“Weird Al” Yankovic
We had heard that Weird Al was coming to town and playing at the Starlight Theater several weeks ago and so we went to see if they had any good tickets left… naturally they didn’t. So we decided to try and win some tickets and then maybe if worse came to worse, we’d buy some cheap nosebleed seats. Well the feeble attempts at winning tickets were not helped by my owning an iPod which I listen to on the way to and from work, and for some odd reason no one was giving away tickets during my playlists.
So two days before the concert I decided to see what tickets were left, and for some odd reason some prime tickets were available. So I went ahead and grabbed them.
Now let me take a moment to express my pure distain for buying tickets from ticketmaster (they don’t deserve a link). The tickets were $38 a seat (which isn’t my issue), but there was an $8 “convenience” charge for EACH TICKET!!! What the heck is that all about? We called the place they were playing to see if we could come down and buy the tickets there, but they said the same $8 per ticket charge would apply. So if we didn’t use the “convenient” way to buy the tickets we still had to pay the convenience fee. What a joke! Then to add insult to injury, there was another $4.something processing charge. If you are going to give me this rediculous charge at least do me the decency of masking it, and just make the tickets be $46 each. Highway robbery at it’s finest…
Anyway… we got to the theater an hour early or so and it was a PERFECT evening. 72 or so degrees and just a slight breeze. Our tickets were dead center and 20 or so rows back… pretty sweet. Some comedian comes out and makes fun of various things around KC (the plaza, the triangle, Sprint, etc) and actually made me chuckle a few times (I don’t laugh easily).
Finally the show starts. This was only my 3-4 “professional” concert, and my first time seing Weird Al. He put on a great show, and was easily my favorite out of the shows I had seen. When I started thinking about it, I know more of his songs then probably any other artist. I guess this was an extension of his Poodle Hat tour so he played several songs from that album. Several of them I didn’t know either the parody or the original song… guess I’m getting out of touch.
But he did do some classics… All about the Pentiums, Horoscope (which I proudly know the long fast part in the middle), The Saga Begins (Star Wars I one), Yoda, Amish Paradise, I was Only Kidding, a compelation set or two, and several others I of course forgot.
We had a total blast and are going to make sure to get tickets early next time he comes. A highly recommended show from a great artist.
August 14th, 2004
Overall it was a fun day, with a LOT of walking. I won’t go over each little detail but there were two that were really cool. First was a bird show that we went to watch while waiting for the second thing. I know, bird show shmird show… which was kinda what I thought going into it. During the show they asked for two adult volunteers and if they had a camera all the better. So I held mine up and got picked. We were told to go sit on these chairs. Then they bring out this big ole owl that they are going to send to a stand that is inches behind us. Luckily my camera has video, so I switched to that thinking it would be cooler to get the full action instead of one shot at a picture that I would probably miss. I wasn’t mistaken… this huge owl comes flying at us and lands basically on our heads. Having it come right at the camera is pretty sweet. Then they sent it off to another stand across the crowd, and then back to us, before going back up to the stage.
The second part was the best. They have a cage full of 
The rest of the zoo was pretty cool, got some other cool shots. A large part of me wanting to go was to get some fun pictures and to play with the