E Center
Camden, NJ
November 13, 1999
This was the last concert that I got to go to in 1999. It was pretty exciting for a last concert and I got to meet a lot of new people and see a lot of great friends from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Steve (Hi Steve!) and I drove down to Rutgers to meet Adrian and Anne (Hi Adrian! Hi Anne!). Adrian was kind enough to drive down the rest of the way. Parking was a bit expensive but we didn't have much choice where we could park.
When we got inside, there was some new merchandise at the merchandise table. I'm not sure what's up on the "Weird Al" merchandise page but this was the new stuff I noticed: There was a beige Saga shirt, 3 new sweatshirts with the CPFOA logo (stone, black, and grey), and the other two shirts that had the real dates on the back are updated for the new real Fall dates. There was also a blue CPFOA hat. Hopefully they'll put this stuff on the store, if they haven't already, because we quickly realized we didn't bring anywhere near enough money to buy all that we had wanted to.
We met up with Sandy and Stacy (Hi Sandy! Hi Stacy!) and their friend (Hi Friend!) and got to our seats. We were off on the left side of the theater in the fourth row. The seats were pretty good. We were right in the front of Steve and Rubén. The opening comedian (Hi comedian!) wasn't terribly funny, but at least people responded to him and he gave it a nice try.
The show was pretty exciting. There was a lot of snow for "The Night Santa Went Crazy." The people in the section to the left of us (Hi people to the left of us!) were covered with snow. We didn't have any fall on us though.
I think the funniest part of the show was during "One More Minute." Rubén was being his usual self where he plays obnoxiously loud and Al turns around and shot him. Then Al sings the song and goes out into the audience. After he comes back on stage he's about near the end of the song and Rubén gets up off the ground, plays 5 or 6 loud notes on the keyboard and without batting an eye or even turning around, Al points the gun over his shoulder in the direction of Rubén and fires off another shot killing Rubén again! The crowd went crazy applauding and I doubled over laughing. Rubén was also pretty funny with his "Like A Surgeon" routine. He stole the spotlight again on that one.
Jim was all over the stage during "Smells Like Nirvana" He was bouncing and jumping around and running all over the place. Throughout the whole show, Steve kept going over and standing next to the speaker. Audience participation was great! Everyone took advantage of all the audience participation points in the show. It was really a great show.
I met a lot of people on the alt.music.weird-al newsgroup that I hadn't met before. After the show, I got to meet Sue Kelleher of Al-team fame (Hi Sue!) and Carole Goetzelmann also of newsgroup fame (Hi Carole!) and Rich, Sue's friend (Hi Rich!). Sue and Carole had Al-Team laminated passes, a pretty clever idea. The security herded us over near the phones and I ran into Matt Garvey (Hi Matt!) and TMBJon! (Hi Jon!!). Matt's 27/Albuquerque shirt is very creative.
Security was trying to rush everything along and made us all wait in line. We kept letting people go ahead of us trying to be last. This was because after you met Al, you weren't allowed to stay around. Backstage I ran into Gina (Hi Gina!) whom I had met at the Hershey shows. Jon (Hi Jon!) came by and signed autographs for people. He thanked me again for his birthday gift, which I gave him in Toronto only a couple of months late.
Jim (Hi Jim!) came by too to sign autographs. He stayed hidden in the hallway for most of the time though. When he saw me he came over and said, "Hi Dave." and asked me how I was doing. We talked for a little bit about stuff. I asked him where Steve was and he said he was by the bus. We didn't get to see Steve all night, except for up on the stage. I was hoping to see Steve because I had brought a T-shirt I made for Steve, but Jim offered to take it back to the bus and give it to him. Jim also signed my "Coconut Hat" CD.
Stacy and Sandy gave Al (Hi Al! - okay, I'll stop that now...) a big kiss and Steve showed Al some "UHF" artwork that he painted. It's a really nice picture of the "UHF" poster and Al liked it a lot. I had Al sign the inside of my "Running With Scissors" booklet. I was trying to be clever so I went up to him and asked him what instrument he played in the band. He chuckled and thought hard about it for a while and said the glockenspiel. I asked Al some questions about his surgery. I asked him if the flashes from all the cameras hurt his eyes after the surgery and he said it doesn't. He said, maybe if there were a lot of flashes for a long time it would. Then he said that the only thing is that his night vision is slightly less acute then his day vision and the only thing that he notices is that if there are headlights coming right at him on a dark road he sees a halo effect. I asked him about the concert lights and he said it doesn't bother him because they are constant and pretty bright. That's good news!! I'd hate to have to have him give up on giving concerts because they hurt his eyes!
Al pretty much had to rush out of there after he was done with our group. We headed over to the bus and got there just in time to see it leave. Then Steve, Adrian, Anne, and I stopped for some doughnuts, got high on cheap gas fumes, and headed back.
Al, Jon, Jim, Steve, Rubén, and assorted crewmembers, thanks for a great bunch of concerts. You made my summer and fall very exciting and I look forward to the new live video and Al TV specials. When you guys head out again next year, you can count on me being there!!!