Live Review: Festival Supreme

Despite relocating twice since the last year’s event, Tenacious D’s comedy bacchanal that is Festival Supreme went down smoothly at the Shrine Auditorium and grounds on Saturday.  The venue – essentially the cavernous Shrine Auditorium, with stages in the adjacent gymnasium and its small parking lot – was weirdly tiny enough that it should have been a crowded clusterfuck.  But on the contrary, it was a breeze going from one stage to another even when the festival was at its most crowded.  And unlike most festivals over pumped with indie-machismo trying to out-hip the rest of the crowd, the audience of Festival Supreme had no airs about it – many even dressing up for Halloween in costumes as uncool as Pikachu and, brilliantly, a mash-up of popular X-Men character Wolverine and a banana (see below.)

Highlights included Norm Macdonald ignorantly and blissfully going ten minutes over his allotted twenty minute set rambling about whacking off and draculas, and a live taping of the popular comedy podcast Comedy Bang Bang that included appearances from Zach Galifianakis and Parks and Recreation‘s Adam Scott.  Some of the musical acts didn’t exactly enthrall – a difficult proposition when you’re playing to an outdoor audience that doesn’t know you – but the crowds responded positively enough.  One early set saw a guy costumed as Jesus moshing to a band dressed as 18th century aristocrats.

The festival junkie in me didn’t get any real rock-out moments, but the comedy nerd in me saw Festival Supreme for what it was – a spectacularly planned little festival that went down more masterfully than anyone should ever expect a festival to go down.