Not Stone Temple Pilots

Got up early this morning to go to Nickelodeon's upfront, which is a TV/cable staple where networks reveal their shows for the upcoming season. So at 8:45 in the a.m., after watching a man wipe-out on the ice, I show up with 700 other people at a Roseland tricked out to look like a middle-school cafeteria. Complete with women wearing blue aprons and hairnets, lunch ladies, handing out donuts and chocolate milk. So the presentation starts, we're sitting in the "gymnasium" with big orange banners reading "Nick is # 1" and "The Future Is Now" at plastic lunchroom tables as they parade every top level executive past us. The VP of ad-sales even dresses up like a coach, and has his staff dress in warm-up suits, so he can scream and make them do push-ups while talking about their sales approach ("50% is us talking and 50% is us waiting to talk"). And then, after the last speaker, they push out two risers that have one guy sitting on each in a big, headless animal suit, and say, "Here's our surprise musical guest, The Flaming Lips."
Holy shit.
The FL sing a song about SpongeBob, which is the connection, and apparently Nick got Alanis Morissette last year, so maybe one should expect a big time musical act. Still. I think that there were maybe 7 other people in the crowd who knew who they were. The guy across from me, a TVLand guy, was like, "He sounds like Adam Sandler." And I smiled and said, "But they're great," and then he got embarrassed/pissed, so I smiled some more, and he felt renewed confidence and said "If you close your eyes, exactly like Adam Sandler."
Half the people left before the second song. It was really so surreal, all these suited up business people, sitting in a gymnasium, staring without reaction, as enormous balloons drop from the rafters and bounce around the room, while Wayne Coyne’s pretending he's ever done a show this early in a morning, sporting a three piece suit and throwing confetti into the motionless crowd, while a number of extras jump up and down in animal costumes waving flashlights, as close-ups of band members' faces and nostril hairs screen behind them. The show ends as Coyne inflates a yellow balloon with a helium machine until it's bigger than any balloon I've ever seen that's not in the Thanksgiving Day Parade and then it bursts.