08/28/07 Kansas City, MO Uptown Theatre

[Well, Well, Well]

Is there a picture of this shirt anywhere? I wonder where he got it...

[weirdallie27]

As we left the gas station, the cops pulled us over for putting on the turn signal a tad too late for their liking, so they left us with a warning ticket, which means nothing as even the cop said.

LOL....gee, you should come here. You'd be fine. Nobody seems to even know where their turn signals are....except for me.

...and Jon adores brownies, eh? I'll have to make a mental note of that. Hehehe.

~Allison

[algonacchick]

hehe, he also loves dark chocolate...

[stupidsurgeon27]

Here are some sneak peaks at my pictures. I'm in the process of resizing them for friendly internet viewing.

Below is one of my favorite pictures. I just love Jim's expression. It's so funny!

[taralyn919]

Awesome photos!

Tara Lyn

[algonacchick]

Nice pics, CindyBob! I have that animé Al shirt, too. I love it! Although, it's big on me, now that I'm 18 lbs lighter. Rubén and Jon look really happy! You and your friends, do, too. 24 more days 'til my concert. It's getting closer!!

[this_is_the_life]

Great pics! Jim's expression is priceless!

[Kristine]

ROTFLOL I love that photo of Jim!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. You should post a slightly smaller version of it on Jim's myspace page as a comment. I'm sure he'd get a laugh out of it!

So, about the whole shirt thing: That was his first night as SM, and everyone was so busy doing their own thing to get ready that no one thought to tell him what to wear/ what not to wear. In previous jobs, he worked for heavy metal bands... and wasn't aware of the "family-friendly" thing that this group has. So, it was really just an oversight and won't happen again.

[weird_el]

If a guy works for Al, he should really KNOW about the family-friendly thing before hand. "Oversight" is a kinda lame excuse, but ultimately it's up to Al what happens next.

[taralyn919]

This extremely long. Basically, it's everything I can remember:

==========================================

If I was going to choose a random out of town Al show to attend, it wouldn’t be in Kansas City on a Tuesday night. However, my sister lives in Missouri and I promised her and my nephews that I’d take them to see Al at least once every tour. So this was the show.

My sister, Beth, is a high school gifted education teacher and she teaches a course on humor: what’s funny, why it’s funny. And she plays Al’s DVDs in class and also requires that her students write and perform a parody. She has a hard time finding humor clean enough to show to 12-14 year olds. Plus, she is a HUGE Al fan in her own right. Both my nephews are also Al fans. I wonder if that’s nature or nurture? Anyway, Beth and I really want to ensure that next generation of Al fans – not for them, for US!

I planned to fly in Tuesday afternoon, rent a car and a hotel, then fly out Wednesday morning. No reason to spend a whole 24 hours in KC, know what I mean?

I officially hate the TSA agents at Dulles airport! I’d never carried on my luggage before but I did put all my liquids in a plastic baggie. The one thing I didn’t think would raise suspicion was my jar of Nutella, the chocolate hazelnut creamy stuff. I was bringing Nutella and pretzel sticks for Al and the guys. Wouldn’t you know it, they took it away from me! The reason: it’s a gel. C’mon, give me a freaking break! I offered to open it and eat some to prove it was actually chocolate. No dice. They threw the whole thing away right in front of me. Now I’m left with boring plain old pretzel sticks. Grrrrr!

Got to the hotel with just a little bit of lost-ness. I chose the cheapest place I could find that was close to the venue. This always gets me into trouble! I have stayed in some of the seediest dives in my quest to see Al. Seriously! Part 1: bad neighborhood! Part 2: No a/c in the common areas. (I didn’t know it but this would become a theme.) My room was quaint, and by quaint, I mean it was last decorated in the 1950s! Who makes showers that small anymore? I couldn’t even bend over to pick up the soap. It had a window A/C unit which even on high didn’t cool the room down. It was still hot in there when I checked out the next day. Oh well.

I went to dinner at the only restaurant that was open and within walking distance of the venue. As it turned out, it was a gay sports bar. Hence the name: Out and About. Ha ha ha! The food was fine and I was the hottest chick in there (meaning I was the only chick). Food and service was just fine, so what did I care? My sister, nephews and a friend showed up about 6:30 PM. They drove in from Columbia for the show. We sat and yakked for a few minutes while I finished my dinner. Beth, the gang, and I left soon after to pick up our backstage passes, buy merch, and find our seats.

