cassi and braeden meet tomáš kubínek and the symphony

Tonight Braeden and I went to the world premiere of Tomáš Kubínek Meets the Symphony. Braeden had seen Dr. Professor Kubínek perform a few years ago out in Utah and when he saw that he was coming here he said, "We have to go!" The performance he'd seen before was just Kubínek's solo act (since this was the first ever performance in concert with an orchestra) and he said the solo act was a little better—which I could understand since there seemed to be a fair amount of what can only be described as musical filler—but this show was great, too. I'd never seen Kubínek before and I thought he was a riot. After entering the auditorium held aloft on a litter carried by two strong men, he took the stage and told us that for his opening act he would drink a toast to the orchestra without using his hands. He filled a crystal glass with wine, placed it on his forehead, then proceeded to both whistle and play a tune on his banjolele (a mini banjo-ukulele combo: this is the second time in a month we've seen this instrument played. The first time was at the Weepies concert last Tuesday when Matt the Electrician played on in his set) while contorting himself so that he could remove the glass from his forehead with his kneecaps then crouch and lift it from the stage between his teeth to drink it. Pure craziness. Another highlight was when he strapped a contraption with two shoes attached on sticks to each of his legs and danced the Dance of the Six Shoes. It has to be seen to be believed.

After the show we went over to Prairie Lights for an after-hours Anthology reading (I helped letterpress the posters for it on Tuesday). We randomly saw Jacob there with this guy Scott who's in town for the Non-Fiction Now conference going on right now on campus so we chatted with them before it all started. The readings themselves were varied and amazing. Some of the highlights were Amy Scott's song on the ukulele about Iowa and the final reading about a king mosquito with faucets for knees.

It was a great night.