White and Nerdy

In case there was any doubt, I am white and nerdy. What may not have been so clear is that "Weird Al" is my Homeboy. No really, my shirt says so.

The world is full of strangeness, and Weird Al Yankovic accounts for plenty of it himself. He was born in Downey, CA, (where I appeared in "Oklahoma" at the civic center) and grew up in Lynwood, which is a whole 15 miles from Whittier, where I grew up. The first music video I ever saw was "I'm Fat", his parody of then-cool Michael Jackson's "I'm Bad." The year was approximately 1988. I must say, I have never been much of an MTV aficionado, but that video remains among my favorites.

While I loved "I'm Fat" from the first viewing, and became aware of Al's existence back in the late 80's, and really enjoyed pretty much everything Al was written since, and lived in Southern California... I never managed to see Al until I moved to the Raleigh area and caught him on his current tour. Dan similarly has known of Al for years -- he recalls a classmate singing "Another one Rides the Bus" ages ago -- and never managed to see him perform.

The crowd, on the whole, was, well... white and nerdy. As Dan put it, there seemed to be a sub-set of the audience for whom Al was salvation and a justification for being. Al is quite a showman, and somehow even his old material still works. With the exception, perhaps, of "All about the Pentiums," which was still fun to watch, his parodies are timeless even where the originals are dated. "My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
But it was obsolete before I opened the box
You say you've had your desktop for over a week?
Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique."

Dan appreciated different things about the concert itself than I did. He remarked on the number of strings on the Banjo Jim West played, and he identified all of the basses Steve Jay played. I just giggled over the lyrics and the way Al wooed the crown. Both of us admired the musicianship of the band -- playing every genre from polka to grunge to rap convincingly -- and the amazing way that Al manages to enthrall a crowd ranging in age from 6 to 60. Far from being a has-been, he has attracted a whole new generation of white and nerdy followers. Al and Steve Jay, the band bassist, were both gracious enough to meet and greet several of us after the show, and they signed my T-shirt.

I had a lot of fun. Dan remarked after the show that I was a "such a good wife" for buying him tickets. So, I think it was a winner!

For the record, we also ate dinner at Abyssinia, the Ethiopian restaurant in Raleigh. It's a bit of a hole in the wall, but the food was excellent, and the minimalistic decor featured several lovely Ethiopian Orthodox icons. We'll definitely be back there again... even if we are rather white and nerdy.