Road Trip to see Conan

Alright, what with my recent post about how fucking broke TH and I have been, you’re probably wondering how we can afford to go see Conan and do all these wine tasting excursions and shit – I’ll tell you: state tax refund. The Federal one is going partially toward credit card debt, partially toward savings, and partially toward an as-yet-undecided trip for my big 3-0 this summer. But the State one, we blew. It was awesome.
TH loves him some Conan O’Brien, and when we got the news about the tax refunds (i.e. the fact that we were getting some), his first request was to buy tickets to see Conan in Seattle. The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour actually opened in Eugene, much closer to us, but it was on a Monday and we wouldn’t have been able to make it from work and school in time. So the Sunday Seattle show it was.

We didn’t have plans other than that, so when we got to Seattle several hours ahead of the show, we just wandered and then headed to a nearby McMenamin’s for dinner (shoot, I should have taken Mrs P to a McMenamin’s! Oh well – StarlitViolets, it’s up to you), then over to the show, where we got some awesome t-shirts!

front

back

our matching shirts :)

the front of both shirts

This is the back of the men's shirt. The women's shirt has nothing on the back. WTF is up with that???

The opener was Reggie Watts, and he was so fucking hilarious – he did these freestyle, layered track songs, where he would lay down a beatbox beat on some sort of little recording device, then loop it, then lay down more layers and then sing over the top of the whole thing, it was just amazing and so so funny. His opening joke was “Why people so crazy?” He was really funny and talented. I’m still singing the “Fuck Shit Stack” song… (“You take some fuck, then some shit, then some fuck, and some shit, you’ve got a fuck shit stack, a fuck shit stack…”) Here's n example of what he does...

Transition (excerpt) from Reggie Watts on Vimeo.

Then: Conan. Hooray! I guess he’s never done stand-up before, so that was exciting, and he brought along Andy Richter, as well as the Masturbating Bear (who may or may not be “intellectual property” of a certain network, so they transformed him into the Self-Pleasuring Panda), Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (via satellite), and the Walker Texas Ranger lever (now the Chuck Norris Rural Marshal Handle), which I could have watched for hours. If you’re not familiar with this last one (I wasn’t, either, Conan’s always on past my bedtime), basically he just plays small clips from “Walker, Texas Ranger” and laughs about them.

The show was on his actual birthday, so they encouraged everyone to tweet with a hashtag of #cocobday, which I totally did, of course… or tried to, anyway. My phone is not so smart. Then, the introduction of a super-secret musical guest, who turned out to be none other than Dave Matthews. TH is a HUGE DMB fan, so we were both shocked and he was elated. Words can’t describe the joy on my husband’s face. It was amazing – he did an awesome rendition of Bartender, and then participated in some Chuck Norris Rural Marshal Handle pulling, during which a clip of Haley Joel Osment played wherein the kid said, “Walker told me I have AIDS.” And Dave deadpanned, “Hey, man, that’s not funny. I wanted to play, but I didn’t think it was going to be devastating. Fuck you, pal.” Awesome. Conan joked that the next day the Seattle Times would read: “Dave Matthews to Conan: Fuck You, Pal.” LOL

Here is a clip from someone with terrible seats (at least as far as the video screen was concerned):

The show was indescribable – stand-up, singing, lots of band numbers, the giant inflatable bat from Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell tour, huge laughs, and an overall good time. It was worth it to be exhausted on Monday! We drove home right after (well, TH drove home while I dozed – he’s so nice to me) and got back at almost 2am. Totally worth it.

One of these "woo"ers is me, and one is TH...