On Christmas morning, I was handed a wrapped gift from my family that looked suspiciously like a banana. Upon opening it, it was… a banana.
It was labeled “Free Banana”, which I immediately recognized as a reference to a bit by British comedian James Acaster, whose Netflix stand-up series had made me a fan.
I feel like that series is comedic genius, because he not only made me laugh, he made me feel other things too with awkward moments, vulnerability and emotional darkness. Often with a comedy show it seems like your brain adapts to the humor and things seem a little less funny as it goes on, and I think Acaster’s style helps negate that.
The other side of the banana:
So not just a funny reference, but tickets to actually go see him!
The only catch? The show is in Denver.
So like the jet-setters we are, Shannon and I booked a cheap flight to spend a weekend together and go to a stand-up show.
Even without the show the trip was pretty delightful. Somehow it is springtime in the intermountain west, with highs in the low 60s when normally it would be much closer to freezing. We rode the train from the airport to downtown, walked around the city, ate out, stayed the night at a decent hotel, all at a leisurely pace.
The show itself was at the Paramount Theater and was sold out. When the lights went down, a voice announced, “Please welcome the UK’s number one James Acaster tribute act, Craig Simons!” The man who came out explained, “Look, ‘James Acaster’ is the name of the show, not who is in it.” He proceeded to do a few extremely bad impressions of James Acaster, which was a feat since it actually was the man himself. But he kept up the persona for the entire show, in a love-hate kind of theme because while, as a tribute act, he was totally dependent on James Acaster’s success to have his own tribute gig, he was frustrated at being bound by Acaster’s material, wanting to break out on his own.
It is hard to convey the jokes since it is inescapable that my writing about them is not funny, but there was a baggage claim bit that was great, a theme of unexpected Pixar movie references, and the American liberty of being able to view adult content online just by clicking a button that says, “Yes, I’m over 18” compared to having to scan your passport in the UK.
There was a also bit about the ABBA tribute group Björn Again trying to murder their ABBA counterparts, but it going wrong and ABBA killing Björn Again instead. But realizing that Björn Again had upcoming shows booked, ABBA had to step in and do them themselves because people would start asking questions if Björn Again didn’t show up to their gigs.
Which brought around full circle to Craig Simons admitting that he’d actually killed James Acaster and so had to take over his shows.
At the end of the show, as he was exiting the stage, Acaster/Simons, ran back to the mic and said, “Oh, tomorrow there’s going to be a Q&A kind of thing at Wax Trax. They’re worried that it is a bit under-promoted, so come!”
Wondering what that was all about, a search led me to an interview with Seth Meyers a few days ago where he took the opportunity to promote his appearance at a record store, Wax Trax, in Denver. Warning, there is a bit of crass humor here should you choose to watch…
Wax Trax was only a mile from our hotel, but the time of the event would make it extremely difficult for us to catch our flight home. Still, out of curiosity we walked over to the shop in the morning to check it out. It was three and a half hours before the event and there were already people lining up to see him. I’ve no idea how it went because it is a pretty small record shop, and if even a 10th of the people at the show last night stopped by, never mind the announcement on national TV, the place would be completely overrun.
But we had a nice chat with the people at the front of the line, asking them to say hi to him for us since we had to get back to Salt Lake.
