8/23/15 Denver, CO PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Two shows!

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Re: 8/23/15 Denver, CO PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Two shows!

Post by Elvis »

Driew! :oo Sorry, I missed you, didn't know you were here!

Anyway, I did get to meet up with Casey before the show. He enjoyed the VIP activities very much and I could see him rockin' out to the show from my seat, so I'm sure he'll share his stories.

Jackie, Heather, Josh and I took Uber over, which was the first time I ever tried Uber actually. Following the theme for us this year, thanks to a bicycle race going on downtown, we made it there just in time to sit down and for the show to start. Our seats were third row off on Steve's side and except for the few shows we ended up in the center section somehow, probably the best seats we had. We were very close to the stage. For "Tacky" Al started in a seafood restaurant and walked out into an alley. He flipped JW's sunglasses off in the alley. The stage was small enough that they had to sit the microphone/sound guy on the stage, and it was funny to watch him mouth along to every video clip. The cheerleaders for SLN were professional cheerleaders. You could tell right from the start that they were above and beyond any of the cheerleaders at the other shows I've seen, but when they started lifting each other over each other heads(!), that's when they started stealing the show. They were absolutely awesome! Al definitely played up that there were two shows that night because at the end of show during the James Brown routine, he said something like "I wish we could play all night, but we can't because we have another show to do in 90 minutes and it wouldn't be fair to those who paid for tickets." Al had only the white people sing for "Yoda". Anyway, the crowd was awesome. Had that been my last show as planned, I would totally have been pleased, but as it was, after the show, we hung back in our seats to let the crowd thin out before leaving, and Bermuda comes over and says hi for a minute. Then Jim was also hanging around and said hi. I think they were looking for their guests. Well, we're about to leave and we run into an old friend and long story short, she casually tells me that there are 4 tickets waiting for me for the 7:30 show at will call.

Wait... what?!?! :tacky:

So now that our plans of going home and watching zombies and wrestling having being abruptly changed, we head to the closest restaurant, which I believe was called Earl's and was really good, and had dinner, then walked back to the theater, where I ran into JW outside wrapping up VIP stuff. This time our seats were oer on Jim's side a few rows further back, but it was nice to see the same show back to back from opposite sides of the theater. Slightly different opening to "Tacky" as Al followed the same path, but slapped a drink out of Jim's hand and threw flowers JW had onto the ground. Also being on the opposite side this time, Al walked right past me as he came down the aisle. At the beginning of NTWICP Al played up the 2 show thing again, and said that he just felt like he played Denver 90 minutes ago. The cheerleaders did the same routine but were somehow much better the second show, which is insane because they were so incredible the first show. There's a video I shared on my Facebook of them from the second show that's worth watching. . And at the end of the show during the James Brown thing, Al said something "I wish we could play all night, but I just did two shows and I'm really tired and he have to drive 11 hours tonight to Utah, so that would be highly impractical". There were much less stormtroopers for the second show so we surmise some had to leave early. Al singled out a guy in the front row to sing "Yoda".

Anyway we were asked to hang back at the end of the second show to say good night to my friend and security hassled us a little but then security got the official okay that we could stay in the theater and we watched them almost completely tear down the stage, which is a massive undertaking. At one point we were asked to move to the middle of the theater because they were taking down the speaker stacks and I guess they were afraid of dropping them on us! Well, we ended up being shuffled backstage, where we ran into Steve Jay who congratulated Jackie on 100 shows and asked me to show his guests my tattoos. We asked Steve if he was tired from playing for 4 hours and he said no because he fed off the energy of the awesome audiences and that Denver always had good audiences. Then shortly after Al came out and he was very relaxed too considering the physical workout he had. He commented to Jackie that it was her 102nd show and told her at 500 she gets a pair of novelty glasses. :online: We complimented him on the show and talked about the cheerleaders which Al said he couldn't actually see them while singing, he only heard when they did something awesome because of the audience reaction. Anyway, Al graciously posed for a group photo. We then said good night to our friend and caught an Uber back to the house, where everyone (not me-- too scared!) watched zombies after all.

