The Blue Man Group, Dr. Tobias Fünke & Me

I love Arrested Development. For a lot of people who know me, that’s not news by any means. In fact, I love it so much that I’m recording a podcast about it with my friend Miles Rausch (and his “Hey, Brother” Bryce).

But for as much as I love Arrested Development, there are facets of the show that I can only appreciate from a distance. One such facet is Dr. Tobias Fünke’s desperate attempt to serve as an understudy for the Blue Man Group. Even though I know about the Blue Man Group, I really have no direct experience with them other than knowing they paint themselves blue (much better than Tobias does) and play awesome music on instruments made of PVC pipe and whatnot.

Fortunately, because of my cooler-than-me wife, my non-experience with the Blue Man Group came to a glorious end last weekend. Blue Man Group was in Springfield on February 18th and Lindsie and I were right there in the front (actually more like 300th) row, enjoying the spectacle that is a Blue Man Group performance.

While I’m not sure I’d pay another $28 each for our seats, which were about 10 rows back in the very top balcony, I will say that the Blue Man Group puts on a really entertaining, crowd-engaging performance that ended up being a lot of fun. For not saying a single word throughout the entire performance, they’re pretty funny. And listening to them play classic rock and pop covers on xylophones made of PVC pipe was nothing short of awesome. In fact, I’d probably pay more to see an entire concert of just that, but I have a feeling that won’t be in the cards anytime soon.

All that is to say, I now have a better idea of why Tobias is so desperate to become a Blue Man and, thanks to my wife, I find Arrested Development even funnier than I found it before. Which is an incredibly impressive accomplishment.

Best of all, my wife had a local clothing store print up the shirt you see up at the top of this post basically overnight. For all of you (sad, empty) non-Arrested Development fans, that’s Dr. Fünke himself, as a Blue Man on a blue shirt. Pretty funny, and cool of my wife to get that taken care of with only 36-48 hours to make it happen.

That’s all I’ve got. I’ll have more info on that podcast I mentioned later on (as far as when it’ll go live, etc.). If you haven’t checked out the Blue Man Group, it’s a fun performance. If you haven’t checked out Arrested Development, it’s an incredibly funny show that is absolutely deserving of your attention.

Thanks to my wife for a fun night and a funny set of matching shirts.

-Mike