A girlfriend of mine won free tickets to go see Michael McKean at Zellerbach Hall on the Berkeley campus last Sunday night. She told me that I was her "back up" in case someone else didn't say yes. I don't mind being back up these days, it suits me just fine. Once 6:00 pm rolled around, and my friend was on her way to pick me up, I was tired. I wasn't sure I wanted to go, but I had committed and I reasoned with myself that Michael McKean might just give us a good show because, a) he was funny (from the likes of Best in Show) b) I watched enough Laverne & Shirley reruns with him as Lenny to keep up his royalites and c) This Is Spinal Tap was one of my all-time favorite movies and his character in the film, David St. Hubbins, as the lead singer, just about kills me whenever I hear one of his lines. McKean did a sort of musical medley coupled with a few "bits", if that's what you could call them. He read one piece of James Thurber's that had us practically rolling in the aisles. Just when I wrote him off as the kind of guy who got his laughs from other famous people's works, he brought out his lovely wife. They sang together and did an old-school husband-wife thing where they sang and had interesting banter, like Ricky and Lucy, but updated.
In the last fifteen minutes of the show, McKean did us a favor and opened up the floor for questions. As the lights showed the audience, I marveled at all of the boomers and older folk who had loved him as much as me. I giggled every time someone asked a Spinal Tap question, which was nearly all of them. One guy flaunted his Spinal Tap arm tatoo and he couldn't have been a day over eighteen. I knew I had to say something. I didn't have a question, I had a compliment. My face reddened and my pulse quickened. I raised my hand.
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