their way down to his box, tapped him on the shoulder, and got his autograph and took pictures. He looked only vaguely familiar and neither Kevin nor I could place him at all. At one point I said, "Whoever he is, he seems like a really nice guy." He was obviously very warm and friendly and was completely gracious to the fans who kept interrupting him.
Okay, so the second opening act of the show was stand-up comedian Aziz Ansari, who played the role of a racist fruit vendor on one episode of the HBO show. He was talking about how at Cold Stone Creamery (an ice cream place--YUM!), if you leave a tip, the employees burst into a song. The songs are adapted from popular songs, Ansari pans, using Cold Stone lyrics, "like a retarded third cousin of Weird Al." At that the audience went wild. Ansari paused, because the audience reaction was too raucous for the degree of humor of the joke. So he said, "You laugh like Weird Al is in the audience." The audience went WILD again, so he said, "Wait, is Weird Al in the audience???" The audience goes wild with cheering, the house lights come on, and everyone points and looks at the celebrity we were wondering about before in the box seat. It was Weird Al! After general hilarity, Ansari said, "I thought he had to be here because that joke is not that funny."
All in all it was a very fun, entertaining evening, and I learned that Weird Al seems like a really nice guy.
Posted by Shelby at June 2, 2008 07:36 PM