Tim and Eric Awesome Tour, Great Job! Chrimbus Spectacular 2010

I recently saw the “Tim and Eric Awesome Tour, Great Job! Chrimbus Spectacular 2010” at the Wilbur Theater in Boston. Let me tell you, it was a success.

I've loved Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! for quite a while and feel a strong kinship with their kind of humor: off-beat / dark / weird / inspired by David Lynch films / makes you say “what?” every time. When I first saw the ad for the live show in the newspaper, I was absurdly pumped and cut it out right away so that I wouldn't forget to get a ticket. Then as the day got closer, I began to have my doubts and kept wondering “can Tim and Eric really pull off a live show?” I remember talking to a friend about it a couple weeks before the show and him saying, “wow...that's going to be a mess”. It was a legitimate concern: could two comedians who have mastered the detailed pre-taped short, who's comedy relies on break-neck speed editing and visual effects, also entertain a live crowd in person?

The answer is: duh. More than being good with video or editing software, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are funny. And their material translates live. The live show was well paced, varied and satisfying. What really made it work is how the live skits blended seamlessly into and out of the taped content.

The show sold out – apparently, Boston was one of the first city's to sell out on the tour - and the crowd was really into it, shouting out lines and singing along to the music when Tim and Eric later performed as their band, Pusswhip Banggang. There were pre-taped video bits that had never before been aired – shorts with Zach Galifianakis, John C. Reilly as "Steve Brule," and a whole stable of other Tim and Eric regulars who's names I'd cite if I had any idea who they were. There was one of the recurring “Cinco” commercials and also a “vote with your applause” bit where the audience got to cheer and yell for their favorite of three classic Tim and Eric sketches (the Spaget sketch won).

Neil Hamburger opened with a 15-20 minute set of bizarre celebrity news quips that were all pretty distasteful and hilarious, as is his schtick. Tim and Eric's set started with an intro taped bit where Tim and Eric regular, David Liebe Hart (who always has a blue tooth in his ear and is perhaps best known for his bits where he sings with various horrifying puppets) talked to the crowd and got us ready for what was about to happen. This intro was fast, chaotic and very energetic. At one point, Hart said “if you have to pee...go in your pants...you don't want to miss a second of this”. For the online advertising during the runup to the show, there was a trailer with a running gag that the “Wharf” character from Star Trek (the character with the huge, curved ridges in his forehead) was going to be featured. This was, of course, not true.



During the live show taped intro, there was a line: “the appearance by Wharf has been canceled, but WHO FUCKING CARES!” which got a lot of laughs. This running Wharf gag reminded me of a Tim and Eric episode I'd seen a while back that had the theme: “100 years of Jackie Chan! Congratulations!”. The episode was commemorating the incredibly false 100 year milestone of Jackie Chan being in entertainment. This and the Wharf gag are both random celebrations of a false and delightfully weird thing.

The opening live skit to the show was Tim and Eric singing a “Chrimbus” song while the huge projection monitor behind them played an accompanying video where people dressed in Chrimbus-wear awkwardly moved about a festive landscape. After the song, there was a skit about Chrimbus and how Eric didn't get Tim a present for the holiday. Eric evenutally revealed that he did have something for Tim – a fat, naked, plushy body costume with a huge penis and testicles and weird reddish buttocks. With the costume revealed, Tim and Eric walked around in circles to the sound effects of hooves playing. Whenever they finished one of these galloped circles, they pretended to open imaginary doors (with the accompanying sounds of doors playing on the speakers) and then they said a quick line of dialogue and closed the pretend doors. They made about three of these circles. I think this little bit with the galloped circles and opening/closing of fake doors was one of the most bizarre and brilliant parts of the show. One of those moments where you just feel completely adrift; like the humor is coming at you from no identifiable place and it hits you in a visceral way.

There were a few live action set pieces – the Jim and Derrick sketch where Tim and Eric dress up like really stupid bro/skater guys; the universe skit where they're dressed up in all black and “explain” the universe; a “Blues Brothers 2012” bit, where Tim and Eric acted like they were going to be in a new Blues Brothers movie sponsored by Terminix. They sang all these famous pop/rock songs while doing awkward exaggerated dances, and then shot the audience with fake Terminix bug sprayers.

The Cinco commercial was disgusting. It was advertising a food tube that you can use in restaurants so that you don't have to chew your food, because...who has time for that? You just remove all of your teeth, put the tube in your mouth and into your stomach and then drill a hole in the table you're sitting at so you can properly fit the apparatus. And then you dump your plate of food into the machine. The food gets blended and gets shot into the tube which goes directly into your stomach. Like all of the Cinco products, the "food tube" is a certifiably unnecessary / dangerous / scary product. 

