Geeks at a Concert
Andrew and I went to the Weird Al concert last night at the 930 Club in DC. I haven’t seen such a gathering of geeks since…well…since the last Star Trek con I went to years ago. (There are probably that many geeks at work, but they don’t congregate in such large numbers at once.)
Before the concert started, I had fun watching the crowd. The only thing funnier than geeks trying to dress up (see one of my entries from the American Astronomical Society meeting for more on that) is geeks trying to look cool. For example, there was one guy fairly close to where we were standing who looked a bit like Screech from Saved by the Bell (the older Screech, not the gangly young Screech). He wore dark pants and a dark polo-type shirt. That would have been a good look for him. But, he couldn’t stop at looking nice; he had to try for cool. His idea of cool was a Mr. T-type chain — just one, but it was fairly thick. Oh, and the pièce de résistance was his sun glasses…inside a dark club. He kept taking off of the glasses, but still.
The concert itself was great fun. Weird Al knows how to put on a good show. He went off for frequent costume changes, but while he was out they played bits from Al TV, so there wasn’t ever any lulls in the concert. He opened with one of his polka-compilations, which are always fun. They also did a montage of several songs (though there wasn’t a discernible theme — at first I thought TV songs, then food songs, then it seemed anything went, including Jerry Springer, Pretty Fly for a Rabbi, Lasagna, and Gump. Among my favorites of the other songs he played were: Amish Paradise, One More Minute, It’s All About the Pentiums.
Oh, and they also did an encore. I remember when I saw him years ago (late 80s…possibly early 90s), he did an encore of Yoda. That was the song for which my best friend, who accompanied me to the concert, and I had won a lip-synching concert (I played Yoda, and she was Luke). We felt like he played that encore just for us. For the encore last night, he first did The Saga Begins and then Yoda. Ah. That was a great ending to the evening.
A couple notes on the venue: The 930 Club is not a seated venue, meaning that everyone just stands around the stage. While this makes for an intimate-feeling concert, it also made for a painful one. About half-way through, my legs started to cramp up, and I really wanted to stretch them. However, we were surrounded by people, close enough that they were constantly bumping into me, so there was no room to really move at all.
Besides that, the 930 Club is in a really rough part of DC. When Andrew told me which Metro stop we’d have to use to get there, I nearly told him we weren’t going…our $80 investment be damned. Andrew managed to calm me down enough that we went (obviously), but I can safely say that we won’t be back anytime soon. I don’t care who plays there.