So I got in Monday from Detroit around noon and literally took a nap, showered, and got back into the car to go perform at the Punchline Comedy Club in downtown San Fran. I cut my trip short so I could come back for the punchline show, which ended up working into my favor. Tuesday I received an email from the San Jose IMPROV asking me if I'd like to open for Jim Breuer. Of course I would.
I found out I'd be emcee'ing the show and Kris Tinkle would be feature. Tinkle is one of my favorite comics on stage and off, so I knew good times were ahead. The shows were great, the girls were hot, and the drinks were stiff. Which worked into our favor, since we got to see an extremely chesty female with tig'o'bitties chew on JCH(one of the IMPROV top dogs).
Anyways, on to the good stuff. Jim Breuer was a cool guy, eventhough it took him 4 days to remember my name. But hey, I'm Douchey McNutsack, I just host the show. I don't expect a guy like him to remember. But he tried, and we shared a good conversation or two about baseball and what not. Breuer was always one of my top 10 personal favorite comics, and the guy lived up to what I had hoped for. Awesome.
However, sunday night the guy made me shit my pants. Breuer is well known for doing an EXACT replication of Metallica's James Hetfield on stage. It's dead on, and it's awesome. Anyways, he walks in the door on sunday night, and he's got James Hetfield with him. Wait, what? Yes. JAMES F'N HETFIELD. LEAD SINGER OF METALLICA! I told the club manager "I'm going so gay right now, you don't know how many times I've imagined myself beating the shit out of 10 people to that guy's songs." I NEVER get nervous on stage, but I will admit I was crapping a bit. I hadn't been this nervous since I performed in front of Robin Williams. But this was so much different. James Hetfield is a god. I looked into the balcony where he was sitting during my set, and he wasn't even sitting in a chair. He was standing on a thunder cloud, backlit by the sun, shooting lighting into the audience. It was INSANE.
And that's when things got momentarily lame. Some guy, during my closing joke, walked up to the stage from the back of the theater and popped a squat ON the stage, no more than a foot in front of me. I could reach out and pet him, although I was compelled to do something else to the back of his head that involved my foot. Luckily, I didn't panic, said something witty and funny in relation to the guy, and ended my set gracefully to the best of my abilities. But I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that the Metal God sat there and saw all of this, and I will be the first to say this was not my finest evening. I thought great, now I'm a complete d-bag in front of one of my musical heroes and one of my comedy heroes. "FUCK" I thought to myself. So I went and had that ass clown tossed.
Let me rewind for a quick second to before the show when James and Jim walked in. We had been standing there talking to Larry Bubbles Brown when they walked in, and we immediately fagged out and ditched poor Larry to run upstairs like little girls. We passed by the headliner green room and saw James standing there talking to Jim. From the regular green room we could hear James talking, and hear that voice that is so ridiculously recognizable. We closed the door to the green room and proceeded to rock out on the IMPROV couch, kicking into a spirited air band version of master of puppets. Tinkle was Hetfield, I was Lars, and we rocked that shit. We then opened the green room door and casually strolled by back down to get the show started as if we had no clue who the guys was.
Fast forward to the end of the show. Tinkle and I decided there was no way we were letting Hetfield and Breuer leave without us getting proper visual documentation that we were actually all in the same place, on the same show, at the same time. We decided that we were going to have a battle plan in order to make this happen, and we swung into full effect. We moved the merch table close to the stairs so that leaving would be a little difficult without crossing our path. As the emcee, it's my job to close the show, say goodnight, plug upcoming shows and merch, etc. Usually this takes a minute or two and allows the headliner to make his way to the green room or out the door to be unbothered. However that night, I basically said goodnight, check the website, BYE! I then booked up the ramp to the front door and met a smiling Kris Tinkle: "They haven't left yet dude."
I strolled up to the green room calm, cool, casual, Bond style. I grab my things, walk past the green room and see the guys in chill mode and think "jackpot" as I stroll back down the stairs. We stood at the merch table selling t-shirts, shaking hands, kissing babies, signing boobies, all the shit that we don't actually do but would like to think we do. Actually, Tinkle had his share of hands to shake and shirts to sign and sell. In the meantime, I was avoided like the plague since I was the lowly host, which was fine with me because it gave me the opportunity to focus on achieving a succesful photo to write a boring blog about for people who have half a clue who these guys are. They stroll down the stairs, I shake hands with Breuer and say thanks for letting me open the program, and ask for the picture. Biggity bam, it's on, smile, cheese, CLICK. Then the best part: Hetfield leans over and says to Tinkle, "so where's MY Tinkle t-shirt?" Tinkle scrambles to come up with one of the only shirts he had left: a baby blue Kris Tinkle "I did it" t-shirt. Awesome. The lead singer of one of the most, if not the most important metal band of all time will be walking around sporting a baby blue Kris Tinkle shirt. That's metal.
Awesome weekend, even better ending to it.
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