Monday, July 30, 2012

The Amazing Meeting 2012, Day Three (part 2)

I will not add much text to this post, as it largely consists of videos to begin with, and those are enough to keep one occupied. Also, since I know that since there may be children wanting to look at this post, especially ones who don't like swear words, I will give fair warning of this. (No, really, I will.)

Although the buffet was preferable, at this hour the Steak and Shake was the only place open, so Leonard and I got a salad (which took at least 20 minutes) and brought it upstairs to the TAM hall, where there was a huge line waiting around to get into Penn Jillette's Rock n' Roll Doughnut and Bacon Party.
` After eating said salad, and stupidly trying to clean up oil with water, as Leo pointed out, I discovered that the line was just for donations/T-shirts. No point in waiting in that line! I didn't even particularly want a T-shirt, but since I had already donated 25$ previous to coming to TAM, I got to grab one anyway and headed in.

The electrical kept shorting out around this time, but I ran into the same Swedish guy and he showed me the money -- not as much as it looks, but it has an ant on it, and Linnaeus. Also, I start talking into my camera again a lot, which is really trippy, and then continue to speak like a normal humon:


I do like to put my camera down, but not the whole time, as you'll see, but first, here's a description of this party from Penn, in which he talks about how much cool stuff is going to be happening, and how he's going to be singing badly and swearing and saying bad things about religion and stuff:
To people coming for the first time - WELCOME TO MY PARTY!  NOTHING in this room was paid for by JREF.  NOTHING in this room was paid for by you.   Many people donated their time and talent, and many people donated equipment, doughnuts and bacon.   I thank them all.  The NoGodBand has been rehearsing with one goal, to BRING THE STUPID!   The smarter a man or woman is, the sexier it is when they get stupid.  I don’t drink or do recreational drugs and I never have, so when I say stupid, I don’t mean faced -- I mean a real stupid from deep within.  Wanna?

This is my private party and I want to offend no one, so you are invited IF and only IF you really WANT to experience:

- All the obscenity and taboo hateful words possible (including the only one that really bugs you)
- All the blasphemy possible (including unfair ad hominem attacks on god and religion)
- Bacon
- Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (Elvis’ favorite doughnut)
- Proud stupidity and incompetence
- A celebration of love, and sex.
- A lot of artistic aggressive venting of sexual, political, theological and emotional rage.
- People of all sexes, genders, orientations and kinks scantily clad (within the law)
- People asking people who they don’t know, “Baby, do ya wanna dance?”
- Penn singing out of tune.
- Penn hitting wrong notes on his bass.  (Last year it was LOTS of wrong notes)
- Penn forgetting the endings to songs that we have practiced for months (last year, almost every song)
- A setlist that much shorter this year, so I hope we’re a little tighter, but don’t count on it.
- Penn, a 57 year old man, over 300 pounds, jumping around like he swallowed a whole live crazy monkey.

It’s my private party.  In terms of manners, you’ve been invited to my home.  If you don’t like me, don’t come to my party.  This party is for my friends.  Please respect that.  We just want to have fun.  This is not a show.   I do a lot of shows.  This isn’t really one.  This is a party.  I’m not doing this to kick off my career as a musician or singer.  I have no career as a musician or singer.  I’m not good.  I’m just monkeying around with my friends.  If you want to join in, please do.   If you want to say, “Man, he really sucks as a musician,” just say that and walk away.  I agree with you.  I lack talent, but I’m bursting with joy.  If you don’t know the difference, don’t come to my party.

I have no desire to offend anyone, at least not tonight.  If you are here, I love and respect you.  I don’t want to cause you any discomfort.  So, if you aren’t just thrilled about being here, please leave -- it’s Las Vegas and a nice hotel, there’s plenty of fun stuff for you to do.  The second something offends you, just leave, it’s not going to get better.   Just go away.  We’ll talk another time.  I take no offense with you avoiding my offensive party.  Deal?

But, if you walk through these doors, you have given your consent to enjoy all of the above.  You’re at my party and I ask you one question:  

Are you ready to BRING THE STUPID?
You'll know I brought plenty of stupid for this show. Here's Penn starting the official show (a bit of swearing, of course):


That song he's singing is called "Clay Aiken", and you can watch the official video on YouTube, if you're not easily bored.

This one also has swearing, as well as me wandering around the room, not stalking Geo. I find Randi and Maynard, however:


Out of bacon already, but how about Strippin' For Jesus? (A bit of swearing, too.)


