Bruce’s Best, Weird Birthday

by Bruce Grimes

Weird Al had a concert for Bruce to celebrate Bruce’s birthday. It was awesome! The concert was at Treasure Island Resort & Casino, where Weird Al played a regular concert earlier in the year. 

Weird Al also made Bruce a big birthday cake, and served it with Chinese food. Bruce’s favorite dish is Sweet & Sour Chicken. Weird Al made a batch from scratch, in his tour bus. 

He travels in his tour bus from one city to the next. It’s made from a train car that Weird Al put on an old bus chassis so he could take it on the road. Inside, there are three bathrooms and a big oven for baking and cooking. There’s also a record player to spin tunes, and a sound booth for recording and listening to music. He uses the booth to write some of his best parody songs, like “Trapped in the Drive Through.”

On the night of Bruce’s birthday, August 11, Weird Al invited Bruce onto the bus for a special dinner celebration! There was a lift for Bruce’s wheelchair. 

Weird Al served the delicious Chinese food to Bruce and his friends. For dessert, he served chocolate & strawberry shortcake, and banana split smoothies. 

Then at showtime, Weird Al invited Bruce and his guests Andrew and Rafi to sing “Trapped in the Drive Through” with him on-stage. They also sang a bunch of his old songs together, including Bruce’s favorites “Like a Surgeon” and “I Want a New Duck.” 

Bruce was nervous to be singing on-stage with his favorite performer. After a couple of songs, Weird Al asked the audience to sing “Happy Birthday” to Bruce. It was so loud! It was outside the amphitheater, and the wildly happy sounds of the song traveled up, up, up into the air above the town. People could hear it from as far away as Missouri and Canada. They started singing too! Pretty soon it wasn’t just the audience singing – it was people across the U.S. and Canada singing together to wish Bruce a happy birthday. 

It was so much fun that Weird Al and Bruce celebrated the same way every year after that.