Al At Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre

All about Weird Al's concerts and other live appearances.

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Wizzerkat
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Post by Wizzerkat »

Tonight (in minutes!) Anyone go?

The smurf Show
A collection of the worst (real) pilots, movies, and projects you've ever seen. Presented by the actors who regret doing them.

Hosted by Rob Huebel

* 9:30 pm — $5 Sunday June 28, 2009
Weird Al Yankovic, Chris Hardwick, Ken Marino, more!

ADVANCE RESERVATIONS ARE SOLD OUT
There will be a stand-by line for this show.


http://losangeles.ucbtheatre.com/shows/2020
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Post by Orthography Enthusiast »

That Al. He'll do ANYTHING to sell a few extra copies of The Weird Al Show. :rolleyes:
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Post by FredHuggins »

I found out about this thing JUST in the nick of time to go. I didn't bring my video camera, but hopefully someone did, because it was one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my desolate life.

I'd like to describe it in detail, but I realize that doing so might be considered a "spoiler" on the offchance that by some miracle someone DID film it and they DO post it on YouTube. So does anyone object?
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Post by Orthography Enthusiast »

No, you can only spoil officially-released stuff. Describe in all the gory details!
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Post by Wizzerkat »

Yes, please! I read there were only 100 seats in the theatre(was it small?) so the chance of video might be bleak..
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Post by FredHuggins »

Okay, here goes. I'm still trying to fully wrap my head around exactly what went down in there - it was an enormous personal geekgasm on MANY many levels.

The UCB Theater is indeed small, but not TOO small. Nice and cozy and very intimate, like you're in some friend's basement. Holds 100-150 people. Maybe about half the size of Chicago's Second City Mainstage, if you've ever been there. Perfect for a hilarious and inexpensive evening of live comedy. (For a good idea of the size of this theater, not to mention a document of some AMAZINGLY funny improv, I highly recommend Shout! Factory's 'Upright Citizen's Brigade: ASSSSCAT' DVD. Anyway...) So the show started, Rob Huebel (of "Human Giant") introduced the first five guests - Seth Morris, Jon Daly, Whit Hertford (I kid you not, Whit played the kid at the beginning of Jurassic Park whose gender Al & Mike Nelson couldn't discern - a fact that went sadly unacknowledged during the evening), Ken Marino (of "The State" and "Role Models" fame) and Chris Hardwick. Then Rob said "this next guy's an up-and-coming musician, give it up for Al Yankovic!" Interestingly, nobody called him "Weird Al" all night, only "Al Yankovic." Anyway, one by one each guest showed the audience (and each other) one or two embarrassingly horrid projects they've appeared in - an Olive Garden commercial, a corporate sales training video, a low-budget horror film, etc. And the language used to describe and mock these clips was RAUNCHY. Everyone but Al cursed like sailors. In case the title didn't make it clear enough, this was a show put on BY adults FOR adults - by FAR the most raunchily adult setting that Al's ever publicly appeared in. The horror film clip even contained female nudity, and for a few minutes early on, the guests got sidetracked onto the topic of...how do I put this on a family-friendly forum...the topic of pleasuring one's bodily fluids into hotel bath towels, and that concept became a running gag which recurred frequently throughout the evening. Al didn't comment very much, or at all really, on the other guests' clips - I'm guessing partly because (as he admits) he's not great at improv, and partly because it wasn't terribly possible to get a word in edgewise anyway.

Anyway, the first four guests all went, and then it was Al's turn. He grabbed a microphone, stood up, and pretty much OWNED the stage. This was only the second time I've seen Al just TALK on stage for an audience, rather than sing - the other time was when he premiered the UHF DVD extras at ALCON III. And I was struck this time by how EXTREMELY GOOD he is at just talking to an audience, and getting huge laughs from them to boot. Al knows EXACTLY which words to emphasize, when to pause and for how long, EVERY SKILL a good stand-up needs. If the band dissolves or the touring budget disappears, Al could seriously have a future doing talking gigs - if not with straight stand-up, then certainly with funny show-biz anecdotes, a la Henry Rollins or Kevin Smith.

So Al says (and btw, I'm paraphrasing all of Al's speeches because, alas, I ain't no stenographer), "I should preface by saying these are not the MOST embarrassing clips of my career. These are only moderately stupid - I'll come back another time with some stuff that'll make your eyeballs melt."

"First up, I brought an appearance I made on a little show called 'Wheel of Fortune,' or 'Wheel,' as it's called by absolutely no one. In 1994, my manager called and said, 'Hey, do you want to be on Wheel of Fortune? They're doing a Music Stars Week.' And I said, 'I dunno, game shows are kinda cheesy...who would I be playing against?' 'James Brown and Little Richard.' 'AWESOME! COUNT ME IN!'" The audience is rolling at this point, and we haven't even gotten to the clip yet.

"So I fly down to Florida, and I get there and find out that I'm playing against Lee Greenwood, the 'God Bless the USA' guy, and Little Richard and James Brown playing AS A TEAM, as though they share a brain. So, here's about two minutes of me on Wheel Of Fortune."

Then Al shows the first minute and a half of this clip. Go watch the first minute and a half of that clip right now to simulate the full experience and don't read the next paragraph until you do.

