My weekend so far:
Friday night: Brian Regan at Copley Symphony Hall in San Diego, CA. While the audience was loading in (a full house, of course), they were playing Coldplay (my favorite band) over the speakers. I was, of course, singing along.
Then Brian’s brother Dennis did the opening act. He was pretty good, but he was kind of upstaged by the guy doing the sign language for the deaf members of the audience. The guy doing the sign language was acting out the scenes while signing, and then he was adding in his own commentary. It was soo hilarious that I was basically just listening to Dennis while watching the guy signing.
There were a few technical glitches during the opening act, so they took a brief break to fix the speakers (feedback is kinda funny, but not during a whole set).
More Coldplay during the intermission, and the audience bought beer and wine by the barrel. It started to smell like a baseball game in there, but hey, we were all having a good time.
Dennis came out again, but this time to introduce his brother. Brian comes out, wild applause. He gets through a couple of jokes, but then a section of the audience stands up and begins shouting at him.
“We can’t hear you!” they yell.
He looks puzzled. “Then you’re sitting in the wrong section,” he says, pointing to the section where the guy is signing, “They can’t hear me either.”
The crowd roars, but eventually Brian stops the show and vows to get the sound fixed for real. Turns out several sections of the theater had no audio.
After another 15-minute intermission (more Coldplay!), Brian comes out again.
“What an awkward way to start a show. I’m apologizing! ‘Hey Brian, how are you starting your show these days?’ ‘Well, I walk out, get down on my knees, and beg for forgiveness.’ How’s that for an opening joke?”
But the crowd was a forgiving one (the alcohol might have helped) and the rest of the night was stellar.
I got home and was bumming around on Twitter (find me and follow me!) when I saw that Coldplay (my favorite band) had a free album out! I KNOW!!!!
So a night full of great comedy and free music.
Saturday:
I saw two of the greatest movies of the year so far:
Star Trek (duh!) and Taken. You already know about Star Trek, so I’ll sell Taken instead.
Taken stars Liam Neeson (Love Actually, voice of Aslan from Chronicles of Narnia) as Bryan Mills, a former “preventer” for the United States government. But when his only child Kim (played by Lost‘s Maggie Grace) is kidnapped in Paris and sold into slavery, Mills vows, “I will find you, and I will kill you.”
It’s a short movie, only an hour and a half, but it’s so tense, full of action (Neeson can still kick butt, even at the age of 56), and I’ll admit it – I like the idea of the dad doing anything and everything to save his daughter.
It was always just a personal vendetta – get Kim back. He wasn’t about busting a drug ring, exposing crooked politicians, or killing mass murderers. It was only just about getting his daughter back.
So…
In conclusion:
See live: Brian Regan.
See in theaters: Star Trek.
Rent: Taken.
Listen to: Coldplay.
(Bonus music tip: download Plain White T’s “1, 2, 3, 4″)
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