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1'059 kilometres for "Weird Al" Yankovic
After missing "Weird Al" Yankovic's concert in New York last year, I was extremely eager to go to one of his gigs this time round. However, the closest he was about to come to Pittsburgh, within the next couple of months, was St. Louis which is slightly more than 1'000 kilometers away. Since air travel on such short notice was quite expensive (about 1'000 US$ for a return ticket) I rented a car and undertook an American Road Trip.
The first day I left Pittsburgh in the evening and drove till I got too tired to continue, which was in the middle of Ohio. Just when I was about to turn into a motel driveway the cars control panel made a beeping sound, I didn't know what was going on so I drove on for a couple of minutes. When I got out of the car I heard a loud hissing noise and knew immediately that one of the tires was going flat...
The next morning I called roadside assistance from my rental agency and they sent AAA to exchange the tire. That went pretty smoothly. When I started the car the beeping sound came again and I discovered that it warned me of low air pressure in one of the tires. This time round the warning occurred because the spare tire was smaller and the system got confused. So there was nothing to do for me but to drive on.
In Illinois I made a short detour to visit Vandalia, one of Illinois' early capitals. Once in St. Louis I had some time to kill so I looked for and found a car service garage which put switched my spare tire with a real one, now the car was ready for the drive back.
Then it was finally time to go to the Family Arena where "Weird Al" would play his gig. And what a gig it turned out to be. During 2.5 hours he played a fantastic sets featuring his newest hits along with several old favorites, some of which he combined into funny medleys. A big part of the show were the costumes, "Weird Al" and his band regularly changed their clothes to fit the music. During these intermissions short episodes of interviews "Weird Al" prepared for MTV and appearances in famous cartoons were shown, these were hilarious. The two most memorable moments of the show for me were when "Weird Al" was stripping during the performance of "You're Pitiful" and in the end was standing on stage in a Spongebob Squarepants t-shirt, a pink tutu and boxershorts with hearts on them! The other thing was during the encore when he sang "We all have cellphones" and everyone waved their cellphone in the air! (After all pocket lighters are so passé ;) )
In short seeing "Weird Al" Yankovic live was worth every kilometer I had to drive ^^Labels: Concert, Music, road trip, usa
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