It Takes Two to Tango and Cash

Comedy is for Humans, Mundial (505 E 12th St), 8:00PM
Hosts: Baron Vaughn and Joshua Grosvent
Guest Director: Noah Starr
Guest Host: Brooke Van Poppelen
Sherwin Smith
Mandy Stadtmiller
Todd Womack
Allison Castillo
Nick Kroll

There's a Snapple flavored drink called What-a-Melon. That's a clever name. If there was a drink for today, I'd call it What-a-Wednesday, and it would taste like laughter! Wednesdays in the city are chock full of great comedy. Rififi hosts its weekly showcase event, Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale's Invite Them Up, Todd Levin and Bob Powers produce their semi-regular reading series How to Kick People at Mo Pitkin's, and Like2Laugh.com presents its very own stand-up show, the Voodoo Luau at Otto's Shrunken Head. But tonight, I had made plans to see the latest addition to Wednesday's comedy workout, Comedy is for Humans. Hosted by Baron Vaughn and Joshua Grosvent, Humans features is different from most comedy shows in the city in that it features three comics doing 25 minute extended sets (the tagline: i like my sets long).

Baron and Josh are the first two people I really got to know in the downtown scene after I performed with Josh at an Otto's show back in January. I ran into him at Rififi later that week where he introduced me to Baron, and the three of us left together and split a cab across town to catch a show at the People's Improv Theatre (PIT). Closed out of the show, we settled for a late night dinner at a nearby bar and grill popular among the PIT actors. We entertained ourselves with fruitless waitress flirtation and stimulating conversation about comedy and music. I had an amazing night talking shop with those guys and I was blown away by their collective knowledge of comedy history - between the two of them, they must have seen every sitcom and every stand-up special of the last thirty years. When the show ended and the actors trickled into the bar, I was introduced to Shayna Ferm and Kurt Braunohler and others whom I can't remember (Shayna gave me her business card. Shayna's pretty). The best thing to come out of that storied evening? At the urging of Baron and Josh, I signed up for a MySpace account as soon as I got home.

The two have been nice enough to keep in touch since then while I spent the semester in Denmark and they busied themselves with comedy festivals and regional tours. They teamed up to create Humans and presented their first show back in March. Tonight's show was scheduled to start at 8:00, but as with most small, independently produced shows in the city, the start time was pushed back so as to allow the tardy audience to assemble. The Wu-Tang Clan kept my date Robyn and me company until Josh and Baron got the show going at around 8:30 with a sketch involving guest comedian Noah Starr in which Baron revealed his natural accent to be that of an aristocratic Englishman. Chicago-native Brooke Van Poppelen took the mic as guest host for the evening. After venting about the absurdities and frustrations of catering to elderly, affluent women as a waitress in an upper east side vegan café, she brought up Sherwin Smith, a low-energy, bearded comic who didn't seem entirely comfortable under the lights. Sounds an awful lot like somebody I know... somebody named SCOTT ROGOWSKY! It was a strange moment of self-recognition for me, as Sherwin looked and sounded just how I imagined myself looking and sounding during my most uncomfortable performances. His mannerisms, his speech pattern... I bet we even prepared our material the same way, him carefully writing out his shit word for word and repeatedly going over it in his head right up to the moment before stepping up onto the stage. He closed his otherwise decent set with a very funny bit involving audience participation, a quiz game called "Black Name or Prescription Drug." The audience member incorrectly guessed Plaxico and Flozell to be prescription drug registered trademarks when in fact they are the Christian names of professional football players Burress and Adams, respectively.