There were recurring video bits where different Tim and Eric regulars talked about the Star Trek character Wharf and their relationship / memories of him. All of these were very off and random; the “memories” or “stories” had non-existent punchlines and completely off-topic focuses which is, of course, the point of the humor. Tim and Eric stable member - Ron Auster (“I wanna' meet that dad” song guy) was featured in a video where he sang a song while walking through a wintery woods scene. He slowly developed frostbite in front of our eyes while wondering aloud “where are the squirrels when you need them?”

There was interaction with / messing with the crowd throughout the show. Right after the opening sketch, Tim and Eric announced that the show was over. They walked off stage and people started cleaning up the cables and props off the floor while the big screen on top of the stage rolled the credits. After a few minutes of this, the video changed and announced that there was more show coming up. This gag made me think of Andy Kauffman.

There was a hilarious bit of video where Liebe Hart was talking to the audience and was abruptly interrupted for an “emergency sound calibration” where all the color bars flashed and the sound got crazy.

Prior to the show, I wasn't sure what to expect from Pusswhip Banggang. I knew a couple of the songs they were going to play but I had never seen video or anything of them in action. The band took stage after the comedy act was over, about an hour into the show. While people were setting up the instruments, still pictures of different Tim and Eric-related stuff played on the screen: backstage shenanigans, friends, etc. Some of the stills showed people with Tim and Eric-inspired tattoos (whether real or not, I'm not positive) and one of them was of the Spaget character on a guy's hip, popping out of what would be his pants waist line to surprise whoever was there.

Pusswhip took the stage with Tim on guitar, Eric on auxillary percussion and unknown other band members on drums, keyboard and bass. Eric was dressed in these hilariously high boots and very tight pants. Tim had an un-bottoned shirt on. After playing what I guess is the Pusswhip Bangang theme song, they went into “Petite Feet,” a personal favorite. They also played "Sports"; during the song, they tossed out a bunch of beach balls to the crowd. There was a lot of energy and the crowd was loving the music – something I find both incredible and refreshing (I mean these are dumb songs and aren't that involved. You could easily argue that they don't stand up on their own. But the songs are also catchy and creative, and are part of the greater universe of Tim and Eric and I think that people who like Tim and Eric like to throw themselves into and get lost in that universe, songs included).

During a break in the action, the audience started shouting out song names, favorites that hadn't been played yet. Tim kind of absently said “it's not a jukebox” and got right into the next number. This got cheers from the crowd. It was clear to me by the end of the night that fans of Tim and Eric respect Tim and Eric and that Tim and Eric respect their fans – they don't play to them because they know that what the fans want (at least the good ones) is them pushing it and doing what excites them.

Towards the end of the Pusswhip set, Tim yelled at a guy in the first row, who was looking away from the stage and toward the crowd. Tim yelled, “what the fuck man...that's rude...people paid good money and you're in the front row not even looking...are you doing a bit or something?” and then Tim pointed the mic at the guy and the guy explained that he worked for the Wilbur theater. After that, there was a running gag after each song where Tim apologized to the guy and made like he was so incredibly sorry.

At the end of the show, after much clapping and cheering, Tim and Eric came back out on stage and thanked the audience. They asked people who were dressed up in costume in the audience to come up on stage and show off their outfits. Somebody was dressed as Wharf, the Star Trek character, and Eric was joking that this guy's friend had been pointing to him the whole show and yelling “it's Wharf! It's Wharf!” Eric said, “I'm trying to play a fucking show man...you think I don't see this guy dressed up like Wharf in the fucking first row??”

At the end of Neil Hamburger's set, when he was introducing Tim and Eric, he said: “Now get ready for our young stars...” That really hit me - Tim and Eric are certifiable stars. They've completed 5 seasons of the Awesome Show, they're on this tour (and it's not the first time they've taken their show on the road), they've got a movie in the works, they've created a spinoff show with the Steve Brule character, they cut a record of the songs featured in their shows, and they had an interview in Maxim, which revealed that marketing executives now say “we've got to Tim and Eric this” when they want to make a commercial more random / bizarre.

Why / how are Tim and Eric so huge? Humor now, on the whole, has taken a turn for the “absurd” - it's there in a lot of commercials, it's behind the near-ubiquitous love of Family Guy and like-minded network comedy, and it's why a programming block like Adult Swim can exist and thrive. And I think it speaks to something deeper too – everyone enjoys the experience of totally letting go. That, to me, is what Tim and Eric is – the most primal / silliest / craziest / out of the park kind of humor. But it's also brilliant in the sense that it's aware of a context and what's come before and is commenting on norms and stereotypes. Evidence of this primal attraction and brilliance = the laundry list of incredibly talented actors and comedians who frequently participate in the show (David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Paul Rudd, Michael Ian Black, Maria Bamford, etc., etc.)

Synopsis: Tim and Eric make a hilarious pre-taped show and they're hilarious live. Long live Tim and Eric. 

