I am using some of my long weekend to catch up on things I have not had time to do, such as tell ya'll ALL the gory details of the Flight of the Conchords concert. Enjoy!

Last weekend I got to sit on the 2nd row of the Flight of the Conchords concert at Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City (see previous post for pictures, some I am reposting here for good measure). This show sold out in 9 (nine) minutes and tickets were reselling for up to $200 each on craiglist, so I was VERY geeked that I got my perfect seat for a mere $35.

Arj Barker, a standup comedian who plays Dave on the HBO FotC series, was the opening act. He was funny, although a bit screechy and angry at a couple points. It is at this juncture that the six annoying fangirl chicks sitting directly in front of me come into the story. For Arj's part of the show, all six girls wore different colored bandanas on their heads like Dave does in the TV show, which was all fine and good, but they were very loud and kept holding up homemade signs. They continued this behavior and actually got worse during the main show, even putting two of those battery-powered dancing flowers on the stage for Bret and Jemaine. Ugh, STFU already stupid girls. Ok, moving on...

Here is the setlist for FoTC as far as I remember it, but I'm sure I'm missing a couple. It is approximately in show order, but the middle order could be shuffled a bit:

Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor

Hurt Feelings Rap

Jenny

I'm Not Crying

Humans are Dead

Carol Brown

Stana

Business Time

Beautiful Girl

Muther'uckas

Bus Driver's Song

We're Both In Love With A Sexy Lady

Sugalumps

Encore

Hiphopapotomus vs Rhymnoserous

Albi the Racist Dragon

Bowie

Bret and Jemaine started the show off in robot suits doing a techno version of Too Many Dicks On The Dancefloor (which I had not heard before and thought was frickin hilarious). They then settled down into their usual setup of two chairs and two acoustic guitars, with Nigel on cello (aka "the entire New Zealand Symphony Orchestra") joining them after a couple songs. Bret switched to keyboards and drums a few times, both of which he was suprisingly very good at (I had no idea he played so many instruments, but apparently both of them do.)

I was thrilled when they did Jenny, a personal favorite of mine, but was slightly disappointed they did not do "If You're Into It", my other favorite.

At one point during Business Time, the monitors let out an ear piercing screech, interrupting Jemaine's sensual lyrics. However he did not miss a beat by crooning "Honey, there's a pteradactyl in our room."

A funny running joke they had going throughout the first half of the show involved their lighting guy (Mark). With my brother being a lighting guru and most of my family having experience as theater technicians, I thought the joke was perfect. It went like this: at the beginning of each song, Bret or Jemaine would request various lighting effects to match the song they were about

to play. Each request got progressively more ridiculous: from "this song is sad...make it look like we are inside of a teardrop" (the blue effect seen the pic above); all the way to "this is one of our futuristic songs...can you give us some lights from the future (lighting design one comes up)...no, those won't work, more futuristic (lighting design two comes up)...no, those won't work either...perhaps lights that have not been invented yet?" It was at this point that all the lights in the entire place turned off and the stage was bathed in darkness. A few seconds later, a meek sounding Bret said something like "Mark?.....Mark, we're sorry...." BA DUM CHING. The lights came back on and no more lighting requests were made for the rest of the show.

They also performed a new song that has not been released yet, called Stana. Done in the style of The Devil Went Down To Georgia with hints of Johnny Cash, it told the story of a man named Stana ("like the word Satan with the letters swapped around a bit") who breaks all laws ("even tax law...he would burn the form and not even hand it in. Pointless but illegal! He breaks all natural laws, like the law of gravity...he'd just float off and say 'Fuck you, gravity'.....He would occupy the same space as another solid object, he didn't give a shit! He was beyond reproach.")
Of course, the dorky science humor made me crack up and still remains, IMO, the best lines of the entire show. You can find a live performance of Stana here.

Now to Sugalumps. Sugalumps is a new song from this past season (see clip from TV show here) that honestly made me snort whatever I was drinking out my nose the first time I saw it because I was laughing so hard. For this show, they did a fabulous slow acoustic version immediatly following the song We're Both In Love With A Sexy Lady. Check out this excellent video from a previous performance that was essentially the exact same performance they did in SLC (except I was not directly in front of Jemaine's sugalumps like this girl, damnit!) I did manage to take a few pics in between laughing my ass off.

This was the end of the regular set. They came back out for the encore and asked "Does anyone have any requests?" I think the audience was completely taken aback by that question (I know I was), since there was about a second of dead silence before everyone started yelling out song titles. (I have never been to a concert where the performer asks that, ever.) I don't remember exactly which songs they did, but I know they ended with Bowie.

After the show, I decided to check out the alley behind the Hall for any sign of the band. Low and behold, there was their tour bus, 4 or 5 random fans and about 10 security guys. I hung out for a bit until Jemaine came out (I didn't see Bret) and managed to get my pic with him before those annoying-as-all-hell girls from the front row came around the corner and started shrieking. I noticed that he has quite a large nose and is in very good shape. *sigh* I was twitterpated for the next two days.

This concert was fabulous. I admit that my perfect seat definitely added to the experience, but they would still be funny from the nosebleeds. Bret and Jemaine are very talented musicians and comedians and if you have the chance to see them live, I highly recommend you go.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Row 2 Seat 17, smack in the middle

Funky lighting

Bret

Jermaine

Rainbow lighting at the end of Albi

Me and Jermaine (I was just a bit twitterpated by the dorky Kiwi)

In case you don't know who FOTC are, here is their performance of "Jenny" on HBO's One Night Stand:

Last night was the ACLU of Utah's annual fundraiser dinner with Bill from X96 Radio From Hell acting as the emcee and Rachel Maddow as keynote speaker. So exciting! We finally got Rachel to visit Utah AND she brought her partner Susan for the weekend.

(A short disclaimer: No, I did not know the ACLU was suing my company until after I had bought my ticket to the dinner. I am supposed to refer all queries to our Director of Communications so don't ask me, I'm tired of talking about it.)

I was at the Drinking Liberally SLC table, a fabulous bunch of people I met during the 2008 election. This picture is a horrible picture of the view of Rachel speaking from our table (usually my Berry takes really good pics but I think the dark of the room threw it for a loop.) A couple of us went booking it up to Rachel's table right after the dinner ended, but she had already bailed! Bah. Sneaky. Her talk was recorded, hopefully it will end up on Youtube or something so I can post it because it was very entertaining and enjoyable.

These guys have been camped outside my work for the last week and a half. This company is well known in the SLC area, as they have protested pretty much every company within a 50 mile radius for "labor disputes". These disputes are always three or four degrees removed from the actual company named on the banner, but the smaller companies do not have the name recognition of the larger company, so they lump it all under one name. Usually if you ask these professional protestors what they are protesting, they will A. not speak English, B. not have any idea WHAT they are protesting and C. just hand you a flyer.

So, apparently our story is that the construction company that is building our new building contracted with a bunch of subcontractors for stuff like drywall, electrical wiring, etc and one of those drywall subcontractors sub-contracted out their work to somebody else who is apparently not paying their employees health benefits. Did you get all that? Oh, and lets not forget to mention that they are NOWHERE NEAR the drywalling stage of construction yet. In fact, they only finished pouring the foundation last week, so these guys can bugger off.

Because I'm too busy to talk about anything other than sequencing and regression tests.