I totally couldn't have asked for any more awesome or unexpected ending to a great summer. I saw 24 shows this tour and this was my favorite setlist so far, and probably my favorite tour chasing . A lot of it had to do with the shows, but a lot of it had to do with the great friends I got to meet for the first time, or see again and hang out with along the way. I will miss seeing you all, but you know where to find me, so don't be a stranger!

Here are the pictures from the shows. My camera died halfway through the second show because, well, frankly I didn't conserve batter power because I didn't know there would be a second show. You need to be my friend to see them. Applications for friendship are available for free at Facebook, and I accept all applicants.

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Re: 8/23/15 Denver, CO PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Two shows!

Post by BullMoose »

Ah; non!
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I wanna see your picturess!!
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Re: 8/23/15 Denver, CO PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Two shows!

Post by Yankomaniac »

You may have to have him on FB. I can see them.
What a racket they're makin', Jack, they keep me up at night playin' their electric guitars!!
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Re: 8/23/15 Denver, CO PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Two shows!

Post by Driew_La_27 »

Elvis wrote:Driew! :oo Sorry, I missed you, didn't know you were here!
Yeah I'm sorry I missed the legendary Dave too! :oo

I never thought for a second you'd be at the Denver show. :lol:
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Re: 8/23/15 Denver, CO PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Two shows!

Post by Killingsworth »

I got to the venue at around 12:30pm. I got there so early I could see them just starting to setup the VIP entrance, so I decided to go around the corner and grab some gelato and a Sprite at a nearby place.

After they checked us in and gave us our free VIP gear, they led us upstairs and around the left corner to the VIP lounge for the venue. We walked into see the wall of Al's career accomplishments right next to the cash bar. I got a bottled water and a little plate of tortilla chips and salsa and headed through the hallway (which was decorated with MF liner notes art) and headed to the actual VIP room where people were hanging out. I first took a couple of photos at the photo booth. I was apparently too tall to do the Mandatory Fun cover pose in my Czar shirt without my head getting cut off the way this booth was setup so I just leaned into the camera and stared. You can see those photos on my Twitter.

At around 1:20pm, JW began the festivities by singing along to Jackson Park Express. This was a very WBUL/OMM like performance as he was walking through the crowd and interacting with us. He sang the "answer to everything/Written drivers test" part to me. I got a video of him interacting with everyone after me and posted it on my facebook along with a brief clip of me just walking through the VIP room to show off the decorations.

After that performance, JW announced people to come up and participate in a contest which I foolishly did. This turned out to be a dance contest to Polka Your Eyes Out. Being put on the spot like this, I naturally decided to go full on boneless boy and somehow got eliminated. The girl that won received a rare limited edition Weird Al bottle opener. She also noticed my tickets had fallen out of my front pocket and gave them to JW who announced them and allowed me to come up and get them. Someone told me they thought I would win when I made it back to my table. In between activities and contests, I alternated between texting, talking to strangers and going through my complete trading card set. One person asked me if there was anything interesting in there and I said is was just album/single covers, UHF/video shoot scenes and other various moments in Al's career.

Around 2:17pm was when they put on the VIP Czar Meet and Greet. They led us into another room behind where JW's podium was. He asked to see my Czar pass on the way in as my Hawaiian shirt apparently hid it that well. The room they led us into appeared to be a dining room with actual tables. It must've been the room where the caterers give the band fresh food before each performance. Not only could we see trays of fresh fruit behind the curtains but we could also see Jim and Ruben back there as well. JW explained the rules for the meet and greet (hug the wall, kneel down besides Al for the "optimal photo", resist the temptation to drool in the presence of a celebrity, have the camera apps on your phones up and running and hand them to this other guy who works for CID) and I let 8 people go ahead of me because I was feeling generous and wanted to savor the moment.