The first of the long-set comics was Todd Womack. Baron told me before the show that he was a New York guy who moved to LA but came back to New York for want of more stage time, and that's just what Baron's show gave him. Todd, throwing convention to the wind, took a seat on the stool and delivered a sit-down set, which included a great impression of a whites only dance club in the 1920s. Allison Castillo, co-host of Sweet Paprika Comedy and a former Premium Blender, followed with her own long, mostly depressing set. She had some funny lines mixed in with affirmations of self-hate and several allusions to suicide. I was looking forward to Nick Kroll's closing set to save the night, or at the very least work Robyn into enough of an endorphin-flooding giggle frenzy that would set the table for the possibility of uninhibited bathroom sex. But the audience's lukewarm response to Nick's proven material served to teach me a valuable lesson in contrast. Nick delivered mostly the same set as his Monday night slaughter of Crash Test - all of it practice for his big show on Friday opening for Michael Ian Black in Hoboken - but it lacked the energy and confidence of his UCBT stint. And what's to account for the stark difference between gigs just two days apart? Audience. Nick was feeding off the wild energy of the Crash Test, performing to a packed room full of hip comedy loyalists who came to bust a gut. He paced about the expansive stage, expelling his own nervous energy and giving full treatment to the acting out of his animated stories; enabled by an encouraging audience, he performed to his fullest, funniest potential. At Mundial, he was visibly less comfortable in front of a sparse crowd mostly populated by friends of the performers. Tonight's set lacked the focus and tightness of Monday night, and many of the voices and expressions so key to his talent as a storyteller were absent. On the other hand, the informal, intimate setting allowed Nick the opportunity to break from his normal routine as he dialogued with audience members and even took the mic outside for a brief, impromptu street show. He also threw in a few jokes that were not performed on Monday, including one to which I could especially relate. On growing up in neighboring Rye, "I come from a privileged background, but don't think it was all easy. I didn't even have my own tennis court. I had to take group lessons, and my backhand suffered for it."

I walked away from tonight's show with a keener perspective on the interplay between comedian and audience and how audience can affect performance. I'm sure many of tonight's sets would have gone over much better on a larger crowd, if only for the simple statistical reasoning that more people means more chances for laughs. And in a larger room or theatre show with hundreds of people packed together and focused on the performer, laughter comes more readily and intensely, either as a result of increased peer pressure to laugh or the opposite circumstance of peer release whereby individuals feel comfortable to react loosely and honestly. Whichever the phenomenon, it is best illustrated on many of Comedy Central's mediocre stand-up specials. How is it that TV comics never bomb when some are so painfully and obviously unfunny?

I have only to look at my own experiences on stage and the very evolution of my short career to draw a parallel to Nick's situation tonight. My first ever gig was in front of 300+ students in a packed theatre at school. I was the last to perform and, if I don't mind me saying, I brought the house down with my five minutes. After that show, I felt much like Nick told me he felt after Crash Test - "like the best comic in the world." The energy in the Arellano Theatre that night was electric and I was getting laughs every time I opened my mouth (there might have been something in my teeth). It was the strong response to my set that inspired me to seriously pursue stand-up, and a year and a half later I'm doing just that. But when I returned home to Westchester and started performing with Josh Filipowski in his Like2Laugh.com productions, I was routinely playing to near-empty bars and inattentive audiences. The very same jokes that absolutely killed in that first show were met with coughs and blank stares in these small rooms. The audience reaction affected my ability as a comedian, contributing to a lack of confidence on stage and increasingly lower-energy performance. Back at school this past fall semester, I opened for UCBTourCo in a large auditorium with a student audience of 150, and all of the sudden I was back in top form. The jokes were getting laughs again, and the confidence surged.

That wasn't a particularly funny post, but it made me think.

Memorial Day: Laugh it Off!

Tell Your Friends!, Lolita Bar (266 Broome St), 8:00PM
Host: Baron Vaughn
Christian Finnegan
Liam McEneaney
Todd Barry
Tom Shillue

Crash Test, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (307 W 26th St), 11:00PM
Host: Aziz Ansari
Nick Kroll
Eugene Mirman

Today was one of those days, one of those days when you remember the veterans. How did I do it? By laughing my ass off! Well, first I watched Saving Private Ryan on TNT. Not too much to laugh about there. But after paying my respects through television, I caught the 6:23 into Grand Central for a night of great comedy. First stop was the Lolita Bar for Liam McEneaney's weekly show, "Tell Your Friends!" I was excited for the line-up which featured the guest hosting of my (MySpace) friend Baron Vaughn who I hadn't seen since my coming back from Denmark. During the interim, his rising star has included a performance at the prestigious US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen and the launch of his own bi-monthly show, Comedy is for Humans, hosted with Joshua Grosvent.