Stephen King's "Just After Sunset"

I'll start this review by saying that I'm not an avid Stephen King reader. In fact, this is the first Stephen King book I've ever read from cover to cover. I started reading The Shining several years back and liked it but never felt compelled to finish. I mean, if you've seen the film adaptation of The Shining you can understand my lack of interest in the source material – Stanley Kubrick's version is so damn good it makes it hard to get excited for the actual novel.

Up until a couple years ago, I had discounted Stephen King as a supermarket pulp writer. I figured that an author who pumped out books with such frequency (he's published 49) and with such silly names and covers surely could not be worth my time. Reading Just After Sunset has changed my opinion.

In 2007, King was asked to edit the 2007 Best American Short Stories anthology, and this experience motivated him to write Just After Sunset, his 5^th collection of short stories. As an introduction to the collection, King comments on how writing short stories harkens back to his roots when he was struggling to make money publishing stories in random magazines. He remembers how exciting it was and how the writing just flew out of him. I think you can sense that spirit in Just After Sunset - more than anything else, these are fun reads and must have been fun for King to write. 

While reading the stories in this collection, I noticed something. There are moments in each when I stop and appreciate a sentence, or the pacing of a section, or a character. And then there are other moments when I stop and shake my head, feeling like I've encountered throw-away lines or trite cliches. I think this comes with the territory. Years from now, people will probably not read Stephen King in their Literature class (in their higher level Genre class, maybe - wait a minute...are they already doing that? it's possible), but that is not to say that he doesn't have the chops. It's a fact that these stories have been published in magazines like the New Yorker and McSweeney's. There wasn't a story in this collection that I had to labor through. Some, I loved. Others, I didn't necessarily feel an excitement for but still enjoyed. With King, you have to take the strokes of genius with the occasional commercial elements. Now, on to the stories:

My favorite is “Stationary Bike” – I love this story for the wonderful complexity and ingenuity of the setup. A commercial artist needs to lose weight so he paints a mural depicting a country road in front of his stationary bike. But the motivation becomes dangerous as he imagines characters into life and struggles to keep his grip on reality. It's such a great / interesting story because the frightening and suspenseful elements are all coming out of the action going on in a painting / fictional world that a fat man had to create for himself in an attempt to lose weight.  

The “Cat from Hell” is a treat in that “give me what I expect” kind of way. If you don't know much about Stephen King, you might expect him to have written a story “The Cat from Hell”. You can probably even guess the plot – possessed cat seems to be killing off everyone around it and a hired hand comes in to fix the problem but may have met his match because this cat... This story has long been anthologized and is included here as a kind of bonus. It's intriguing enough but the thing you'll remember is the payoff at the end and the rather gory and very graphic details.

“A Very Tight Place” is the most disgusting of the stories. There are a lot of cringe worthy moments and King even wrote in his notes that he grossed himself out at points during the writing of this one. The main character is a gay man and he has to deal with a very homophobic / insane man for much of the plot - this is just one instance where King engages serious content within a story that largely exists to entertain / scare. “Harvey's Dream” is very short and succinct. In its few pages, you get a vivid image that will stick with you. I can still picture a scene from this story, weeks after I've finished reading it.

“Willa” is maybe the only story in the collection that I would describe as “cute”. It's a story about ghosts and it has some sadness and some scare but that's not what I took away from it – I remember the image of ghosts dancing together in a road side bar. They're not going to hurt anyone, but they do make for quite a scene. “The Things They Left Behind” is, as King explains in his notes, his attempt to engage the September 11^th attacks and write about them in a way that could help him to understand what happened and how it affected the people who were there and who were directly touched by it.

The most forgettable story for me was “New York Times at Special Bargain Rates” – maybe it would work better as a movie? The crux of the action happens on a telephone and it reminds me of the Mothman Prophecies and the scenes in that movie where so much suspense and tension happened via phantom phone calls. This story feels like a scene more than a complete and finished work. 

If you have seen the Coen Brothers' A Simple Man, and remember the abrupt ending to that movie you will recognize a similarity in the story “Graduation Afternoon”. “N” is one of the longer stories and was later made into an animated miniseries. It feels like the most ambitious of the stories and involves a mix of writing styles and a very involved presence of the supernatural which is less conventional / pulpy than ghosts or cats from hell. During some of the conversations between the N character and his psychiatrist, I felt like I was reading an Edgar Allen Poe tale – there was this horror and just “off” feeling about the conversations, but it was always kept muffled and never allowed to come fully to the surface. “N” has a slow and strong progression. Each page is peppered with hints and tips of the inevitable and frightening conclusion.

I appreciated the brief section at the end of the book, where Stephen King writes a short explanation of where he was coming from with each of the stories. It's good to have a context and a frame for these imaginative worlds and characters. While a story can stand on its own, it can also be enriched by context, which I think it is here. So, in conclusion, I say YES! to Stephen King. He may write pulp/horror fiction but he does it well. I'm looking forward to reading more Stephen King in the future and think I'll next take the plunge into one of his epic books - The Stand.