TVSquad

On a night when Seth MacFarlane's mother is willing to come onstage and in exchange for her son paying off one of her credit cards, she'll say, "Suck my dick, Carnegie Hall," you know anything is possible.

Last night MacFarlane and Alex Borstein (she voices Lois on Family Guy) played to a sold out room at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium. While their benefit show for the Writer's Guild of America East and the Actors Fund might have seemed out of place in the house that music from the likes of Beethoven and Bach helped to build, the two comedians wasted no time in making the whole room feel like a filthy dive bar. Obscene. Insulting. Vulgar. Enjoyable.

Right from the start it was no holds barred, as Borstein introduced herself and the theme for the evening: pretend you're on the subway and you just picked up "some retard's iPod."

Naturally, you'd take a listen. So starting from A and progressing to Z, the audience was treated to a lounge act of epic proportions. A song for every letter, the show lasted over two hours and included accompaniment from an extremely talented jazz trio -- all players from the Family Guy orchestra.

All the bases were covered, and while the expected numbers from Family Guy were performed (we'll get to those), there were plenty of other songs that as MacFarlane put it, "have no business being sung the way we're about to sing them." It should be noted that during the entire evening in true lounge act fashion, MacFarlane was drinking not water, but straight Jack Daniels out of a rocks glass. Was it actually whiskey? I'd like to say yes, and if so, the guy can hold his liquor because his voice never faltered once. From his regular monotone drawl (the voice of Brian), to Peter, Quagmire, Stewie, Ronald Regan, William Shatner, and Roger the alien (from American Dad), the guy makes a pretty good stab at becoming Rich Little's successor if he can add some more celeb voices to his repertoire.

Over-exaggerating everything, the duo hit on such classics as "Don't Stop Believin'," the Bee Gees' "How Deep is Your Love," "Jessie's Girl," and "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music. Keep in mind that whenever possible, lyrics were changed to something sexually explicit or vulgar and in the case of "Edelweiss," Borstein "protested" the singing of the song and MacFarlane responded by telling her that "Carnegie Hall was not the f*ckin' place to bring her Hebrew baggage." Ha! See what I mean? No one was safe.

Other random performances included the opening monologue from Masters of the Universe, the old Juicy Fruit gum jingle (The taste is gonna move ya!), the theme from Family Ties, The Neverending Story theme, and Borstein as Lindsay Lohan as The Little Mermaid's Ariel singing "Part of Your World" -- only she was collecting ben-wah balls instead of forks. Absolute madness at this point. She followed that one up with Marlee Matlin as Diana Ross singing "Upside Down." That's right. They made fun of deaf people too. I should mention at this point, that both MacFarlane and Borstein have spectacular singing voices.

Now the stuff you've been waiting for. What'd they sing from Family Guy? Honestly, not much - but what we got was gold. Instant classics such as "Shpoopie" and "Prom Night Dumpster Baby" made the cut, but MacFarlane also performed Stewie's rendition of "Rocket Man" and the Quagmire/Patti Lupone duet "The 'Q' Man Loves Nobody."

Also included were a handful or Peter/Lois duets such as "But I'm Yours" (from the Family Guy Live in Vegas album) and a stirring rendition of "You Don't Buy Me Flowers" which devolved into a rant about the lack of oral sex in their marriage.

I suppose I should mention that Janeane Garafalo opened the show, but she and the audience both knew that her presence was merely to kill time and her quick set flew by relatively fast. Once onstage, Borstein and MacFarlane played off of each other effortlessly and made it seem as though they had been performing the act together for years. It just speaks volumes about why Family Guy is so good. Because the people behind the voices (and writing) are.

UPDATE: New York Magazine has a full set list here.