I don’t know exactly when I first heard Weird Al. It was probably when I was in middle school, and I have vague memories of seeing his music videos on MTV or VH1 for Eat It, and some of his other parody songs. I have specific memories of listening to his albums in my friends basement, and then later on seeing the music video for “The Saga Begins” and loving it because I was obsessed with the song “American Pie” AND Star Wars. After college, a good friend of mine used to make me mixed CDs, and every once in a while, I’d get one with a Weird AL song on it, but the ones he chose were the original songs that Al wrote, and I wasn’t quite as familiar with them. They were still funny, but just more strange (one might say…weird?) than the rest of Al’s oeuvre. So I have a lot of feelings about Weird Al, and they are mostly nostalgic.
So back in October when it was announced that Weird Al was going on tour, and would be doing a night at the Strathmore in Bethesda, I jumped on it. I texted the Boy and said, “Should we do this? We’ll have a tiny baby!!!”, and the reason I know we are meant to be together is because he said, “It’s Weird Al, we’ll figure it out.” And we did. I got to see Weird Al Yankovic perform live, and it was awesome and funny, and walking into the venue I looked around at the people there and thought, “Yes – these are my people”. In fact, I know they are/were my people, because I saw one friend who I knew in advance would be there, and ran into another friend and his wife (Hello B and M!) who we didn’t know would be there, but it makes perfect sense would be there. Mainly because B is the one who made the mix CDs.
The show was mostly the obscure originals that Al put on his CDs – hence the “vanity tour” label you see above. But mainly due to having been familiar with some of these, I felt very comfortable and like I knew what to expect. Sure, there were some I hadn’t been as familiar with, but it’s Weird Al, and it was still very funny. This felt like the same kind of experience I had with the Boy when we saw The School for Lies last year, in that I kept turning to look at him, making sure that he was laughing at all the same things I found amazingly hilarious, and he was. So that was cool. And apparently the encore included “The Saga Begins”, which makes me a little sad because we missed it (see below). But the rest of the show was so funny, and so niche, that it made me really happy that we decided to actually go.
But the show was also a challenge for me as a new mom, and I swear, not every post is going to be about being a new mom, but this particular outing was a challenge for a few reasons. It was the first time I went out after Baby B was born. I had to figure out how to pump in the car. You should have seen us driving home, with the Boy at the wheel of my car, and me, boobs out in the passenger seat, trying to get the pump started in the dark so that I wouldn’t have rock-hard, engorged boobs, while also trying not to blind the boy with the flashlight on my phone. It was starting to snow, and both of us were super tired from having a newborn. The fact that we made it home in one piece, and not flipped over on the side of the road, me topless holding plastic shields and cups to my breasts while a small appliance sucked milk out of me is a small miracle.
Anyways – adventures in travel pumping aside, Weird Al is a great performer. This was a very different show than what I hear he normally does with all the parodies, but he is just great, period. So if you have the chance to see him, I would highly recommend it. And if you’re a new mom planning on going to his show, this is the car adapter for the breast pump that I used.
Details: Weird Al’s Ridiculously Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity Tour through mid-June.