Words by guest contributor Adele Pham and photos by Bao Nguyen

Tim + Eric Live, like a dirty autistic sesame street.

What makes Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job true to its title are the crazy ass graphics, costumes, and camera FX that both reference and ridicule low budget commercials and cable access television. Parodies like “Steve Mahanahan’s child clown outlet”, “Uncle Muscles Hour”, and characters like Dr. Steve Brule and the Beaver Boyz, are half steeped in the zeitgeist of low budge TV/karaoke video, and the perverted bizarre. As expected, it is impossible for the live action Tim & Eric to compare to savage edited genius that makes Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job! original and hilarious.

In the live version, Tim & Eric in the flesh, bounce onto the stage dressed in ridiculous unitards with detachable tail hooks, and over-compensated padded crotches. I dunno, I find small peen funnier, but Tim & Eric are still young, perhaps they haven’t quite owned up to their shortcomings. The two men open the show with a riveting rendition “Diarrhea”, a one word song/dance routine. Flashing randomly behind the two rotund performers, is a jumbo screen rotating a power point slideshow of random hi-resolution pictures, mostly people doing random shit, sometimes in other countries. This is not unlike the engineering of a stadium kids show with Elmo and the gang, or some craptastic mickey mouse bunch. In the future I hope Tim & Eric spin the nursery rhyme theme out of context, vis-a-vis a creepy child clown slave driver.

Sitting, or rather being forced to stand with the emphatic, howling audience, was a bit like watching John Cage’s unabashedly autistic children unchecked, surrounded by other cheering autistic kids, so you know, it’s all kosher. However, there were moments of genius, like guest appearances by public access youtube gems James Quall and David Liebe Hart. This blending of “real” and “fake real” is what makes the 15-minute Tim & Eric adult swim show a refreshingly creepy delight, and the live show, a cavalcade of unforgettable, forgettable personalities.

In between wacky nonsensical skits, clips from the upcoming fourth season would play on the jumbo screen. Get ready for ‘cinco poop-pants’ y’all! At times Tim & Eric would interact with the screen, i.e. using it as a giant karaoke monitor for their songs dance numbers, or a backdrop for whatever random-ass scenario was being enacted. As expected the visuals were spot on, and sound FX were well orchestrated with the performance. If chippy could have enjoyed the spectacle sitting down, chippy would have had a better time. And though the venue was a synagogue, adding to the element of strange, (David Liebe Hart shouted “shalom, it’s a synagogue” during his set), I found myself underwhelmed by the environment, annoyed by the standing crowd’s blind enthusiasm.

Again, watching David Liebe Hart hawk his homemade DVRs after the show to Weird Al Yankovic look-a-like no less, was undoubtedly worthwhile…in a creepy sad way that made me want to clap and yell something esoteric and incoherent. David Liebe Hart is the new Elmo perhaps.