I would not have gone to see "Weird Al" Yankovic if it weren't for Luci. After all, I do art and travel and Florida. Weird Al? Outside my wheel house. Mostly.

But I love Luci. She's one of my oldest friends and, after exposing her Weird Al addiction to our readers, I felt duty-bound to bring her to his concert at Mahaffey Theater on Friday night.

Two middle-aged women at a Weird Al concert? I'm not sure what you're expecting here, Loafers, but, well, here we go.

We park, get our tickets and — whoa — find out we have passes to the meet and greet.

"I… I get to meet him?" she says, her eyes big.

"Looks that way," I tell her.

"Have I ever shown you my Gary Busey face? What if I have a heart attack?" she asks.

"Then we call 911," I tell her. "Do NOT make your Gary Busey face for Weird Al."

"I remember when we were younger. You took me to that club in Ybor, it was called 911."

"It wasn't in Ybor. It was on Franklin. That was the address, 911 Franklin Street. I need you to stay with me here."

"I'm good. I'm OK.OH MY GOD we're in the ORCHESTRA?"

"Yes, it looks that way. I need you to breathe now."

"You can have whichever of my cats you want."

"That didn't work when you tried to give me one of your daughters 15 years ago and it isn't going to work today."

We take our seats.

"I can get to the stage from here."

"I really wish you wouldn't."

"That guy's security, right?. He probably won't let me get on the stage, will he?"

"Let's not find out."

And then the concert starts and you know what? It's friggin' awesome. Yankovic opens with "Tacky" ("Happy") and enters from the house, not the stage and oh my god you would think we were watching the damn Rolling Stones based on the audience reaction. There's a polka medley that includes — wait for it — Miley Cyrus, followed by a beautiful (non-polka) "Perform This Way" Lady Gaga parody, with Yankovic adorned in purple octopus tentacles.

"I have that in blue," Luci says. You'd have to know her to understand she could be serious.

Yankovic is still weird, just like I remember him from the '80s.

There are three groups of people: People who go to his shows, people who don't care either way, and people who will never go. I don't care about the third group, those of you in the first attend no matter what I write, but that second group? Yeah, you're my people. And I think the next time he comes around, you should go.

Why?

Simply put, he gives good show. He's an athlete, which you realize when he bounces onstage wearing a new costume for every damn song, but you really get it when the show takes a decidedly Wayne Newton turn. All of a sudden, there's this dude who's — what, 56? — doing low squats that I couldn't hold for more than three seconds, and he's doing them repeatedly over a fan's head and she's losing her fucking mind. And then he's climbing over seats and serenading the ladies, flipping his leg up on the back of a chair and doing more deep bends over another lady who may or may not be wearing a tin foil hat and screaming at him like she's 12 and he's Justin-fucking-Bieber. Luci describes this later as "dry humping the audience" but in the business I believe they call it "entertaining."

You have no idea what this sort of thing does to the ladies. Seriously.

Cathy Salustri

He keeps stripping off shirts that he wears in layers, one after another. The show had, at this point, a distinctly sexy feel, which is not something I would ever have pictured myself writing in reference to Weird Al Yankovic. He is one hell of an showman, he has a lovely body (we see more of it than I imagined, though mostly through fitted dress pants and — in a moment when I really thought I would have to dial 911 for Luci — an exposed chest), and I’m having a wonderful night. All too quickly, it’s over and those of us with after-show passes get herded first to the left side of the auditorium where an usher jokes with Lu about heroin — “Those were the days,” Lu says, to which the usher responds, “Still are!” — and then into a long dark hallway that leads down, then up.

"This is how they got the Jews to the showers," Lu whispers. I shoot her a dirty look.

"What? I'm Jewish. I can say that."

"Yeah, well, until they hand us a bar of soap, I think we're safe," I tell her. "It's more like a damn horror film. There's nowhere to go if someone tries to kill us."

We do not die.

You can't buy this level of swank anymore.

Cathy Salustri

Instead, we end up in a dressing room with excellent ’70s-era swank, where we
joke around, mostly about my inability to take a selfie and her Gary Busey face. Then, the man of the hour arrives.

"HOLY SHIT! He's in the hallway. What if I pass out? Will you catch me?"

"No."

"Seriously? That's shitty."

"No, shitty would be if I lied to you. If you fall, I won't catch you."

And then we get to see Yankovic, and he's sweet and gracious and lets Lu put her arm around him and tells me he likes the article I wrote and then holds up his wedding ring finger to Luci.

"Sorry," he says, shrugging and smiling and I totally don't melt just a teeny tiny bit. Lu holds up her wedding band in return and wiggles her fingers… and giggles.

"Well, me, too," she tells him, then leans closer and whispers to Yankovic in a sinister voice, "But someday."

We all laugh, his crew snaps a photo, and we leave, walking through the rain to our car.

Yeah, definitely worth it. It was fun, but am I an Al-aholic?

No. I mean, I only go for my friend. I can quit at any time.