There was a time in my life I got super excited about things. My emotions would well up and spill out of my heart into the physical reality of life on the outside of my soul. For some reason or other I often feel numb or blank when I experience exhilarating fun things nowadays. I tend to dwell on the imperfection of the event I have partaken of. Writing this blog post was sort of frustrating for my computer wasn’t fully cooperating with me as I was trying to upload pictures and videos into it. It kept stalling and delaying getting me frazzled. But on to the real point I want to write about.
Several months ago a lifelong dream of mine came to fruition. I got to go and see ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic LIVE in concert. Kristin had heard me say “I always wanted to see Weird Al in concert but I never did,” to her some time last year in 2021 and decided that the best Christmas gift she could give me was a chance to see him perform a show live in person. We got a hotel as the concert was about an hour or so from our house and Kris didn’t want us driving home tired from having rocked out to funny rock songs.
As we were eating at Bickfords 2 hours before the show, we spotted some Weird Al fans coming in to eat as well. This is why buying T-shirts is a good thing as they provide conversation starters with total strangers. I wanted to get a shirt but they were 30 bucks and it was too crowded to get one. This older couple who had the shirts go to all of his shows anytime he is giving a concert in the area. I had wondered why I had never gone out of my way to see him perform live before, as he is my all-time favorite musical artist.
I remember loving the Weird Al mockumentary The Complete Al which featured several of his music videos produced before 1985. And now, Weird: The Al Yankovic movie just appeared on the Roku Channel starring Daniel ‘Harry Potter’ Radcliffe as Al. My wife was expecting a more straightforward bio pic instead of the parody one we got. It’s the Weird Al of an alternate universe. It’s sort of unsettling to see Weird Al have offscreen sex with Madonna. It sort of left a sour taste in my brain and damped my enjoyment of the film. In real life he is much more clean cut. There was no swearing in the movie and the joke about Michael Jackson parodying Eat It was funny. The inspiration of how he came up with several of his songs I found quite funny including Amish Paradise. If you look you will find a Harry Potter joke. Dr. Demento became Al’s de-mentor. Parents beware it is not the family friendly Al in this movie. If you do decide to watch the movies watch the reviews before hand as it will let you know what type of movie it is your getting into and it may increase or not your enjoyment of it.
I remember listening to his first five albums on cassette tape over and over again. I remember the first time I saw his Fat music video over my friend Bobby Joe’s house when I was younger, it had me laughing hysterically. I performed his ‘Isle Thing’ parody at a high school talent show. I performed another one of his Star Wars songs at some event in grad school. He had been a part of my life since I was a wee lad. And now I was getting a chance to see him in person but from a distance away as we had seats high up in the balcony area.
Performing Weird Al IN HIGH SCHOOL
Performing Weird Al IN FIRST YEAR OF COLLEGE
The crowd was energetic and excited. So much so that Kristin turned around and told the people behind us not to scream. She can’t understand why adults scream so loud. Loud screaming also affects her stress level. We got there just as the show was starting with the opening act. We would have been there sooner but we had to go to Target to get bathing suits. When Kristin was booking the Best Western through booking.com she got a lower end deal that didn’t include breakfast or the pool. So, we didn’t bring swimming accommodations. The desk clerk informed us that booking.com had lied to us and there were no packages that included or didn’t include the pool or breakfast. Got to love the honesty of people.
Emo Phillips opened with his brand of comedy. Kristin and I didn’t find him over all funny even though the audience was laughing at all his jokes. He said he found a $100 bill in St. Patrick’s cathedral and turned it into the church. He wasn’t really good at origami however. Kristin wondered why someone like Weird Al needed a opening act. People came to see him not Emo. That is not to say he can’t be funny.
He finally came on stage and opened up with ‘Dumb, Young, and Ugly’. All of the songs that followed were his original less popular songs that he had written. About half of his songs are non-parody originals. I was familiar with a lot of them but not all of them. In fact, most of the songs he sang were not my favorite original songs of his. It was sort of hard to understand some of them as I was not familiar or accustomed to the lyrics. I knew this going in, what type of tour it would be and what type of show he would perform.
This effected both Kristin and I’s enjoyment of the show. If we could have sung along with most of the songs it would have been a more jolly time. I did sing along to ‘Don’t Download This Song.” Kristin thought a part of his song Albuquerque was hilarious as Weird Al goes to a convenience store late at night and asks the night clerk if he has certain flavors of donuts only to be told their out of it. But he ends up getting a box of weasels. No new songs. No updates of outdated songs. I guess there a time capsule. The best part of the show was just Weird Al talking to the audience in-between songs. The best song came at the end in the encore segment where he did sing a melody of his popular songs that included Word Crimes, Amish Paradise and the crowd singing Yoda. Here is a little taste of what it was like.
I would have loved to have seen one of his shows where he did costume changes and performed his more popular songs, but it was nice to be part of the eager enthusiastic crowd of Weird Al fans enjoying his music. I was glad to get away for a change from our normal routine. We hadn’t gone away just the two of us many times over the course of our married lives. To Florida on our honeymoon, Amish Country and Washington D.C. were the last two times. Ireland was with her family so it didn’t count she said. Recently we took a field trip to Hartford Connecticut and visited the Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe museum. Mark Twain was the closest thing to Weird Al in the 19th century. If you want to get an insight into Mark Twain the family man take the tour of his house, where he wrote Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, where an actress dresses up as one of his 4 kids and tells you all about life in the Twain household.
If you want to talk about the evils of racism take the tour of the house of the woman who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
If I was younger, I might have been more excited to have gone to the concert. I remember the wonder of seeing Amy Grant and Debbie Gibson in concert. I might have enjoyed it more back in the day. Don’t get me wrong, he still is my all time favorite musical artist. But the fact I didn’t fully have a grand blast of a time at the concert or watching the new movie about him is not a bad thing. We in the western world with our first world problems don’t get reminded as often as people in poverty-stricken countries that life is not always pleasant and easy.
The fact that the concert of a lifetime was not the best thing ever reminds me that this life is not all there is. This life is not the final resting stop. Life with God in heaven is. The concert was good and I was glad to be a part of it. But it wasn’t perfect. Nothing is this side of heaven. And it is good to have good things. It’s even better to remember that this is not all there is.
Some More Good Weird reviews of the new movie.
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