Happy 20th (kind of) birthday, Sub Pop! Thank you for all the music and the Northwest identity and stuff. But especially thank you for including comedy albums and their makers on your roster. And bringing them to Seattle for the festivities.July 11
Friday night was the Sub Pop comedy show at the Moore, hosted by Kristen Schaal (the Fan Base from FotC) and featuring Todd Barry, Eugene Mirman, Patton Oswalt and David Cross. My favorites were of course Eugene and Patton, because I'm not the biggest Todd Barry fan (though I wouldn't consider myself an anti-fan) and I tend to like David Cross better when he's performing other people's material ("Excuse me...do these effectively hide my thunder?"). Plus, Cross had a little bit of an off night, involving leaving notes backstage and swallowing some parts of his punchlines.
One of my favorite jokes of the evening was Eugene Mirman's bit about stereotyping based on assumptions that no one has ever made. For example, he told the story that once he was in a small, crowded elevator, and to break the silence, another passenger made the comment, "I bet they don't make elevators this small in Russia!" Which, Eugene pointed out to us, is NOT one of society's previously agreed-upon stereotypes. It didn't make sense, just like it wouldn't make any sense if someone said, "I went out with this Jewish girl, and man, she was rude as a wolfcat! Which is an animal I just made up. And decided was rude."
Patton was priceless and original as always, but one of his many gems was his monologue about how most presidents have off moments because they work a lot and are struggling with stress and problems of their own, but that doesn't quite account for our current Dear Leader's communication problems. Though he is reputed to take care of himself very well, W. still gets away with amazing missteps. So Patton wants to know "why, when the man gets ten hours of sleep, works out for three hours, and has a big cup of coffee, he can still get up in front of people and say idiotic things like [pointing to his legs and then his head] 'PANTS ARE HATS!'"
I know quoting stand-up from memory in a blog is a poor substitute for the actual experience, and the above jokes are pretty dependent on the delivery...but if you've ever seen Eugene or Patton do stand-up, then you can imagine they really slayed.
What's that? You haven't? Well, please enjoy this slightly weird explanation of Canada from Eugene Mirman. Who is not Canadian. Nor a wolfcat.
July 12
Saturday was Day 1 of the music festival for Sub Pop, which I celebrated by sitting on the Marymoor lawn eating Luna bars, doing crossword puzzles, napping, and generally enjoying summer with Sara, Patty, and Jacqui. Highlights for me included the Helio Sequence, Fleet Foxes, Iron & Wine, and (especially) several of my husbands, Bret and Jemaine--you may know them as Flight of the Conchords. I got up out of my chair and clawed my way into the sweaty crowd for them, of course. Lots of fun: their banter was witty, they seemed genuinely surprised when someone threw a pair of boxers at them (Jemaine: "They're...warm. And they appear to have a snowboarding motif. But I'm not going to investigate that very closely."), and--perhaps most importantly--they don't do note-for-note performances of their songs. Live, FotC keep some of the funny bits, they drop some, they add some: all marks of good comedians (and musicians, actually) that can handle the long haul without going stir-crazy.
FotC played some new material, including one song in which Jemaine laments all the girlfriends that have left him and the different ways they did it (smoothly folding in a reference to '50 Ways to Leave Your Lover'), and Bret sings the part of the choir of Jemaine's pissed-off ex-girlfriends. During "The Boom King," the gentlemen got up and did a choreographed booty-shaking dance, which made all of the ladies scream, myself included. Imagine, if you will, that the Capitol Hill Block Party had a baby with Beatlemania. That is what being at a Flight of the Conchords show is like.
As we were leaving the comedy show on Friday, Sub Pop folks were handing out free compilation CDs. There are some excellent tracks on it from the likes of Sera Cahoone, Blitzen Trapper, Grand Archives and other Sub Pop darlings...but my favorite is perhaps FotC's "Bret, You Got It Going On." I'll leave you with the clip from that episode.
Indeed you do, Bret. Indeed you do.
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3 comments:
those weren't sub pop folks, those were lowly moore ushers. sub pop employees would never soil themselves with handing out goodies to the public. that's why they have interns.
Comedy night was great, though it's true that David Cross had some issues. Though that did allow for Patton to come back out and tell us about the "Mega Leg" coming soon to a KFC near you, so that was a plus. Also I loved Todd Barry's bit about the Forrest Gump themed Bubba Gump shrimp restaurant, because there is one in the Mall of America that I could never bring myself to go into despite being rather curious about just what was going on in there.
Keep up the good work.
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