Tony is my friend from the opera. Tony knows everything there is to know about popular culture, and is a twelve-year-old boy at heart. Tony went to see Adam West host an evening of comedy in Olympia:

My God, you will not BELIEVE the adventure we had with Batman.

We arrived at the Go Club in Olympia at about 6:30 (crappy commute), and there was already a pretty big line; there were three comedians going on, and West was MC'ing. They let us in at about 7pm.

The Go Cllub is a pretty comfy little establishment with a faintly '80's patina to the decor; I got a Cape Codder with an umbrella in it, and nursed it for a long while. After about an hour of waiting, Adam West took the stage, rather nattily dressed in a tweed jacket and sweater. When he first took the stage, the Batman theme was thundering on the PA, and the audience roared. Then Adam yelled into the Mic, "Everyone do the Batusi!", and he proceeded to do an awkward and hilarious variation of that venerable Batdance. From there, however, it all turned to shit.

West looked quite well-preserved, but he was obviously drunk. After the Batusi, he proceeded to slur out several bad Bat-jokes, and harp on about how the producers of the Batman movies snubbed him. His mood grew increasingly sour as he continued his "routine". At one point he grabbed the backside of a passing waitress and asked her, "Do you wanna see my Batarang?" A few very uneasy titters came from the audience, as though this were a joke; I suppose it could have been part of his act, but from the expression on her face, I doubt it.

After 15 minutes, he was finished and made a bee-line straight for the bar. A small cluster of people (Rita and I included) converged on him to get an autograph. It was a good thing we had a DVD and an 8x10 for him to sign, because he had no merchandise of his own there. That, however, didn't stop him from demanding $10 for each autograph from us!! Seriously! My disillusionment was stockpiling fast, but we had driven 80 miles to meet him, and I was damn sure gonna get his John Hancock.I gave him a twenty, which he shoved into his front pocket with a gruff and perfunctory 'thank you'.

He signed my DVD; his hand was slightly moist with condensation from his bourbon glass, and so in addition to his autograph, my Batman DVD now includes a smudged thumbprint of his, and a couple of drops of water (or more likely, bourbon) on it. Rita fared a little better and at least didn't wind up with any foreign substances or pawprints on it. We turned away from him and were nearly out the door when things REALLY got unbelievable.

Rita grabbed my shoulder and pointed me back in Adam West's direction. "Oh, my God! Look!" she said. I turned around to see what drew her attention. Adam, it seems, was in a heated conversation with a very tall guy with a mullet. Then Mulletman jabbed his index finger into West's chest and growled out something about Batman insulting his girlfriend (we were about 75 ft away, and the sound system was loudly pumping out music between comics, so we didn't catch the whole exchange). West was becoming extremely agitated, and barked out an apology with all of the hostility of an insult. Then the guy with the mullet grabbed Adam West's lapel with his left hand, and with his right, TOOK A POKE AT ADAM WEST. No shit. Some guy with a mullet coldcocked Batman! Then several Go Club staffers converged on the two of them, a bouncer and bartender each grabbing one of Mulletman's arms. We couldn't see anything else through the crowd , but I asked a woman who was just a few feet from the fracas what happened (though we had a suspicion). She said that Mulletman was the companion of the waitress at the receiving end of Adam West's bat-paws, and the guy was (obviously) PISSED. I'm surprised that all of this wasn't in the papers.






Ok, I'm only kidding. Being a distraction to those around me is a sworn mission in my life, too...Mwhahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!
I didn't go visit Batman, either. It was $20 admission, and he was only MC'ing a gaggle of comics, plus--Holy Commute, Batman!--it woulda been almost 2 hours one-way to get to Olympia.
Yes it is very, very, very slow at work today. Can you tell?

Everybody admire Tony, for he is a brilliant and funny man. He asked me to reiterate that the preceding is all made up, straight out of his head, and that anyone representing Adam West should remember that before suing him. So, for the record, it's all lies. Lies, lies, lies.