After getting lost amid the named streets of the West Village, I found the unassuming Lolita Bar and was happily surprised to learn that the show had yet to start on account of Baron being stranded in the subway. I took the opportunity to introduce myself to Liam, a comedian who I had seen on Comedy Central's Premium Blend and live at Rififi over the winter. I have also been a repeat visitor to his blog where I've admired his joke-writing and absurd yarns in the style of Woody Allen. He was a real nice guy, and we reminisced on the e-mail I sent him with regards to establishing a sports comedy show in the city, tentatively titled "Twelve Angry Mascots" I had originally contacted Liam based on the following joke I heard him tell, "When you're having sex, in order to 'hold back,' they say you should think about a baseball game. My problem is that I'm a Mets fan, so I'll find myself in bed with a woman, and I'll start screaming, 'No no no! Go back! GO BACK! What are you doing? Run it out, asshole! Goddammit. Okay, I'm going to get a beer, do you want anything?'" Yeah, he's a funny dude.

Baron finally arrived and made up for lost time by immediately busting into hilarity. Baron is a proficient writer, but beyond that, a captivating performer. Between his jokes, the guy will break into song and dance, use different voices and accents, and even drop some sick beatboxing (true to his eccentric form, he started tonight's show by singing the theme song to DuckTales. The last time I saw him before I left for Europe, he inexplicably peppered his set with bizarre vocalizations, including a sing-songy rendition of the Spanish-language soap opera, "Carousel Domingo"). He makes for a great host, spicing up those downtimes between sets, and tonight he had the pleasure of introducing some pretty damn fine comics. Christian Finnegan was up first and did a mostly different set from what I saw last week. He made a great observation of the venue - a tiny, oblong basement/bomb shelter similar to what could be found in most Baltimore rowhouses - as the hideout for the only survivors of a vampire attack, and then imagined the ragtag group of distraught refugees banding together, "I'm a scientist!" "I'm a retired football player!" Todd Barry took his own clever dig at his surroundings, "You always hear about those organizations like NAMBLA but you never know where they meet. I think this is the place, people." Tom Shillue didn't make any quips about the basement, but he tested out some new material on the O'Reilly Factor and shopping at the hardware store without a clue. Funny, funny stuff.

Let's stop and take stock for a moment: I just saw five of the best comics in New York perform for twelve people in a basement hideout presumably reserved for the social gatherings of pedophiles. Wow. Finnegan is perhaps best known as the face of VH1's Best Week Ever franchise, and his cameo as Chad (the white guy) in The Chappelle's Show's "Mad Real World" sketch had all the frat boys talking around the water... keg. But his stand-up is equally as impressive as his TV credits. His setups are sometimes a bit long, but they payoff with a powerful joke, often compounded with a reference to pop culture or with an odd facial expression. The man is very good at what he does. Todd Barry is a national headliner with two half-hour Comedy Central specials under his belt and two comedy albums to his name. His sarcastic, low energy delivery is best experienced in person, however - a privilege that comes with living in New York for the summer. Todd likes to shit on hipsters and the very same East Village scene which he inhabits, and a good portion of his material is derived from his interest in music. It's nice to hear a comic who can make fun of the Allman Brothers for having two drummers. I've seen Todd a bunch of times already and I'll likely be running into him again and again, quite literally! Yes, just this very evening, I bumped into Todd as I was coming out of the bathroom. I introduced myself to him soon after and made a corny joke about him not washing his hands. I don't know why I did that. NEW YORK!

