73% of the Way to Being the World's Greatest Rock Band

In many ways, Tenacious D operate like a classic comedy team -- right down to the sight gag of their own appearance, only instead of a fat guy and a skinny guy, it's a fat guy and a slightly fatter guy. The first time I met the D, at the Dust Brothers' recording studio a few years ago, Black was eating a salad. After he finished, he lifted the plate to his face and began lapping up the creamy dressing with his tongue. Pausing to look at me, the plate still parallel to his face, he asked, "Is this disgusting to you? If it is, I will stop."

"You're fine," I said.

"Let me know if you change your mind," Black continued, his tongue still caressing the plate. "I. Will. Stop."

The day after the premiere of The Pick of Destiny, on a sunny patio in Beverly Hills, Black -- in jeans, a Beastie Boys T-shirt and an upscale haircut -- is looking more like the movie star he has become since the D's lean years of playing to alt-comedy groupies at tiny Los Angeles clubs like Largo. Slight variations on his obnoxious Tenacious D persona in films like High Fidelity and School of Rock made Black, with his ever-dancing eyebrows and semi-crazed glare, a much-sought-after comedic presence in Hollywood. His drawing power was enough to make even last summer's largely unfunny Nacho Libre a hit, and he's also graduated to roles in films as mainstream as King Kong and the upcoming romantic comedy The Holiday. Black also recently became a father. His wife, Tanya Haden, is a cellist and the daughter of jazz bassist Charlie Haden. They'd known each other since high school, but the teenage metalhead-stoner version of Black had been too shy to make a move. Then, in 2005, after Black had broken up with his longtime girlfriend, the comedian Laura Kightlinger, he ran into Haden at Frank Black's fortieth birthday party, where the D were the house band. They eloped after dating less than a year.

Gass, meanwhile, seems little changed. He is the fatter one. This afternoon he is wearing a MANDALAY BAY LAS VEGAS T-shirt over baggy blue shorts, along with white tube socks and thong sandals. Much of his hair is gone, and aside from a sandy-brown crop-circle of goatee, his cheeks are covered with gray stubble. Outside of the D, Gass has played smaller character roles in films like Elf, and, of late, he's been on the road with his side project, Trainwreck, a mock Southern-rock band.

Black and Gass both grew up in California -- Gass in Walnut Creek, a town north of San Francisco, and Black in the wealthy Los Angeles suburb Hermosa Beach. Gass' father was a fireman and his mother was a dental hygienist. "They get offended by some of the jokes," Gass says. "But the success trumps everything. Not just success, but making money. They were at the premiere last night. It almost didn't matter what I did. I could have been a Maytag repairman, as long as I was bringing home the bacon."

Black's parents were rocket scientists; his mother worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. "I got the 'rock' science," Black says, "but I didn't get the 'et.'" Black's parents split up when he was ten, but not before attempting to save their marriage by joining Family Synergy, a very Seventies, very Southern California polyamorous group. In an interview with GQ, Black described attending nudist camps with his folks, as well as the period in which a woman moved in with the Black family for an ill-fated ménage.

Black started acting as a teenager, appearing in television commercials. He met Gass while studying acting at UCLA, when he joined the Actor's Gang, a political experimental theater group co-founded by Tim Robbins, which Gass belonged to. The D played their first gig in 1994.

"We sort of sniffed each other out as musical cohorts," Gass recalls. "The show we did together was called The Big Show, which was a comic look at the Nicaraguan situation, and we both contributed music to that. Jack was doing some great multi-harmony stuff."

"They were jingles for a Nicaraguan game show," Black says. "If I didn't make it in acting or rocking, I could have been a good jingle maker for commercials."

GASS: It's a good fallback plan.

BLACK: Isn't that what Seinfeld did? After he bailed on his TV show, he just started making commercials.

GASS: He went into advertising. Because, well, he figured, he didn't have a billion dollars yet, so he wanted to push it over. He didn't have enough Porsches, so I think he had to get in there and make some more money.

BLACK: I saw him the other day.

GASS: [In Seinfeld's voice] "Why, if I have a hundred Porsches, do I need fifty more? I don't know. Maybe my penis is too small?"