Being Totally Crushed Out on Kelley Deal & Sarah Silverman Is a Really Good Feeling

BY LIZ

I saw the Breeders two Saturdays ago! It was my first time seeing them since they opened for Nirvana, 20 years ago this November. They played all of Last Splash and were glorious, just so on and obviously having a really cool and awesome time. They looked happy and it made me happy (did you read that super-sweet Buzzfeed thing that Matthew Perpetua wrote about "being a music fan in your 20s vs. your 30s"? The second half of #4 is absolutely how I feel about the Breeders and so many other bands/musicians I've loved a long time), and every song sounded perfect and better to me than anything on Last Splash had ever sounded before.

And never in my life had I really been like "Yeahhhhh, Kelley Deal!", but now I'm just crazy for her. She was radiant and wearing that goofy "USA" t-shirt with dangly earrings, a sort of jock/middle-school-art-teacher hybrid thing that was very inspiring to me in its what-the-fuck-ness. Kelley was all smiles the whole set and got all dramatic with her hand gestures and vocal delivery when she sang "I Just Wanna Get Along," really acting out the lyrics, really committed. Plus her head-bopping at 0:53 is divine.



P.S. Amazing fact, as semi-recently tweeted by Leah Petrakis who always has amazing things to say about good music: "Kelley learned guitar two weeks before they recorded Last Splash whilst working a full-time job and balancing a heroin addiction as well." Total superhero.

Another rad thing I experienced recently was seeing Sarah Silverman and Jen Kirkman and Jenny Slate at Largo last Thursday night. (Doug Benson and Todd Glass were also there, but the girls were just the best). I'm still as in love with Sarah Silverman as I was when I wrote about her Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee episode in June, only about a thousand times more so, since I've now sat in a small theater and gazed upon her as she told jokes about periods and Annie and sex emails and Zach Galifianakis. She was wearing these tight jeans and near-knee-high lace-up boots and a great grayish-white t-shirt and a red plaid flannel and the most majestic hair poof that I really want to copy. Sorry to be all focused on "looks" but what am I going to do, sit here and try to type up all her jokes for you? No, no way. Although I will say that she told a story about going out to lunch with Kanye West and how they both use the "Notes" app on their phones and ended up sharing their "Notes" notes with each other, which is pretty adorable.

Anyway, isn't this picture of Sarah Silverman and Tig Notaro so beautiful? It is.



Jen Kirkman was so tough too and I just rewatched her Frederick Douglass Drunk History and it remains the best Drunk History and I feel compelled to report that she now has black hair and the freshest bangs. At one point she did an impression of her mom and her Massachusetts accent was brilliant, like the opposite of Jack Nicholson in The Departed/every Hollywood actor who's ever attempted a Boston accent ever except maybe Matt Damon although the jury's still out on that.

Oh and Jenny Slate! One of her opening lines was "Like many Americans, I come from a haunted house from Massachusetts," which I really wish I could say every day and claim as my own. And if you've never seen the Bestie x Bestie episode about "what is wrong with books," it's a real treat. The first 46 seconds are unremarkable but the remaining 55 seconds are gold.

All these magnificent women from New England, and from Ohio, to bring it back to the Breeders. They make me feel like you can just have fun forever, if you're smart and thoughtful and tough about it, and that's a really good feeling.