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| From left: Julie and Sunshine |
We came to love the Nerdist when we discovered The Walking Dead. Immediately, Hardwick became our zombie trauma grief counselor every Sunday night as we decompressed from the rotten flesh-filled stress fest that is Walking Dead. Eventually, we started to realize that Hardwick wasn't just a slave to undead decompression for the living, but he was a stand-up comedian with so many irons in the fire that he was about to give Ryan Seacrest a run for his money. Hardwick has a successful podcast, late night show, comedy tours, YouTube channel, is a magazine contributor, and has shown up in a little bit of everything.
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| From left: Julie and Sunshine |
Well, again, almost too late, we found out he was headed to Portland, and we quickly snagged ourselves a couple of tickets. I've been to a ton of events where I've met the performers, so I thought maybe, just maybe, we could scratch meeting someone famous off of our baby list. I also know that it takes about six weeks to get a press pass most of the time, and we were a week out from his show, so I couldn't even use my press magic to make anything happen, so we went in with a tweet and a prayer.
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| Red hot zombie guts |
When we arrived at Helium Comedy Club, we soon realized that we should have sprung for the reserved seating, but still, there's not a bad seat in the house. Our waitress was amazing, and despite the reviews that said we'd never get service more than once, she was very attentive to everyone in her section throughout the entire show. We ordered the hummus plate, and it was amazing. While we waited, we entertained ourselves and the tables around us by playing with our zombie finger puppets who exploded in red hots every time they fell over....because we stuffed them with Red Hots so they would have guts...don't ask, I can't give an explanation. We're just giant children.
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| Tomatoes don't fit inside zombies |
Jon Dore and Shane Torres tickled our funny bones so much that we totally lost it in a googol of giggles.. They were pretty funny in a strange awkward sort of way.
When Hardwick came out, we both felt like we were on the set of Talking Dead, except he made us laugh so hard that we were pretty sure we were going to die with jokes that pretty much had zero to do with flesh eating monsters.
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| Chloe Dykstra |
Immediately, the most awkward of all things happened. Someone threw a pair of red lacy panties on the stage...at the Nerdist...who obviously had no idea what to do about the situation. Uncomfortably, he held them up, tried to figure out what to do with them, and stared at them like they were going to explode. Then we got a bonus! Chloe Dykstra, Hardwick's girlfriend, bounded down from the sound booth to rescue him from the evil death grip of the red panties by whisking them far enough away that they lost their power over him. It was like they had some sort of magic within them that prevented his ability to continue on with the show until they were destroyed by his heroin. What do you think about THAT fairy tale?
We listened, we learned, we laughed hysterically, and being the nerd that I am, I took notes. No, no, not because I'm a total weirdo, because I am, but because I hate that moment when you try to remember why a comedian was so funny and you can't remember a single thing. I scribbled on my napkin things that you would only get if you were there...or maybe somewhere else watching him live. Here's a rundown of the undeniable hilarity:
- Dancing Nerdist. Enough said. I will never be able to look at a dance floor the same.
- Weird virus baby. As much as most people would love the idea of taking something that was once living inside of Hardwick and then having it live inside of them, I don't think a virus is what they might be thinking.
- Chris Hardwick, you ruined Finding Nemo for all of us....or did you make it better? I can't decide, it's too confusing.
- Grameltoe.....I'm not even going to go there.
- Devil's Taffy. I have actually replaced all curse words with this phrase. If I am freaking out, I am going to yell, "What in the devil's taffy are we going to do now?"
- I don't want to play marbles....especially not six more times.
- 11 years
- Midwife
- I think I'm turning Japanese, but I"m not very good at it.
- That moment when Hardwick was having Deja Vu
- Face up on the raft son
- Balloon animals will never be the same.....ever.
- Flarb
- Did you read the comic...you know, the one I gave you last year?
- Don't just stand there, help our son!
- I'm sold on kigurumi
- Bonus mom
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| Purple Wolf Kigurumi |
After reading over my nerd notes, I wondered if Hardwick would even remember what any of these mean.
Sadly, our tweets to meet Hardwick fell on blind eyes, as perfect as it would have been to meet him AND Chloe, but we still have about six months to track down a famous person to meet and we weren't about to let that hamper the extraordinary experience we just had.
As we drove home to our families who weren't laughing to death, we wondered how weird we were going to sound for the next six weeks or so that it would take for the giggling to calm down. We laughed even harder when we realized nothing we repeated from the show would be funny to anyone but us.
Even if watching Nerdist perform live didn't cure our mid-life crisis, I'm 100% positive that the amount of laughter we experienced knocked a couple years off. Maybe next year, during our mid-life crisis' first year of life, we'll be able to shake hands with the man who both helped us grieve through the loss of Hershel and the realization of crazy Lizzy and who made us laugh so hard we started to wish we were wearing adult diapers...you know, the cool ones that the astronauts use.
Thanks for the memories Hardwick!!
-Sunshine O'Connor
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