See, I saw
Ben Folds at a casino in Atlantic City last night, and you can FOLD at the poker table. There must be something there, right? Well, never mind. It would have been lame anyway. What wasn't lame was the concert itself. It did take forever to get started, but since we had seats, it wasn't the big deal it might have been otherwise. The opening band was the Hotel Lights, the current project of former Ben Folds Five member Darren Jessee. I honestly can't say I had much of an opinion on them one way or the other. Ben himself was accompanied by a band, and did an interesting set that included a few of the fake versions of the
Way to Normal tracks, which were apparently leaked out before the album's release as a joke. I hadn't heard any of them before, but maybe I should seek them out. It was actually a while into the show before he pulled out any songs from his days with the Five, although he did play several in his encore. For "Free Coffee," he placed Altoid tins on top of his piano strings, producing a weird, sort of electronic sound. Ben also told stories about crazy cab drivers, one of which he turned into a brief song. (Whether the song was totally off the cuff or something he'd prepared ahead of time wasn't totally clear, but he certainly made it sound like he was improvising it.)
After the show,
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bethje and I went out to eat with her cousin Mark and his girlfriend Katie, which was fun. It took us a while to find a place we could eat at that time of night. We tried to find the Bombay Cafe at the Trump Taj Mahal, but were unable to locate it, so instead we went to Breadsticks at Resorts. Oh, and while we were in line for the concert, I noticed someone wearing a shirt with what looked like the Oz symbol on the back, but it actually turned out to be advertising a cult. If I were Ozma, I'd sue. {g}
You might have noticed that, even though the Animation Domination block on Fox (NewsCorp sure loves the word "dominate," don't they?) was new last Sunday, I didn't review them. That's because Beth and I were out with her cousin Craig when they were on (well, we got back in time for American Dad, but not the others), and I didn't get a chance to watch the tape until Thursday. I don't really have too much to say about them even now. The Simpsons episode was pretty bland for the most part, and Bart pretending to be good to impress a girl had been done before. I did like the focus on Milhouse, though, and some of the brief gags. I do have to nitpick the bit near the beginning with Groundskeeper Willy being knocked out by the letters from the school sign, though. When he was knocked out, we saw three N's turn sideways into Z's, but there are only two N's in "Springfield Elementary School." I hope someone got fired for that blunder. :P
I don't have much to say about Family Guy or American Dad. They were passable, and the "Bag of Weed" song in the former was pretty good, but neither was anything all that special. I do feel I should say a bit about
Sit Down, Shut Up, though, seeing as how it's new and all. Despite top-name voice talent (I think the creators of the show must have come to the set of
Arrested Development and gotten as many people as possible to sign up as cartoon voices), I didn't think it was that funny. Honestly, it seemed to be trying too hard. And is it really reasonable to do so much meta-humor before you've even fully introduced your characters and premise? Oh, well. You can rarely judge a show by its first episode.
And now we're pretty much caught up to the present day. I do still need to provide the answers to last week's lyric quiz, though, don't I?
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