My Monday night didn't end at Lolita, ohhhh no. I said my goodbyes to my new MySpace friends and made the trek by foot to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre for Aziz Ansari's Crash Test. It was a pleasant walk around lower the lower west side (is it just me, or did 8th Avenue between 15th and 23rd get a whole lot gayer?), and I arrived at the theatre just in time for the 11:00 PM start. I had seen Crash Test once before and caught an amazing show hosted by Rob Heubel and featuring Chelsea Peretti, Brian Huskey, Andy Blitz, and Eugene Mirman. But I was looking forward to seeing Aziz Ansari after hearing about all the hype and enjoying his Shutterbugs mini-series. He's a young comic who rose remarkably quickly through the New York scene, mostly on the strength of his joke about Texas Senator John Cornyn marrying a box turtle, and then snagged a spot on the most recent season of Premium Blend. He also tied with Mitch Fatel for Best Stand-Up at the US Comedy Arts Festival in March, no small accomplishment. Allow me to rephrase - that's a very big accomplishment.

The UCBT was packed out, probably one hundred and fifty people strong. I say "people," but these are no ordinary people attending Crash Test. They are hipster incarnate: the guys in tight, raggedy clothes and thick-rimmed glasses, the girls in vintage sun dresses and thick-rimmed glasses; and they came to laugh tonight. Aziz Ansari stepped out from behind the black curtains with a glass of red wine in hand to wild applause. He is so absolutely beloved on his home turf that he could hold a five-minute phone conversation on stage without his audience thinking twice, and that's exactly what he did! Aziz didn’t perform any of his material, but he did find out that his friend Paul Scheer (UCB, Best Week Ever, gap-toothed) left his cell phone in a cab earlier that day.

Nick Kroll is a funny guy who happens to belong to my synagogue. I happened to find this out one night in talking to my parents about some of the comedians I had been seeing when I was home for winter break. “Nick Kroll? From Rye? We know his parents. They belong to the JCC.” I never thought my Hebrew School teachers would facilitate a showbiz connection, but lo and behold.

Nick hosts a show at Rififi with John Mulaney on Thursday nights called, “Oh, Hello” in which he and John portray fifty-something divorcees who live on the Upper West Side and worship Alan Alda. It sounds strange, and it is, but it’s also some of the funniest shit I have ever seen, and no, I couldn’t put that more eloquently. Nick is also known around town for his characters Fabrice Fabrice and Enrique Goldfarb, and he delivers a consistently hilarious performance as Catskills comedian Morty Chucklestein in Comedy Central’s Motherload feature series I Love the 30s, so it was a surprise to see him on stage playing the hardest character of them all, himself. Nick took the mic and proceeded to kill. He began with a story about a recent trip to Atlantic City that encouraged him to consider the question, “In what year did cocaine invent the bachelor party?” and he finished with an embarrassing shitfaced story from freshman year of college that I completely related to, besides the being shitfaced part. He seemed incredibly comfortable on stage, feeding off the palpable energy in the room, delivering facial expressions and voice impressions with expert hilarity. And when asked during the post-set interview how we spent his Memorial Day, Nick quipped a fine quip, “I remembered the veterans. And then I bought a futon for half off.”

Eugene Mirman closed the night with more funny. If you’ve never heard of Eugene, stop reading and visit his website. Watch his videos and discover the genius. That’s how I first got turned onto the absurd nightclub comedy of Eugene Mirman (coincidentally, the name of his first album). My roommate Aaron and I would watch them over and over and over again to the point where he became this huge celebrity in the part of my mind that gives a shit about celebrities (a very small part). So when I first met him back in January, I could hardly contain my giddiness and sheer amazement that this movie star was just a normal, personable guy who sold me his debut CD right out of his backpack. I’ve seen him so many times since then, and we’ve exchanged so many awkward hellos to the point where he has become more of a good old friend in the part of my mind that thinks I’m friends with famous comedians. Eugene told a few jokes and read a letter he wrote to the Philadelphia Hilton Garden Inn in which he often used the word “blowjob” to comical effect. I laughed all the way to the bank, and then to Grand Central Terminal where I caught my ride back into the dark, suburban milieu. Nice, huh?