Yes, there were strippers, but they all had pasties -- even the guy here had crucifixes on his nipples:

TAM 132

This is me doing the 'Awwwww, they're really stripping? Ohhhhhh, I have to get a closer look!' bit:


This next video has neither swearing nor stripping -- In it, I run into Brian Dunning, who says, "Hey, crazy chick, what's up?" and I tell him my plans to stalk Geo. Oops, I mean... not stalk Geo!


I got a shaky picture of the camera man getting a shot of Running Elk and the rest:

TAM 137

Here's Penn explaining a song about what really, really bad words mean. The song itself has lots of swear words in it, especially the word "Dave":


I figured I'd get a still photo of Penn on stage at some point, so here he is playing "Dave Dave":

TAM 140

Here's a short video of me hanging out by the door, where it's cool, and where Geo and his girlfriend were standing.


This is a funny song, called The Clothes of The Dead, about how people buy their clothes from the Salvation Army, which sells dead people's clothes:


Someone got an actual video of this song last year -- not much swearing in it, either.

One of the band members is crowd surfing, then they launch into another chorus of "To Serve With Love" when Randi comes up on stage. I got more footage (footage?) of this, but the Flickr limit cuts off just before he says of Penn and Teller, "They're like brothers, they're like lovers."


This video begins with a discussion on how to grab the cameraman properly -- this is too funny! Then, Penn starts going on about how much he loves Randi, which has a bit of swearing.


The La La La Song was fun to sing along with, although it has some very bad words -- that's what makes it even more fun!


There's no swearing here -- this is a sort of tour of the room, and also I find Mark the Newly Beardless Guy again:


There's Brian Dunning, his wife, and others, while I just blur around the room:


I was touching the tattoo girl's silicon star implant (yes, really) when ehrmagerd, it's YouTube's Aron Ra and his Aron-lets!


Despite Aron-Ra being mistaken for Sasquatch, Penn is notably taller:


Here's me about to take a picture of Leick and Aron Ra together:


Here's a video of me explaining some of what has been going on at the bar, and how I once again didn't have to pay for alcohol, videoing more of the same people and then getting all flappy about Geo:


At one point, I was talking with a couple guys, something about pathological physics, I think, and we were waving our arms at Geo as though we had magical powers and he was backing up towards us.
` Geo knew this, of course, but it was kinda funny anyway, because I didn't have to worry about him thinking that I was sneaking up behind him. You can kinda guess how this all turns out:


Is it strange that I'm getting video of people taking pictures together with other people?


Although this is a picture with me, Geo and Bruce Hood, I did not make them pose for me -- I don't quite get why people do this.

TAM 166

Bruce actually asked me if I was from Germany because apparently the alcohol was making my acquired accent more noticeable. Can you hear it when I mention this to Lawrence Krauss?


Eventually, I wound up leaving the bar, but having had so little to eat, didn't want to get rid of the beer that Bruce Hood bought me. I gave it to this one guy, whose name I am blanking on, and he said that he promised nothing would wind up in it, and I made some stupid joke and then was gone for like ever.
` During this time, I discovered that the hotel's pool was outdoors, and remembered -- oh yeah, it's warm in Las Vegas! (The air conditioning keeps one's mind off of that...)

TAM 169

When I finally got back down to the bar, my beer was no longer there because it was something like four in the morning. As before, there were awesome conversations that I can scarcely remember, but soon I found Singar the Goat Demon -- whose pants were on backwards, which is what I was referring to. (Which is also why I was swearing...)


Once I told him that his pants were on backwards -- he was like, "is my tail gone?" And I was like, "no, it's in the front!" -- he realized that he was walking around like that all day and was so mortified! But that was okay, as he was really cool, and we went up to his room where he was able to turn his pants around.
` I didn't stay long, but we had a lot of interesting conversation, and he showed me some crazily stupid thing on YouTube, which was actually a million times nuttier than his air guitarist act!

Also, he let me write this small blog post so that my readers could know what I was up to.

His room also had a view of the pool, but it was hard to see because of the spotlight shining in through the window illuminating the curtains. Don't you just love that?

TAM 171

Then, I went back to my room and took a shower, managing to squeeze in a little sleep:

TAM 172

It was just enough to get me ready for the next day... which you can read about here!

3 comments:

  1. On Facebook, Greg Dorais says that if this commenting box had worked,

    "My comment would have said:
    "Love the expression on your face during the stripping vid.""

    Yeah!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're having fun with that camera! I wish I had been there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You're not alone -- hence my trying to bring it to jealous folks via my camera!

    ReplyDelete

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