Done yet? Okay. So as soon as James Brown says "T," Al (on stage) YELLS at the screen at the top of his lungs, "I JUST GUESSED 'T' YOU IDIOT! ALL WE KNOW AT THIS POINT IS THAT THERE IS NO 'T'!"

So then Al gives us the FULL James Brown story - "So me and Lee Greenwood, silly us, get to rehearsal on time. We rehearse, everything goes fine, and then an hour later James Brown shows up with his entourage of twenty people. I mean, he was Diddy before Diddy was Diddy. I don't know why they all flew to Florida with him just for a game show, maybe they're on his payroll, I don't know. So me and Lee are watching on a monitor in the green room while the producer is calmly, patiently, explaining all the rules of Wheel of Fortune to James Brown. I thought the producer would have a coronary any minute, because apparently, James Brown wasn't familiar with Wheel of Fortune. He didn't understand the rules, I guess he never played 'Hangman' as a kid."

Then Al went into a verbatim impression of James Brown in rehearsal - he'd spin the wheel, and then "umm" and "uhhhh..." and "hmmm" for literally two or three minutes each time. "Pick a letter, right? Hmmm....hmmmm....hrmmmmm...I'll pick a....hmmm....hmmmm....pick a letter, right?" Al went on for about two whole minutes on just this, and the audience went nuts. Finally, Al says (still as James Brown) "Okay, I'll pick a.....I'll pick an 'A'! The producer says, 'Mr. Brown, when you spin the wheel, you have to pick a consonant.' 'Oh, okay - Africa!'" Al buries his face in his hand in embarrassment.

Then Al proceeds to his second clip. "Now, I'm sure I have a pristine, high-quality copy of this next show somewhere in a climate-controlled storage facility in Glendale, but for now, I had to grab it off YouTube, which is why it looks like an alien transmission. This clip comes from 1984, back when the surface of the Earth was covered in molten lava. That was the year I really broke out, when 'Eat It' became a big hit, and I spent two weeks doing press in Japan. And while in Japan, I masturbated into my hotel bath towels, thank you" - Al's words, not mine - "...and I appeared on this show. Now, I had a translator with me, but I quickly found that whenever I tried to say something funny or strange through the translator, it never got a big laugh. People just looked at me like they were concerned for my health. The only stuff I did that got big laughs anywhere in Japan was BROAD, PHYSICAL SLAPSTICK, so keep that in mind when you watch this. I was told that this show was the 'Saturday Night Live' of Japan. I've appeared on three different international SNL equivalents - in Japan, in Italy and in Belgium. Anyway, as you'll see, I perform 'Eat It' mostly in English with a little Japanese thrown in. Be sure to watch for the dancing Sumo wrestlers, and watch for the big fat guy - who I was told was the John Belushi of Japan - who for some reason drinks a glass of water with a live goldfish in it and then goes into an epileptic seizure. OH and one more thing - the song suddenly STOPS midway through, as a man in a giant lobster costume comes on stage and DEMANDS THAT I EAT HIM."

The next clip, naturally, was this one. Al made a couple comments as the video played - when the fat guy showed up, Al said "John Belushi, ladies and gentlemen! John Belushi!" When Al fell down he said "That's gotta hurt - see, that was me reaching across cultural barriers." He pointed out that you couldn't see it, but there was in fact a live goldfish in the glass of water the fat guy swallowed. And at one point, Al blurted out "You know the movie 'Lost In Translation'? I LIVED 'Lost In Translation'!" I also noticed a distinct wave of sincere appreciation surging through the audience when Al put on the red "Beat It" jacket, an image that seemed newly powerful following the recent tragic events, ridiculous though the clip itself was.

Anyway, after the guy in the lobster suit entered, Al said "After that it got weird, so I'll cut it off it there." The crowd goes NUTS with applause, and the other guests are in awe of just how insane - and insanely awesome - those clips are. Someone, I forget who, asked if Al had even been involved in the Japanese show's rehearsals, since he has such a genuinely surprised look on his face the whole time. Al says "I was just told to perform 'Eat It' - they had written the lyrics on cue cards in English and phonetic Japanese. They didn't tell me what would happen around me." Chris Hardwick asks, "So when were you raped by tentacles?" Al: "That was the part I cut."

Then it was Chris' turn, and Chris starts going "WOW! How the f**k do I follow THAT? I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it, a Japanese game show with the lobster costume, holy..." Chris spent at least a good minute trying to make sense of it all, before proceeding to his own horrible sitcom pilot.

That was pretty much it - if I remember any more details I'll add them!
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Post by algonacchick »

Thank you, FredHuggins! I was laughing while reading that, so I can only imagine how much more I would have laughed had I been there. I sincerely hope someone did record this, because it sounds hilarious!
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Post by TMBJon »

Upright Citizens Brigade theater is a place I go a lot. Sorry I missed this.
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Post by Grom »

FredHuggins, you are a fantastic writer. Thanks for the summary!
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Post by Orthography Enthusiast »

Thanks for the summary. HIGHLY entertaining. I guess we can add one more thing to the list of Things Al Is Good At That He Doesn't Think He's Good At.
"Weird Al" has a charisma that's all his own. The awkward, the misshapen, the socially inept flock to his banner.
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