Franklin Avenue

Tenacious Surprise
Nice bonus to Saturday night's performance of The Naked Trucker Show at Largo: Tenacious D jumped on stage as the surprise opening act.

What a great place to see the self-proclaimed "Greatest Band on Earth." Largo is a small, intimate venue -- and the crowd went wild when TD's Jack Black and Kyle Gass suddenly appeared. In keeping with the "surprise act" schtick, they introduced themselves as "Standing O," substituting it in place of "Tenacious D" all evening.

But they hit a lot of classic Tenacious D songs, including tracks from their HBO series.

Jeff, a big D fan, was especially psyched. He'd recently caught a glimpse of their free show at the Virgin Megastore, crammed in with a huge crowd of people. He had also seen Naked Trucker open for Tenacious D on the big stage, which made this small performance even more thrilling for him.

A surprise 40-minute set by Tenacious D would seemingly overshadow the Naked Trucker, but the show was tight and fun. Naked Trucker takes a similar alternative comedy approach as "Mr. Show" and "Tenacious D," but spends less time on the music and more building up the comedic buddy relationship between the Naked Trucker (Dave "Gruber" Allen) -- who really is almost completely naked on stage, save his strategically placed guitar -- and sidekick T-Bone ("SNL" alum Dave Koechner), his Jack Daniels-lovin', proud redneck comic foil. "Naked Trucker" won the HBO Comedy Festival's "Best Alternative Show" prize in 2000.

:: Here's Jess and Jeff kickin' it with Tenacious D (or, at least on that night, "Standing O") member Kyle Gass.

:: Keeping on the celebrity (or, in this case, "celebrity") tip, Maria and I met "Survivor" star Rupert Boneham at the show's wrap party. Here's a shot.

:: One more: Roger Daltrey rocked Maria's office Christmas party, along with his band... (ahem), The How. (See it here.) The man still has a bundle of energy on stage, and his voice is as strong as ever. Apparently Daltrey has been doing a series of shows around town; a co-worker saw him elsewhere just two nights later.