Don't Die Wondering

So I had this completely surreal experience last Wednesday. Gary and I made a very last minute decision to drive down to Brooklyn to see the Johns perform in a variety show called The Talent Show. It could have been a disaster, as I had to work in the morning and we had almost exactly four hours to make the four hour drive to Brooklyn in time for the show. One traffic jam or any trouble parking and we would have been late. But I think the TMBG gods were looking out for us, because we made it in perfect time, with no traffic and found free street parking a block from the venue.

This show pretty much could not have been a weirder setting to first see the Johns in after six months forced separation. The Talent Show is a monthly event at this theater. And theater is a very loose term for it as it's just a little room with a stage, some folding chairs, a bit of standing room in back, and a bar. Each month they choose a different theme and have a variety of local celebrity guests come and perform. This month's theme was Speech and Debate. They set up the show like an informal competitive debate competition with pairs of performers competing in different styles of debate. In addition to the Giants, some of the other celebrities participating in the show included, Kristen Schaal, Eugene Mirman, Todd Barry and a very unique street performer called T-Berry whom I will get to later. We also learned as we were in the car driving down that Jonathan Coulton was going to be making an appearance (this was one of these, "this just keeps getting better and better" moments), and indeed he did, paired with musician Dave Hill.

We arrived at the theater about fifteen minutes before the show started, to find the place fairly packed. After briefly saying hi to our friends John and Rebecca who were also in attendance, we opted to stand at the back of the room where there was a pretty clear view of the stage. The show's two hosts, a lively young woman named Elna, and a flamboyantly gay man named Kevin (who was wearing a nice jacket and tie with tiny red short shorts) introduced the proceedings and the show opened with a reading by "judge" Mark Oppenheimer, from his book about his time on the Yale debate team. Mark made quite an amusing show of judging the contestants throughout the show on fairly arbitrary grounds while passing a flask back and forth with the hosts.

Near the beginning of the show I turned around at the sound of the door behind me opening to see a woman entering the back of the room. I had a brief thought of "hmm, she looks kind of familiar" but I think it took me a good 30 seconds before my head snapped back around again to confirm that yes, that was Linnell's wife now standing off to my left.

There were three musical guests featured in the show, all of whom were competing in a category called Extemporaneous Song (a take-off on extemporaneous debate). The guests were brought out on stage and given a choice of two topics to write a song on. They were allowed to confer and select their topic, then were given one article on the subject and 30 minutes in which to compose a song. They then had to return to the stage and perform the song for the audience. This category was the only one of the evening that was not judged as it was deemed too difficult to judge songs.

The first contestants were a band called Stuckey and Murray (and The Band, which consisted of one guy with an accordion). They were given a choice between writing on Muammar Gaddafi or The Death of Jon Benet Ramsey: Murder or Accident? They picked Jon Benet and headed off to start writing.

Next up were Kristen Schaal and Eugene Mirman who were competing in a traditional extemporaneous debate. They were given three choices of topics. The first was Is God Real? The middle one I don't remember and the last was Should Animals Be Given The Power of Speech? They picked Is God Real with Kristen on the affirmative side and Eugene on the negative side, then proceeded to have a ridiculous debate during which Kristen argued that God was real because we had imaginations and could imagine heaven. Eugene attempted to shoot down this argument by pointing out that we could also imagine Star Wars and that wasn't real. Ultimately, bringing up a turtle god and a reference to Passover that appealed to the Jewish judge won Eugene the debate.

I am not 100% on the exact order of the performers after that. I believe they next brought out Dave Hill and JoCo to give them their song assignment. They were given a choice between some study that showed that ovulating women were attracted to the scent of dominant men and the Royal Wedding. They went with the wedding though JoCo had to ask the names of the people getting married. They got one of the souvenir magazines for research material, then trooped off.

Next up, the hosts Elna and Kevin competed against a husband and wife couple in a very bizarre form of debate/performance. I missed part of the explanation, because I got distracted noticing that Linnell had stuck his head out of the stage door at the side of the room and was searching the crowd, presumably for his wife. But he gave up and I focused in again. I believe the idea was the competitors had to dramatically act out a scenario but were not allowed to touch or look at each other. There may have been other rules too. The hosts did a selection of final scenes from episodes of Murder, She Wrote, while the husband and wife, Nate Starkey and Ashley Ward, did a dramatic performance of parts of a fundamental Christian sex book. Personally, I liked their performance better because it was really damn funny, but the hosts won out.