BONUS: At Liam’s show, I met Maryanne who takes pictures for the comedy siteDrink At Work. She gave me the rundown on the next Drinkatwork.com Presents… and highly recommended the band Pela. She was very nice and seemed interested in checking out my stuff. Who knows – maybe this contact could lead to a spot on a future Drink At Work show. If nothing else, I can chalk it up as one more MySpace friend.

A Tale of Two Todds

Champagne Comedy, Plan B (339 E 10th St), 8:00PM
Hosts: Livia Scott and Dave Engel
Christian Finnigan
Biz Ellis (with her mother)
Becky Donahue
Livia Scott with Marylouise Burke
Todd Hanson
Seth Herzog
God's Pottery

So I overuse the "Tale of Two..." headline, so what. Blame Charlie Dickens for creating such a catchy title. Hate the player, is what I think I'm trying to say. Regardless of my literary crutches, I met two dudes named Todd tonight, two very funny dudes. The first was Todd Levin, stand-up comic, writer, and purveyor of Tremble which I always remember to read when I remember to. Check it out for yourself - Todd's writing is some of the funniest/smartest I've ever read. I've considered him my personal Jewish-American Idol ever since I saw his set on an episode of Comedy Central's Premium Blend last fall. All it took was one joke to make me an instant fan - "I was in Germany recently, because I had a score to settle." BOOM! A short, simple, instant classic. Here was the embodiment of smart jewish humor, in the vein of Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Larry David. The paranoid suspicion of anti-semitism, the undercurrent of guilt and shame, the beard! I immediately Googled "Todd Levin" and found his blog and published works. He has been an inspiration to my Denmark blogging and my current writing projects. So you can imagine my excitement and when I recognized him coming out of a corner eatery on 9th and 1st on the way to the show. "Todd Levin?" I asked with a finger pointed at him, so that he knew it was his identity I was questioning. It was him! I introduced myself and I tried to explain how big a fan I was, but only managed to get across how big of an awkward idiot I am when I meet people on the street. I stuttered through the name of his blog (Treble? Noooo!) and acted otherwise uncool. Thankfully, Todd was really nice in the face of my conversational incompetence and told me to contact him through MySpace.

So I added Todd Levin as a friend when I got home, and I've never been happier.

My second encounter of the Todd kind came at the show. Livia Scott and Dave Engel host Champagne Comedy at various times at various venues, and tonight's lineup featured my comedy friend Baron Vaughn! I was looking forward to seeing him perform following his appearance at the US Comedy Arts Festival (he was there in Aspen back in March, but I've been in Denmark, remember). Sadly, when Marc and I got to the show, there was no Baron to be seen. I found out later he was home sick with the one-day stomach bug. Oh well, the lineup was strong and full of comedians I had yet to see live, and most exciting was the opportunity to reintroduce myself to Todd Hanson, Head Writer of The Onion. I had previously met Todd over winter break during my first foray into the alternative comedy scene at Mo Pitkin's where Eugene Mirman guest-hosted for Jon Benjamin at the Midnight Pajama Jam. But Todd Hanson is a busy man, too busy to remember some snot-nosed kid who handed him a homemade business card way back when. Therefore I had prepared a professional proposal this time - a list of Onion headlines to give to Mr. Hanson, having heard on good authority (Marc) that outside submissions are considered on a headline-basis only. I came up with 14 solid headlines on the train ride into the city, incorporating some ideas I had kicking around for a while and some made up right on the spot. Improv, people!

