Explosivo
Just got back from seeing Tenacious D, Jimmy Eat World, and Weezer, down at the Long Beach Arena.
Not a bad place for a concert, but not the best, either.
We got there at 7:00, despite the best efforts of my friend to kill us while we were driving down there…staked out our spot on the floor, and waited…surprisingly, the show started on time, at 7:30. Jimmy Eat World went on, and played everything you’d expect, and played it pretty well, but I don’t think they’re currently suited for an arena show. I think I’d really enjoy them at The Glass House, or The Galaxy theatre, or someplace like that…They played for about 25 minutes, and then there was a break…at about 8:15, Tenacious D took the stage. JB and KG, alone, beneath a mighty banner of the devil…very, very cool. They rocked the hell outta the place, and were simply amazing. Jack Black is a tremendous showman. The crowd was, annoyingly, mostly kids. I’d put the average age at about 14. So JB takes the stage, and he says, “I notice that there’s a lot of kids in the audience! Lots of 13 year olds…couldn’t get into Harry Potter, so ya came out to see the D! Well, I’m gonna keep the show clean for you tonight. You’re only going to hear 25 ‘shits’, 81 ‘bitches’, 324 ‘fucks’ and one ‘cocksucker’. Because we care about keepin’ it clean for you.”
Hilarious.
They played everything I wanted to hear, except for “Kielbasa” and “Dio”, but they said that they had to cut it short for Weezer.
Weezer was pretty good…I can tell that they’re sick of touring, though, and they didn’t play “The World Has Turned”…but they did play some stuff from Pinkerton, which was rad.
Really lame stuff that happened:
*When we were watching the D, these two girls came and stood *way* to close to us, and every time JB would say anything, they would shout something back, like they thought we were on the Satellite of Love, or something…but the thing is, they were the exact opposite of funny. They were so lame and unfunny, that they actually sucked out some of my comedy, just by their mere presence, and I’m going to be forced to replenish my funny before tomorrow’s Liquid Radio Players show…otherwise I could quite possibly suck.
*Also during the D, the kids standing right next to us decided that they really needed to smoke a huge joint. Now, I don’t use the drugs, but I also think that a lot of the laws we have against them are stupid…but there are few things in the world that I hate more than the smell of weed, and I know that going to a concert and expecting it to be weed-free is like going to a tractor pull and expecting it to be mullet-free…but that didn’t make it any less annoying. If you’re gonna burn one, don’t do it by me, dude.
Really cool things that happened:
*We were wating in a HUGE line to get into the arena, and it sort of doubled back on itself, at the edge of the building…so Jeremy and I are about to make the turn, and head back towards where we started, and Jeremy tells me to wait…and we did, and the line moved back past us, and we walked straight across, thereby making the line shorter. (I don’t know if that makes sense, but Jer will probably read this before the weekend is out, and he’ll know what it means, and when we play softball on Sunday we’ll talk about how cool and funny that was. so there.)
*Between Tenacious D and Weezer, we walked over to the beer area place, because it was the only place that was teenager-free, and my friend wanted a beer (duh). While we were there, I saw my friend John, who plays guitar for Eve6. I told John that Keith and I are putting together a special Holiday show sometime soon, and I asked him if Eve6 would come and play on our show, and be guests, and he totally said that they’d do it. So I’m really excited about that. Those guys are all really cool, and we’ll have fun. Funtimes. Yeah.
*When the show was over, we were walking out to the van, and we walked past where the tour busses were, and we saw Jack Black and KG standing outside, just chillin’ with some people. We shot them the metal fist and threw them “the goat”, and JB totally threw it back!! During the show, they shoot off some of those stomp rocket things, that are like Nerf arrows. My friend’s girlfriend caught 2 of them, and we waved them at JB and KG. JB looks surprised that we got 2 rockets, and we told my friend’s girlfriend to go get them signed, because that’d be cool…so she asked them to coem sign them, and they did! They were so fucking cool! I can’t believe how nice, and normal, and grateful they were. Unfortunately, we drew a small crowd, and JB and KG ended up signing stuff for close to 30 minutes (I know because we stood there, waiting for another of our friends to come back to the van), and they were cool, and friendly, and accessible the whole time. I was very impressed. Jeremy got them to sign his “Cleveland Steamer” sweatshirt. Tenacious D gets 50 billion cool points.
I also realized that I’m 1 degree of Jack Black, which makes me 1 degree of Tenacious D.
ROCK.
