What can I say but 'Wow.'

I haven't laughed so hard since the mid-80's, when a buddy and I were playing on my Commodore 64 and typed 'LOAF' instead of 'LOAD'.

(You kinda had to be there)

worms rock!

The Arrogant Worms put on the funniest live performance I have ever seen, and this includes the Barenaked Ladies and Moxy Fruvous. Hard to believe, I know, but it's true.

We all converged on Quincy's restaurant downtown just in time to join the rush seating line. Squeezed into the far-too-small basement club and found a table only partially blocked by a large pole (in my seat, I could see two of the three-man group).

Let's talk about the environment a bit first. The place was stuffed. Literally. Clubs normally oversell tickets, so they have a full room even if a chunk of people don't show up. Everyone showed up last night. There were extra seats blocking the fire exits, the escape routes... If there had been a fire, we would have all been flamb‚ed.

One thing about the Worms fans there... they were a decidedly geeky bunch. There was a hell of a lot of glasses and acne to be found, and the weight scale was skewed to the far ends of the spectrum. Not a big deal, given that was one of those guys back in high school, but kind of funny to see.

Guy sitting at the table with us looked just like a young Dave Foley (of 'Kids in the Hall' and 'NewsRadio fame'). Too young to be him, but still kind of bizarre.

Service was pretty darn atrocious. I know it's standard club procedure to hire chicks that look good in tight revealing clothing, but can't they do just a little IQ screening on these bimbos? Not only was the young lady serving our table vastly confused by having to oversee five tables, but she very nearly forgot to charge us at all -- which wouldn't be so bad, but she came and actually had to ask me if we'd paid yet.

Yes, I told her the truth. Shut up.

Our first appetizer platter took like an hour to arrive, and then we had to remind her a dozen times that we ordered two platters, not one. Of course, the big delay got us a free pizza. Plus by the time they got to our second platter, they were out of the nachos they use to fill the majority of the plate and were obligated to increase the amount of ribs, wings and zucchini sticks to compensate. It's all about timing, really.

What can I say about the show? These guys are brilliant. Everyone knows what great songwriters they are, but these are a bunch of guys so in tune with each other than they can verbally jam for hours without playing a note and still have the audience in the palm of their hands.

The music was killer. They played the biggies, of course. 'Jesus' Brother Bob', 'Celine Dion', 'I Am Cow' and the rest. They even played a couple Christmas songs, as they were hawking their old Christmas album. I've never heard 'Santa's Gonna Kick Your Ass' before. Hee hee!

Two full sets, plus two encores, ending off with 'Big Fat Road Manager'. Oh man, my belly hurt so bad.

I very nearly stopped breathing during 'The Mounted Animal Nature Trail'. The joke of the song, for those who haven't heard it, is a nature trail lined with the results of a taxidermy shop. The chorus goes:

And the dog goes...
And the cow goes...
And the bear goes...
And the pig goes...
And the crow goes caw!, I guess it was alive
You can see all this
On the Mounted Animal Nature Trail

...with silence after each line ('cept the crow bit). The audience started filling in the silence with animal noises, resulting with the band giving perplexed looks and throwing out comments like 'Shut up!' and 'The animals are DEAD, see? That's the JOKE! It's FUNNY!' Of course the audience got the joke, but they were just having way, WAY too much fun to stop.

Other high notes:

• The audience yelling 'WOO!' every time Mike raised his arm for half the show.
• Big Momma's House jokes
• Chris's super power: Finding walls

Whew! Definitely worth the $15 tickets to get in.

Hey! Let's talk about this on the forum! (Shameless plug)

How was Wednesday?

Seen any good movies?

Take me home, big fella