Last Tuesday night, we saw Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark at Terminal Five in Manhattan. I didn't know a whole lot about them, although I had heard some of their songs before, and we listened to some of their other stuff recently in preparation for the show. We were actually supposed to go in October, but Andy McCluskey had to get surgery, and now he has titanium in his knee. And he's still very active on stage, dancing around when he's not playing bass.

His voice also sounds exactly like it did back in the day. The band's music tends to be very energetic snyth-pop, and most of the songs had videos playing on a screen. Before playing "Tesla Girls," Andy made a point of saying that he wasn't going to get political or mention Elon Musk. "If You Leave," the one we both knew best, was preceded by a mention that it was in a John Hughes movie. So was "Tesla Girls," actually. Other ones I recognized were "Joan of Arc," "Enola Gay," "Electricity," and "Pandora's Box," the latter of which is about Louise Brooks.

Wasn't there also some news story recently about the name of the Enola Gay being censored? They didn't reference that one.

The opener was Walt Disco from Scotland, and while nothing they played stood out for me, they were pretty good.


Yesterday, we got last-minute tickets to "Weird Al" Yankovic at Madison Square Garden. This was the first time I'd been to that venue, but Beth had been there before. This was part of the Bigger and Weirder Tour, which had a larger band than the standard four-piece that's played with Al for decades, including two horn players.That allowed them to include songs in the set that weren't normally played live, including the They Might Be Giants style parody "Everything You Know Is Wrong" and the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young take-off "Mission Statement."

The extra members all joined in on the costume and theme changes as well.

And backing vocalist Monique Donnelly dressed, sang, and danced as Lucy during "Ricky," which apparently hadn't been played live in forty years prior to this tour.

I remember Al saying before he was retiring his Michael Jackson parodies due to the allegations against him, but they were both back for this tour, "Fat" in its entirety and "Eat It" as part of a parody medley. The medley also included "It's All About the Pentiums," and the allegations against Diddy are more relevant today than the Jackson ones. I don't think I'd ever heard "Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me" live either. I get the impression that dumb forwards are now more common on Facebook than in email, or at least they are for me, but the song is still relevant otherwise. For "Polkamania!", they did the usual thing of showing sped-up versions of the original videos on a screen.

One thing I wondered about recently is why "We Don't Talk About Bruno" from Encanto didn't come right after the Bruno Mars song, but I know there has to be a flow for the medley to work. As with the stripped-down tours Al did earlier, each show includes one straight cover, in this case Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al." The opener for the show was Puddles Pity Party, an abstract performance art kind of thing with a sad clown singing a strange mix of songs. This included an old non-Al parody, the Gilligan's Island theme to the tune of "Stairway to Heaven" (this kind of thing works with pretty much anything in common meter), with an interlude about Kevin Costner. I was wearing a TMBG T-shirt and Beth a Sparks one, and we both got compliments.


There isn't too much else I would consider worth mentioning. We did meet my sister at a waffle place in Cherry Hill, where the owner said he used actual Belgian dough. That's probably not the kind of thing I'd notice myself, but some people who probably know better than I do say it makes a difference. They did have quite good food. I had a breakfast waffle with ham and eggs, and a sweet one with strawberries and bananas.


Speaking of food, I don't think I've written on here about how we've been getting meal delivery kits for a while now. We originally tried Gobble, then switched to Every Plate, which is cheaper. Beth never learned to cook and I can only make a few things, so we mostly had frozen food and takeout prior to this. It's annoying because it's an extra thing to do on work nights (not every work night; we get three meals a week) and it means washing a lot more dishes (or, more accurately, the same dishes over and over), but I'll definitely say it's improved my diet, although I still do tend to leave out onions when they're part of the recipe, as well as hot ingredients because we're both wimps in that respect. We've both noticed that the potato wedges tend to be quite good, even though all I really do is cut them, add some oil, and heat them in the oven. And I tend to be pickier about potatoes than most people I know.

Well, I'll see ya. Sayanora, sayanora, ayonawa, adinawa.