Don't bother to turn off your cellphone. That's not something you usually hear at the theater, but it's the MO at "Wits," Minnesota Public Radio's comedy and music show aimed at a Tweeting, cellphone-addicted demographic. At the third-season finale, which aired Saturday night in front of a live audience at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, the audience was encouraged to keep one eye and both thumbs on Twitter throughout the show.

It's public radio for hipsters -- "Splendid Table" for people who love the cooking show mainly because of the great "Saturday Night Live" "Delicious Dish" parodies. In other words, it's irony-addled fun, with a dose of whiskey on the side.

The pre-show was like a trippy ballgame, first with an outdoor block party featuring food trucks, beer and wine, a brass band and two lithe dancers outfitted head to toe in orange Spandex. Inside the theater, whiskey-and-ginger cocktails were served at the foot of the stage, while a peddler rolled a cooler of Pabst Blue Ribbon up and down the aisles. Barb Abney, DJ from 89.3 the Current, spun '90s nostalgia hits like "U Can't Touch This."

On the back wall of the stage, a projection showed the latest Tweets about MC Hammer, or about the other people in the audience -- "pale nerds," wrote one Tweeter, "they might be white people," wrote another.

The last Tweet was in reference to the show's musical guests, Brooklyn-based alt-rockers They Might Be Giants. The band opened with the winking "Older." The lyrics: "You're older than you've ever been and now you're even older."

Humorist and author Amy Sedaris was the audience favorite. The Second City alum and "Strangers With Candy" star is the unofficial mascot of the PBR-drinking, cupcake-baking, Hammer-loving set. The author of "Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People," whose version of an embroidered pillowcase is to stencil on some flowers with a marker pen, Sedaris is a master of delivering insane sentences with a straight face.

The height of her craft came during the audience Q&A, in which girls in cute dresses much like Sedaris' and guys in glasses and beards asked etiquette questions like, "So you've stabbed the wrong person. What goes into the gift basket?" Her answer? A nice sewing kit. No card -- "They'll know who it's from."

Sedaris and They Might Be Giants also competed in arbitrary improv contests, and guested in comedy sketches starring host John Moe and "Mystery Science Theater 3000" stars Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, including a "Mad Men" parody.

The show closed with one last ironic wallop on the great Minnesota tradition of the singalong. Here, on one of the hottest nights of the summer so far, everyone joined in on "The 12 Days of Christmas."

The show may be streamed at minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/programs/wits.

Sharyn Jackson • 612-673-4260