Al came out from behind the curtain in a light brown polo shirt and a fishing hat and sat down. He was very friendly and was smiling and waving at the fans as usual. When it got to be my turn, Al said he liked my shirt as I introduced myself and shook his hand. I quickly mumbled something about him being both a fashion AND comedy icon to me as I knelt down and set my copy of the Nathan Rabin coffee table book on the table (which he signed the first page of immediately after the poster without missing a beat, BTW). As he was doing my signing, I told him I thought Mandatory Fun was a strong album that would surely stand the test of time better than a lot of his other work and asked him what motivated him to promote the album without a lead single. He said he couldn't pick out one song from the album that stood out above the rest and questioned whether he needed a single from this album when he could just promote it with a series of viral videos instead. I quickly complimented Al on being ahead of the curve and then asked him how he came up with the idea for "TMZ". He said "oh, just from all the times TMZ ambushed me on the street, I guess". I then quipped "yeah, and then you must've seen TMZ ambush Taylor Swift on the street and the idea just sort of clicked in your head, didn't it?" and he got a chuckle out of that. To this day, I am still amazed that I was able to hold it together well enough to have a causal conversation not once, but TWICE now in the presence of my idol let alone being able to make him laugh at an off the cuff joke of mine in response to something he said to me. As I got my photo taken, he and the guy taking photos both complimented my Skinit phone cover of Al form the BHD album cover.

After the meet and greet came the costume contest. I line up with all the other volunteers. The led to ANOTHER dance contest (this time to "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred) to determine the finalists. The three finalists were a man dressed in Al's "Handy" costume (blond wig, blue denim vest over t-shirt and tool belt) the girl he came with who was wearing a generic 80s/tacky costume and a guy I talked to who was just wearing his jester hat and Czar shirt. This led into the lip sync contest. Tacky girl did "Party In The CIA", Handy man did "Do I Creep You Out" and the jester did "Pentiums". This bled into the trivia contest. I didn't get to participate but I did get to shout out the answers that no one knew (the show Philo hosted in UHF was "Secrets OF The Universe" and the back masking line in "I Remember Larry" was "wow, you must have an awful lot of free time on your hands"). This prompted JW to comment "that guy should be winning the trivia contest, too bad his costume wasn't good enough". Shortly after that, they held the raffle to determine who gets to spin the Wheel Of Fish. Some little girl had the winning ticket and the fish that she landed on was the North American backwards fish. Her actual prize was a keychain. At one point during all of that, a family came up to me and said they just arrived. They then asked if Al had already done the signing and I had to tell them he did. JW sang some other goodbye song to usher us all out of the VIP lounge and into our seats for the show. He stated how he wanted to shout how much he loved his VIPs from the rooftops and then proceeded to do so out of a window.

Meeting Al at a pre-show VIP event did kind of take some excitement out of seeing a concert of his that I already knew the setlist to by heart (Patton Oswalt was right, the magic DID get ruined) but I got way more into the show as it went along. It was pretty much the standard setlist from the tour that everyone has been talking about. Not a lot of things stood out performance wise, but here are a few notes from things I noticed rather than a full review (hey, this post is already long enough with the VIP review and all). I will try not to touch on the same things Dave did in his review

-The restaurant Al walked through was named "Bayou Bobs'" and was next door to the Paramount theater. He flipped JWs sunglasses off and I couldn't see what he did to mess with Jim because I was too busy getting a photo of Al on the big screen.

-Tacky in general was sort of underwhelming to me as I was seated near the opposite aisle from where Al was entering and I could barely see him. At the time, it did not occur to me to look up on the screen.

-A few people have complained about the lights during DTBS, but I found them quite bearable compared to the lights going off directly into my eyes during Lame Claim To Fame, Amish Paradise and CIA/Pentiums/Handy (mostly because it made it that much more difficult to get good pictures of those particular songs.