Finally, the Johns came out to receive their challenge. Linnell walked out to his mic, but Flans came out and sat down at the head table next to Elna in the seat Kevin had vacated to move some mic stands. Linnell kind of looked at him like, "what the hell are you doing?" and there was some brief humorous banter that I don't recall. Then Flans stood up to move to his mic, telling Elna that he didn't want to invade her personal space. She said she hadn't minded :-) Then Kevin took his seat back and said that if he was worried about people invading his personal space he wouldn't have worn such short shorts. Hehe.

Picture By Rebecca

The Johns first option was writing on the anniversary of the wreck of the SS Sultana. Flans seemed very keen on this one and implied that they didn't even need to hear the other, but Linnell pushed to see what it was. It turned out to be Reptiles Eat With The Bones We Hear With, based on a study that recently came out showing that the bones in the human middle ear were once part of the jaw of our reptilian predecessors. Linnell pushed for this one. I think he was a little worried about having to compose a good fact based song in 30 minutes and felt like there was more room to maneuver with the reptile topic. I think he actually said something along those lines. Then they headed off to write. The hosts realized they had forgotten to give them the stuffed alligator they had brought for reference material and threw if after them as the exited the stage.

More extemporaneous speech followed, this time between Mike Albo and Virginia Heffernan, former roommates, who argued on whether the audience was good. This debate was only moderately successful and they both just resorted to telling stories about each other. Mike made several funny references to Virginia's drug use which got her mad because he had apparently promised not to mention the drugs. They failed to stay much on topic but the debate was funny none the less.

Stuckey and Murray and The Band came out and performed their Jon Benet song. It was comically inappropriate but didn't hold a candle to either of the other two songs.

Cintra Wilson and Matt Oberg participated in an off the cuff presentation of a Powerpoint display they had never seen before. They had to act like they knew exactly what they were talking about. Cintra's was on ebonics and she played it like a recovering ebonics addict who was speaking on the dangers of ebonics. Matt's was on exorcism and I was more amused by his interpretation of what was depicted on the slides but Cintra won out by convincing the judge that she really could speak ebonics.

Dave Hill and JoCo came out to perform their Royal Wedding song. Dave had some issues getting the volume of his guitar right but he sorted it out with a few jokes along the way. My video of this song is crap, but the audio came out fine. I put it on my Tumblr for your listening pleasure: The Royal Wedding Song. Warning, contains explicit language.

Todd Barry was asked to present a six minute speech on one of three topics. I don't remember what the first one was. He briefly attempted to talk about Roe vs. Wade before going back and choosing The Career of Todd Barry. He didn't make it the full six minutes and honestly, I didn't find him that funny. At least not compared with some of the other performers of the evening.

Going against him was a street performer called T-Berry. He was one of the sorts of people who acts completely crazy but you can't tell if he really is a bit crazy or if it's just part of his schtick. He apparently stands on the street with a sign that says "T-Berry: World's Greatest Storyteller" and for $1 he will tell you a story on any topic you give him. Elna said she hired him because he told her a story about a monkey. He came on stage and was showing off his lunchbox (Spiderman, I think) which is his donation box. They announced that he would be outside after the show and would tell you a story for $1 if anyone wanted to hear one. He selected Freak Shows as his speech topic, then proceeded to tell the raunchiest, funniest, most disgusting story I have ever heard about nasty hookers throwing a huge party and all the demented degenerates that came to the party. Dracula, Wolfman and Frankenstein's monster all played a part. There was a bit about one of the hooker's breaking wind so hard it blew the doorknob off the door, which made the judge do a legitimate spit take into his water glass. Honestly, I couldn't even begin to describe to you the full scope of this awful epic tale. The most relevant part was the description of the guy with a preference for dead women who showed up at the party with a nine year old corpse and was sucking maggots out of her breast. And yes, I know that is incredibly disgusting but you have to hear that in order for the next part to make sense.

So this guy finally finishes (they allowed him well over the six minutes because he was on a roll) and the judge declares a tie between him and Todd Barry. Then they call out the Giants again to close the show. Flans comes on stage and stage whispers "Stall!" to the hosts. Linnell goes up to the mic and complains that T-Berry has stolen all of their material.

Elna: "Wait you've had sex with a corpse filled with maggots?"

Linnell: "You know that."

Elna: "I didn't even know that could happen."

Flans: "Don't die wondering."

From this point on, I have everything on video, so I'll just post that. I really enjoyed that Linnell, rather than Flans, took point on all the talking at this event. And he really did seem to be in his element and enjoying himself. It was just one more thing that made the experience surreal. I'm still not convinced I didn't dream the whole thing. "Children smile with the bones we hate with" is such a great line. And I love the bit about prepositions.



Oh, and just for you, Ana. I saw Ira Glass in the audience after the show. That makes two TMBG shows (and an OK Go show) I've seen with him in the audience!