The show was very enjoyable and perhaps definitive of the alternative New York comedy scene. Christian Finnegan kicked off the show with a hilarious, matrimonial set that touched on his impending marriage and his soon-to-be inmate inlaw, as well as a suggestion to include a wedding scene at the end of every porno to appease wives/girlfriends. Biz Ellis of the sketch comedy troupe MEAT read from her high school diary and brought her mother onstage to read a favorite children's story. Becky Donahue followed with a raunchy set that featured a send-up of her immigrant mother. Livia Scott and Marylouise Burke (Sideways) gave dramatic readings of actual letters to Cat Fancy magazine, that only reaffirmed what I had already believed to be true about Cat Fancy subscribers - they're crazy about their cats! And also plain crazy. Todd Hanson offered an ultra-ironic political piece entitled "Know Your Rights" which satirized the current administration, the current American populace, and democracy itself! It was pretty clever, if you ask me. Seth Herzog told some ridiculous stories that stemmed from miscommunication and later invited his mother to admit to sucking cock. Yeah, that seemed to be the common theme of the evening - all our mothers sucked cock at some point, and some still might. God's Pottery closed the show with their clever brand of Christian folk rock. What did I tell ya? ALTERNATIVE!

Following the show, I planned to give Todd Hanson my list of headlines. Seeing how Marc had an "in" to the conversation (he was a summer intern at The Onion four years ago), I asked him to be the initiator. But we never had a chance to make our moves - Mr. Hanson was too preoccupied with drinking and hitting on women to be bothered . Rats to merrymaking and the heterosexual male's insatiable appetite for poon! That was supposed to be my big break! Todd Hanson was supposed to read my headlines, chuckle out loud to himself rather heartily, look up at me and say, "Son, you've got what it takes!" Then he would usher to me The Onionmobile waiting outside and whisk me away to the secret underground lair where Rollerball Pens are at my every disposal. I would meet the staff and we'd hit if off beautifully, and I'd get right down to writing. And I'd write and write and write, and at the semi-annual banquet I'd hoist the great flagon of chuckles and toast to the smartest satire in the world!

Nope.

Nonetheless, I've decided to publish my headlines here (copyright me, 2006) as a testament to missed opportunities. At this point, my intellectual property is all I've got left. Goddamn bank took the farm, goddamn wife took the car, goddamn Tijuana hooker took the virginity...

HAMAS LEADER REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE KID HE WENT TO HIGH SCHOOL WITH

HOPKINS LACROSSE TEAM REGRETS NOT RAPING STRIPPER

METAPHORICAL BUSH TAKEN OFF LIFE SUPPORT

KILLER BEE FLU NOT FOOLING ANYONE

PLAYFUL, ALLITERATIVE HEADLINE REVEALS PAINFUL, UNPOETIC NEWS

HS BASKETBALL PHENOM ESCHEWS NBA DRAFT FOR FACEBOOK

THREE-MONTH SEARCH CALLED OFF FOR MISSING AFIKOMEN

COLLEGE REPUBLICAN STUDYING ABROAD BASHES BUSH TO GET LAID

DANISH CARTOONISTS RESUME MAKING FUN OF BLACK PEOPLE

MIDDLE-AGED WHITE MAN SHAKES HEAD DISAPPORVINGLY

SEXY, YOUNG PHILLIES SET TO CAPTURE NATIONAL LEAGUE PAGEANT

SPEED CARBON DATING YIELDS FLAWED DATA, NO SECOND DATES

DEADHEAD STICKER FINALLY REMOVED FROM CADILLAC

FAILED OMELETTE BECOMES SCRAMBLED EGGS

Hot Town, Summer in the City

There comes a time in every young Jewish man's life when he must decide how to spend his Bar Mitzvah loot. Some carelessly fritter it away over the years sponsoring West African orphans; others might blow it all in one crazy weekend at Mohegan Sun. Not me. Those Israeli bonds finally came due, and I'm using the money to pay for 8 weeks rent in the NYU dorm on 3rd Ave and 11th, NEW YORK CITY! In lieu of "working" at "Quizno's" this summer, I will be living in the Lower East Side as I attempt to "make it" as a "comedian." I'll be keeping this blog to document my adventures - the people I meet, the burritos I eat, the shows I see (they're mostly free), the sets I perform, my life in the dorm, and all that's shit to print. It's the stuff reality TV is made of.


Please note: The actual reason for creating this blog is so that 35 years from now I may look back on this summer and realize that my whole life has not been a complete and total waste. Here's to bright futures!