The show was originally planned for Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kansas. But it was moved to The Uptown Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. I was told by both TicketBastards and Uptown staff that our tickets would be honored. This wasn’t exactly true. I had 2nd row center seats! But the second row was already filled. Apparently they were only honoring the front row people and the rest of us had to grab seats wherever we could in the section for people with Memorial Hall tickets. I was complaining loudly! Beth was trying to be a peacemaker by saying that 5th row is just fine, we were still pretty close. To that I say BS!!!! And I say that with all the love I can muster for my only sister. Anyway, we grabbed our lousy 5th row seats and I at least made sure Beth was sitting on the aisle. An Uptown employee came by and asked if everything was OK. I complained to him. He asked to see my tickets. He said yes, those were great seats. We would have been exactly 2nd row center. I just wanted to barf! Kill me now, please. I was rolling my eyes and making hara-kiri motions with my hands. At one point I said to the guy, “Stop it, you’re killing me!” He was just ruthlessly teasing now. Again Beth tried to soothe me. Again, to that I say BS (with love)!!!!!!

The show hadn’t even started and we were sweating to death. There was no a/c that we could tell. I just knew it would be ugly by the end of the show.

So the show finally started. Yay! As I have said before (like a broken record), I love watching Al shows through the eyes of those who are newbies or haven’t seen the show 27 times and know every move and word and note. I can’t remember which parts exactly, but Beth was leaning on me, crying laughing at a couple of video clips and throughout the show. Beth is just as big of an Al fan as I am and she knew every word to every song and we both sang the whole show. We’d also act the words to songs out to each other. The one I remember best was “he still owes me money, what a Jerk!” We really looked mad and there was a lot of finger pointing. Oh, and Beth almost choked from laughing when Al was singing Headline News about Paris Hilton! I told Beth something was going to fall out of the ceiling during I’ll Sue Ya. So she mocked me by looking at the ceiling with her hands open waiting to receive whatever it was. When nothing came down, she’d elbow me and give me a questioning look. She did this a couple of times. I laughed every time. Patience, grasshopper. Good things come to those who wait!

And putting Beth on the aisle worked! Al sang the dryer line right to her! Beth said that, why yes, her clothes DO make a lot of noise in the dryer, how did he know that? Al climbed in the row of empty seats behind us and gyrated in front of another female fan.

Somewhere during the show, Beth pointed to the girl sitting across the aisle and said that she knew every move and line! Sure enough, it was CindyBob! I recognized her from her forum photos.

My nephews, Jacob and Noah, were relatively sedate through the show. They LOVED the Canadian Idiot streamers! We all had streamer fights on and off throughout the show. Jacob wrapped himself in streamers and even made a headband out of them. Beth wore a lot around her neck and complained when the guy behind us tried to grab the same streamers as she did. There’s nothing worse than a streamer thief! Except maybe a 2nd row ticket thief! Yes indeedy, you better believe it! Jacob asked me a couple of times what song it was during the musical intro. He didn’t recognize Why Does This Always Happen To Me. Noah was very good throughout the show but he gets distracted as 5 year olds do. His new mission in life was to pick up all the Yankobucks he could during the show. Man, that kid can keep busy when he wants to! Jon and Jim both commented at the sheer weight of the Yankobucks pile Noah collected. A boy after my own heart!

The show was awesome. Steve tripped while he was walking on the dark stage before I’ll Sue Ya but he recovered before falling. Reuben looked like he just got a fresh haircut. Jon said he just fluffed it up a bit. I thought it looked good. The cheerleaders were 50/50. One really knew what she was doing and the other one was pretty much a beat behind trying to imitate.

I took sneaky video of Ode To A Superhero and Pretty Fly for a Rabbi during the greatest hits medley. The stage manager has a shirt that said “You’re EFFING USELESS” on the back. You could plainly see it from my side of the audience. Very inappropriate for a kid’s show. I saw him with that shirt before the show and it never occurred to me that he’d wear it on stage. This was his first show as stage manager he said.

There were storm troopers again this time. Again, another female storm trooper and on the far right was a character I recognized but don’t know the name. These storm troopers were the worst dancers! Again, I took sneaky video because I wanted to capture the pure folly of the dancing troopers.

During Yoda, Al asked one specific person to sing and when the rest of us were still singing, he told us to shut up! He also mocked a person who wasn’t waving their hands during Amish Paradise. Good for you, Al!

Jon saw me in the audience when he was waving goodbye prior to the encore. I got a personal wave. Thanks Jon!

