Yesterday L and I went to the state fair and saw Weird Al Yankovic in concert. It was awesome. And as per a fellow who literally goes by "weird," it was one of the most unusual concert experiences I've ever had, right up there with Buddy Guy dropping F-bombs all over the place. It was an hour and a half of very busy show! Weird Al isn't much for stage banter--pretty much said a hi and bye to Sacramento--but then again, he's too busy singing and changing costumes. There were a lot of costumes. I haven't been to a Lady Gaga show, but I'd imagine that the costume changes are only slightly less than one of her shows. Mostly he just switches jackets a lot, but towards the end they were getting elaborate. While he's off changing costumes, he's airing videos, both for his songs, for other people's songs (for the opening Polka Face number), and clips from other TV shows that mentioned him. This was my favorite video of the night. Weird Al on the Titanic. He also aired several videos of "interviews" between himself and Eminem, Robert Pattinson, Megan Fox, and Jeff Bridges.

Costumes of the night included: Kurt Cobain (playing facing away from the stage frequently) for "Smells Like Nirvana," wearing a black leather hat and fedora and banging a tambourine for the "Charles Nelson Reilly" number, wearing a red leaf jacket for "Canadian Idiot," Michael Jackson twice, once in a fat suit!*, a fluffy peacock suit for "Perform This Way" that I kind of want now (note that the band dressed up as a skeleton, a head of cheese, and a guy in a gold jacket for this number), rolling out on a Segway for like the first minute of "White 'N Nerdy", and the finale was all Star Wars, with Al as Obi-Wan with a bunch of stormtroopers (dancing with each other at one point), Darth Vader, and even R2D2 twirling in the corner. They did "The Saga Begins" and "Yoda," and at one point he just started making....I don't even know what kind of noises he was making, but that had to be an interesting time for the sign language interpreter.** Oh yeah, and while he was in the fat suit, he punches out a skinny Santa.

* I'd like to point out a quote from the first videos link about one of his costumes, the Michael Jackson fat suit: "Al's makeup took three hours to apply every day and his fat suit weighed 40 pounds, although he's managed to simplify the process down to a minute long costume change for his live performances." DAMN, DUDE. I mean, even his HEAD has the fat neck attached on stage!

** The sign language interpreter for this one was VERY IMPRESSIVE given what she was having to do. It was really funny in places watching her sign certain things. Beats me what the heck she was doing during the nonsense bits.

Things that I haven't mentioned yet:
(a) the drum solo--a one note solo.
(b) This video with Oscar-winning Mary Steenbergen, Gary Cole, and Patton Oswalt, featuring Weird Al's affair with Madonna.
(c) There's a keytar. I don't think he really played it much (if at all), but there is one. Mostly he actually played the harmonica.
(d) During the sing-along bit in "Yoda," at one point he yelled out, "Just the bedwetters!" Then he nodded sagely at the silence that ensued...eventually.
(e) Oh yeah, and during the gargling in "Smells Like Nirvana," he spit out the water on the audience.

Other songs done that I haven't mentioned: Money For Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies, Another Tattoo, I Bought On eBay, I Want A New Duck (who doesn't?), Spam, My Bologna, Lasagna, Amish Paradise (with requisite outfit), Craigslist (while wearing leather pants), Rye or the Kaiser, Ode to a Superhero.

It was an awesome night.

In other news, L told me her schedule for the next month. She's cramming in three CC classes plus volunteering, PLUS finishing up her current job and writing papers and preparing for yet another conference, plus doing side work for someone else, plus selling me a car, plus packing up and moving, plus she wants to finish up her gem class in the Bay Area on Saturday mornings, plus her dad wants her to make some jewelry before she goes and loses access to a place to do jewelry work.... Dear god, I felt bad on her behalf hearing all of that that she needs to cram in. Moving really does suck everything out of you--which is why I changed volunteering nights this quarter so at least we have a reason to hang out in between all of that. And at some point I need to accompany her to the mechanic. Meanwhile, I think I have to be in the Bay Area three out of the remaining four weekends... and eventually drive her to SF the day before she flies out.

Hoo boy.

I have also finally submitted a request for an auto insurance claim today, so good for me. I was taken aback at the "estimate how many miles you're going to drive" bit (what? how should I know?), but eventually just checked how many miles it takes to drive to Sacramento and took that number times 52 weeks--assuming I wanted to go that far away every weekend, but if you have a car, the point of it is to go where public transport won't take you--and how many miles it would take to drive to my mom's and took that number times 12 times for once a month...that came out to about 3500 miles a year, so I put down 4000 and hoped for that to uh, work. Actually, that estimate came out with a lot better financials then the last time I got an insurance estimate (maybe it helps that I'm older...or that was checking it on a specific VIN number), so that's less terrible, eh? We'll see on that one, I guess.

Oh, and in other random news, my mom now wants to go to Hawaii in December and perhaps actually like, use her time share. We'll see how THAT goes...but I got the clear to be off work for it if necessary, so we'll see.

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