-The stage looked rather small up close and Al had to enter through the side for most songs. This looked rather silly for big costume numbers where he had to strut around stage such as PTW and Word Crimes. He had limited stage space to explore and work with on those songs so I guess he had to reel it in a little. I could also see he was very much "in character" for DTBS before he even reached his keyboard

-Al's fat suit looks really good up close. The mask looks much more realistic. They must've refurbished that part recently as well.

-Al had his hand buried in his face to get into character for First World Problems and didn't quite stumble around the stage as much.

-"Foil", "Inactive" and the acoustic/unplugged medley sounded really great and more polished at this point in the tour.

-I agree with Dave on how excellent the cheerleaders were during SLN. I could tell they must have been actual cheerleaders at some point in their lives. I also got splashed with a fair amount of water here.

-"Pentiums" seems to be much slower in tempo and Al is still doing quite the silly accent for Handy. He also held on to the long note at the end of eBay or quite a bit. The Inactive robe looks more purple now that I see it up close and in person. I don't quite know when he started wiping his face with it but he did it at this show.

-There was a quick applause break early on in TSB. It was sometime before "that's where we found this boy". All the stormtroopers went limp on the "battle droids were broken" line.

As I was in line to exit the theater, I met Bermuda. I asked him what I knew was both a dumb question but also a transparent excuse to talk to him in person at the time. I asked Bermuda if there was anything else planned for the 4pm Czars and he said "Oh, no. You've already met Al, right?" and I said "yeah, but I just had to ask because I saw some people still sitting there". Bermuda quickly explained that they were his guests and he graciously agreed to take a picture with me when I asked him. He asked a woman with him if she could take the photo saying "you want take the picture, hon?" and she graciously agreed. I jokingly asked Bermuda if that was his wife and she just said she was his friend. Bermuda then quickly explained he used to be in a band with this woman back in LA.

After that, I waited in a long line to get t-shirts and food with some people. I got a big pretzel and a Sierra Mist while waiting. I talked with some people and joked about the line being so long that Al might interact with us when he comes down to sing Tacky for the 7:30pm show. One gentlemen joked that he might wet his pants if that happens.

After waiting in line, I got a hoodie and a Saga Begins shirt (I do quite like the new design on these red ones) as well as a hat, a MAD magazine, a DVD of UHF (they apparently didn't have the Compleat Al) and a tote bag to carry all of this in. It was quite a fun experience and I'm glad I ended up getting to see AND meet Al on the Mandatory World Tour!
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Re: 8/23/15 Denver, CO PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Two shows!

Post by Yankomaniac »

Sweet review! Did you end up staying into the next show for Tacky or did they make most people from the first show leave?
What a racket they're makin', Jack, they keep me up at night playin' their electric guitars!!
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Re: 8/23/15 Denver, CO PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Two shows!

Post by Killingsworth »

Yankomaniac wrote:Sweet review! Did you end up staying into the next show for Tacky or did they make most people from the first show leave?
I couldn't stay for the next show. Tickets for that one sold put before I even got a chance to get any. Besides, I had to work the following morning and it was a rather long trip back from Denver.
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Re: 8/23/15 Denver, CO PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Two shows!

Post by Yankomaniac »

Oh, I see. In which part of Colorado do you dwell?
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Re: 8/23/15 Denver, CO PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Two shows!

Post by Killingsworth »

Yankomaniac wrote:Oh, I see. In which part of Colorado do you dwell?
I live in Longmont (which is about 20-30 minutes from Boulder and about an hour or two away from Denver).
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Re: 8/23/15 Denver, CO PARAMOUNT THEATRE - Two shows!

Post by DrSteggy »

This was such a great double header! Here are photos from both shows...and at least I am now caught up on posting photos for the most part!

Early show: http://s17.photobucket.com/user/drstegg ... rly%208-23" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Late show: http://s17.photobucket.com/user/drstegg ... ate%208-23" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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