I’m so tired (so tired that I initially typed “gired”). Last night Ryan and I attended the Funny or Die Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival. The headliners were Dave Chappelle and The Flight of the Conchords, but there were LOTS of other stand-up comics there - Jeff Ross, Dimitri Martin, Al Madrigal and Kristen Schaal (to name a few). BUT. There was also a little festival area where they sold food and drink (obvs), concert merch and then…other strange things. They had boring vendors like Dish Nation that gave away quite a bit of swag AAAAANNNNNDDDDD had a free photo booth:
Let me break this down for you. If you can’t tell from my “glistening” (read: sweaty) face, that photo booth tent was like a sweat lodge. I was half expecting to see my spirit animal walk by. You had to pick your favorite DJ (which I’m assuming were made up, but I’m not a big DJ groupie) which was apparently rammed into the last picture making it HILARIOUSer. Of course, we were all over the entire thing. We love photo booths. But after we picked our free bits of swag (Dish Nation t-shirts), the girl said she thought we were so cute that she wanted to give us free VIP lounge tickets. At first I was all “I’m getting played…I’m getting played” (that was my inside voice, I didn’t actually say that), but she said that they had a few tickets to give out and because we were nice and so fun, that she wanted us to have two of them. GAH! Of course, we had no idea what a VIP lounge would entail, but WHATEVAH! After we left, I was laughing because this kinda stuff happens to Ryan and I sometimes. We somehow got into the VIP line at a Vegas nightclub and were ushered in the door while hundreds of people were waiting in, what I now refer to as, the riff-raff line. I asked Ryan what he thought it was about us that made her give us these passes - was it just that we were being goofy and having a good time? He said, and I’m not making this up, yes. AND the fact that we’re such an attractive couple. HA! I told him to look around. We were in Orange County. We look like the hired help compared to most of the people in Orange County. So then he told me to point out people who I thought were better looking than we were. When I pointed out a couple a millisecond later, he said “YOU THINK THAT GUY IS MORE ATTRACTIVE THAN I AM? Douchey McBlueShirt???!!!” HA! I don’t know why on earth I would have ever thought it was a good idea to point out a “good-looking” guy to him. Hilarious.
Some of the other vendors there had weird stuff like electronic cigarettes and a company who sold liquid weed. Or something like that. Being California, half of the people probably had their medical marijuana card out and ready to cash in. The table was so packed that I couldn’t really see exactly what the stuff was. Of course, it didn’t really matter because you were so surrounded by weed in the air anyway. Which reminds of a conversation I had the other day:
Me: Man! It stinks like a skunk in here! What do you think happened?
Ryan: Babe…it’s weed. One of the neighbors is smoking obviously.
Me: Ohhhhhhhhh. (I’m so old now).
There was also a guy who was from some curiosities shop. Or he owned a house of curiosities (or something like that). He brought five of his “treasures” which you could stroll past and peruse. Of course, it was in another blasted tent, so we blew in and out of there in 2 minutes. But not before noticing a strange resemblance between myself and one of the exhibits:
Hello Uncle Thaddeus! Ryan said the stifling heat was worth that find.
Now. The concert itself. Apparently, you were not allowed to even use your cell phone. Not for pictures, texting, tweeting, zippo. I don’t know if that was because they didn’t want the show to be ruined for everyone else or if it was because Dave Chappelle is a paranoid freak. Regardless, I didn’t realize the severity of the ”crime” when I taped this:
Whoops. But right before Dave Chappelle came out, they made an announcement reminding us of the whole cell phone thing and then reminded us not to heckle him at all. OK. I’m not sure if you heard, but Dave Chappelle was heckled at the Hartford, CT show and walked off the stage after 20 minutes to the sound of booing from the entire audience. Apparently, people were being jerks and yelling out things like “DO RICK JAMES!” or whatever and he was having none of it. I get that. Just let me do what I’m going to do and zip your trap. What bugged me a little about the show I was at was the fact that he kept bringing up the whole ordeal. And, of course, there was some raving idiot in the front row who he said was “heckling” him, but I think he was just shouting out stupid things like “I’M FROM CLEVELAND!” Is that heckling? I thought heckling was saying mean things. Is heckling just talking to the performer? Regardless, it was rude. But the point is, the entire time I was extremely nervous he was going to just walk off. It didn’t seem like he had too much planned material. Unless he just worked the whole Hartford incident into his pre-existing material. Honestly, he just seemed a little bitter. He had funny, funny moments, but…it just felt like he didn’t really want to be there. It was sad to me that I liked some of the other comics much better. I mean, Kristen Schaal danced to Flashdance in a leotard. And she was the opener.
Oh, and the VIP lounge was actually pretty cool - free drinks man! Of course, most of the other people in there were too cool for school. Apparently being an “extremely good-looking couple” didn’t minimize our non-cool factor. BUT, we did see a lot of the comedians back there. I wanted to say something to Kristen Schaal so badly, but I cooled my jets. I mean, I don’t want to be one of “those” people. Right? Everyone hates “those” people.
Okay. Time to shut my office door and take a snooze. I’m too old to stay out until 2 a.m. on a school night.
