Sunday, September 03, 2006

sometimes when this place gets kinda empty

Just as I promised, Brianne's first non-Jon Brion Largo show turned out to be a very mellow affair, and I didn't even have to apologize to Mike at the door for hogging up a four-party reservation with only three warm bodies. As always, it's a delight when Evonne joins us.

The Greg Proops Chat Show, Largo, August 30, 2006: Three Largo-related events in five days--that may be a record for me. It would've been my fourth outing in the same amount of time if I had managed to get tickets to the Zach Galifianakis show at the Fillmore, but alas, I've been slipping for some time now.

As this is primarily a concert blog, I'll address the tunage first. Sadly, we couldn't make Greg's last appearance, nor did the junior minions go in our stead, but tonight, we saw a Largo regular other than Jon Brion take up the musical slack: Grant Lee Phillips. He did three songs total, the first of which I didn't recognize, but at the end of the set, he came back for his own "Mockingbirds" and a cover of the Church's "Under the Milky Way Tonight," which you can hear on his recently released album, nineteeneighties.

For the closer, Grant Lee was accompanied by Margaret Cho doing a hilarious burlesque routine. I had my doubts when she described her fascination with this retro form of entertainment, but leave it to Margaret to turn it into a goofy, unique exercise that I doubt you'll see anywhere else. Pussycat Dolls, eat your skinny, no-talent hearts out!

Almost as funny as Margaret's routine were the confused and somewhat concerned faces Grant pulled as she hovered near him. Still, I felt a little weird at the end when I realized we were staring at a nearly naked Margaret Cho, wearing only clear plastic platform boots, panties, two big ostrich-feather fans, and three pairs of pasties on her body.

True to the billing, Greg Proops did indeed conduct a talk show of sorts. After Grant kicked off the proceedings, Greg took the stage for one of his patented long-form rants/observations/schpiels covering, um, a lot of things, most of which weren't included in his rant/observation/schpiel opening for Jon Brion last month. His first guest was Ngaio Bealum, an advocate for safe access to medicinal marijuana. He made a convincing argument, and I liked the "I smoked weed with Ngaio" t-shirts he was hawking.

The next guest was "Lindsay Lohan," if she were trapped in the body of a 40something white guy best known for a TV show celebrating the Ohio lifestyle. Yup, we got Drew Carey sort of pretending to be Lindsay and not doing a very good job of it. Where's a hoedown when you need one??

Margaret and Greg, however, got on like a house on fire, and it was fun sitting in the dark and listening to the two of them just yakking away about every subject under the sun. Greg asked about Margaret's upcoming TV roles, Margaret compared Greg to Marcello Mastroianni, and they both voiced their disdain about being an actor--except they were a lot funnier than I could ever encapsulate.

See also:
» have you tasted the finest of trout
» "My name is Jon, I'm from Connecticut"
» top 5 Largo memories

2 comments:

BeeKay said...

We really need to track down one of those Ngaio shirts.

pneyu said...

Hmmm, who could we get to smoke out with him?