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TagsConan O'Brien and Andy Richter at McCaw Hall
There were a couple things I knew going in to the Conan O'Brien show Sunday night. It was at McCaw Hall, Conan would be there, and...that's about it. (Sunday also just happened to be Conan's birthday!) Not a lot was said about the show, and no one knew who the guests would be. Would he set it up like a talk show? Would he ride a unicycle for 90 minutes?
It turned out to be an interesting mix, more like a variety act than a comedy tour. There's been some positive and negative talk about the tour, but if you're a huge fan of his talk show, then you probably would have had a fantastic time. The show's opening act, Reggie Watts (formerly of Seattle and currently of Maktub), did a great job of working up the crowd and getting them ready for 90 minutes of hot Coco action. He brought on a lot of laughs with his great mix of electronic music, dirty jokes, and wacky lyrics. The Seattle-specific call-outs really perked up the audience as well as his dazzling voice.
And then on came Conan with a bang, kicking off with a two-minute standing ovation by the awaiting audience. He started with a pretty typical introduction, talking about the tour and its purpose, with quite a bit of the complaints that we've gotten used to hearing from the ex-NBC host over the last three months. The Seattle crowd ate it up, and it must have felt good to have that many people behind him. Guests that joined the comedian onstage included his sidekick Andy Richter, one of his writers, Deon Cole, who did a short stand-up routine, La Bamba and his "Big Band," and that night's special music guest Dave Matthews....
Amy O'Neal and Ellie Sandstrom in "too," this Thurs.-Sat. at NW Film Forum. Photo courtesy of amyo/tinyrage.
While she offered the cerebral description of the show as being "about how we create fictitious fights with our self," she had politely gone on to explain how the movement was coming out of her longstanding interest in fighting (though she admits to never actually having gotten into a fight), boxing (which she was "obsessed with" for two years), and, of course, ninjas.
"A lot of times, when I'm dancing or teaching, I'm imagining dancing with swords, or having some sort of imaginary foe that you're dancing with," she said. "A lot of times, I'll be like, 'Okay, this leg comes over here'"—she mimed something swinging toward her head—"'imagine someone's kicking over your head and you have to duck that. Imagine the ninja stars coming at you, you have to get down to the floor or that thing is going to stick you in the head.' I'll use things like that in class so that people will do something, they'll put themselves in a scenario so that something's at stake."...
At the online-only DieHard Torture Labs, a series of viral ads demonstrates how Sears' DieHard car batteries "perform under extreme demands." For example, this battery is able to run a car, while also powering a wall of headlights, a mic, an amp, and a beatboxing Reggie Watts. Y'know, the usual.
(h/t Videogum)
Tommy Smith & Reggie Watts's "Transition," this weekend at On the Boards
Tommy Smith and Reggie Watts don't so much talk to you when they sit down to discuss their work as banter. No doubt this owes something to their process for creating Watts's onstage material, which involves Watts calling Smith up at odd hours with whatever ideas have popped into his head, so the two can discuss, write them down, come back to them later, and maybe somehow turn them into something. That's a lot of talking to do with one another, and so when you ask a question, you tend to get a response from both that trails off into completely different tangents, with plenty of corrections and addenda thrown in.
Monday evening, we were sitting in the dark lobby of On the Boards, where the pair are presenting their 2008 work Transition starting this Thursday, Oct. 15 (through Oct. 17; tickets $18), and Smith was telling me about their first major scripted theatre piece, which also took place at OtB. "We did a show called A Very Reggie Christmas in 2001. It was 38 percent amazing, and the other percentage was just jaw-droppingly bad," Smith said. "The worst part was, we came up with this joke," he paused, chuckling. "Actually, it wasn't mine. It was Michael McQuilken's..."
"It was Michael McQuilken!" Watts agreed before Smith, grinning at taking a rib at an old friend, stated, "I'm going to throw it right out there! It was Michael McQuilken's!"
Then they took a moment to make sure I had the spelling of his name right....
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