I lost my cell phone during the encore. When Al asked us to wave our cell phones, Noah wanted to wave mine so I gave it to him. I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t see it again. I asked the people doing tear down but they didn’t see it either.

Al was funny. He said Hello Kansas City, Kansas! when he was really in KC, Missouri. Just before cell phones, he pulls the tape off the stage which says MISSOURI, holds it up and complained that nobody tells him anything on this tour! Ha ha ha.

The crowd was pretty good and we all stood up during Albuquerque! Al ad libbed the Halle Berry doughnut line and still is Zelda’s sugar pickle. The whole crowd was singing every line! Beth was singing every line. Beth and I were singing and dancing and jumping around and yelling and screaming and basically making fools out of ourselves during Albuquerque! It was a lot of fun! During the encore, one of Beth’s students came up to her and gave her a SOL CD cover for Al to sign. Beth said she’d get an autograph for her.

After the show, CindyBob introduced herself and Beth and I signed the Hall of Fame petition.

While we were waiting to go backstage, the fan wrangler came out and asked for all the Yankovics in the room to go see Al first. There must have been 12 of them! Seriously. We never did find out if or how they were related to Al. But we were curious.

We got the standard one autograph, one photo, no life stories line.

The storm troopers were also there. They all pretty much had matching shirts on. Noah was fascinated with them.

Jon and Jim came out before Al did and signed autographs and took photos. I was glad to introduce Jim to Beth and Beth to Jim. Jim and I actually had a nice conversation which I think was the first real conversation I’ve had with him besides hello, love your music, can I have an autograph and photo, please. You know the drill. He said his new CD should be out in the fall and I begged him to perform on the east coast! He said he tried to do a couple of gigs in between Al shows this tour but the crazy schedule prevented it. Durn!

Noah asked one of the storm troopers for his autograph, so the guy signed a Yankobuck. The storm trooper was so funny! I’m not sure anyone ever asked him for his autograph before. LOL. Thanks, dude! You made Noah’s night! The troopers also have trading cards that look like baseball cards with their photo, rank, email address, etc on them. Noah got a couple and gave one to me. I do remember seeing a car in the parking lot with the license plate DARK CYD. I’m guessing that was Vader’s car.

So Al finally came out and met with everyone. His shirt said, “If you are close enough to read this, you are in the range of my effectiveness.” What the heck does that mean? Anyone, anyone, Bueller, Bueller?

Al signed Noah’s pass that was stuck to his shirt. I think Al improvised on the fly because Noah didn’t give him anything to sign! I'm not sure Noah even said anything to Al at all. Ha ha ha. Never occurred to me or Beth to tell Noah to hand Al a Yankobuck to sign and to say hello, etc. Ha ha ha. Jacob and Joe also got shirts signed and photos. I didn’t remember but Beth was so busy taking photos at the Six Flags St. Louis show last tour that she didn’t get a photo with Al!!!! I was horrified to be reminded. So, I made sure she got a photo with Al and that she and I got a photo with Al together.

We stayed a few minutes after Al left and yakked with Jon and Beth and I got our photo taken with him. We both kissed him on three! Thanks for everything, Jon!

So then it was over. Beth had a 2 hour drive home in front of her. Jon and the guys were bolting to Colorado and the next gig. Jon walked me to my car and I went back to my un-air-conditioned hotel.

Apparently, I was the only guest there who wasn’t renting the rooms by the hour. I am not kidding! The “clientele” was a little on the skeevy side. I went to the soda machine in my men’s jammies and a woman was there trying to decide what kind of soda she wanted. I don’t know for sure but I am guessing this woman was a prostitute. If Britney Spears re-did Baby Hit Me One More Time when she was over 50, that’s how I’d describe the woman standing next to me: platformed stripper shoes, fishnets, garter belt, extremely short Catholic school girl skirt with those large fake safety pins, a black lace top that was barely there. I have to say I’d never seen an outfit like that when it wasn’t Halloween. But she was nice. She gave me change when the dollar bill machine wasn’t working. She wished me a good night and I said the same. I don’t know what her night had in store but I went back to my overheated room at watched CNN until I fell asleep.

That explains all the mirrors on the walls in my hotel! Every wall in my room had a mirror – a big bathroom mirror on any wall that could hold one. Seriously, who needs all those mirrors? Ha ha ha ha!

Yet another awesome show! Thanks to all who made it so memorable!