23 May 2010

That's What I'm talking About

As I've mentioned before, I have a soft spot for the late night comedians who can handle it well.  Of course, my  all-time favorite is Don Barris, who can handle everyone from the obnoxious drunks to the dead quiet stone-faced crowds and somehow manages to make The Barris Kennedy Overdrive bit entertaining over and over again.  But there's a lot of other guys giving a good go of it.

Now, I should mention, there's really two types of late night crowds that I've encountered.  There's the mid-week and there's the weekend.  At 12:15 on a Wednesday night, there's usually about 4 guys left, and they're always foreigners, usually from some random place like Finland or Estonia.  They are sitting pretty close to the front, so you know they've been there since the start.  I suspect that their guidebooks told them to visit The World Famous Comedy Store and since they aren't American, they're just too polite to just get up and go back to their hotel before the official end.  And occasionally there are the obnoxious drunks (and occasionally I am those obnoxious drunks), but usually only one or two.  And this Tuesday, there were two super bitchy, super drunk Australian chicks by the time Sam Tripoli took the stage.  Now, I'll be honest, I've seen Tripoli perform at least twice before and have no memory of it.  I blame this on The Stripcrawl and too many bullets at The Sunset Trocadero, respectively, and not Tripoli being an unmemorable comic, because he is freaking hilarious and had complete control of the room from start to finish, including repeatedly putting the worse of the two Aussie chicks in her place - a very satisfying thing for the rest of us audience members to watch.







19 May 2010

In Praise of the 12:15 Comedian

I have a great love for the 12:15 comic at the Comedy Store.  At first, it was just because that was about the time I'd stroll on in and the crowd was so thin that they'd start talking to the audience, and I was the vast majority of the audience.  But as I have started to spend an inordinate amount of time watching comedy, including the guys who go on at 10 or 11, my love and respect for the 12:15 comedian has only grown.

Hopefully, they had a at least one other slot somewhere earlier in the night, but regardless, they made an effort to get here to go on for what is bound to be a tiny, drunk and possibly surly crowd.  They don't do it for the money (which is shit) and typically they don't really get to work out their material because of said sucky crowd.  But they get up there and do their 15 minutes and work with what the drunk loudmouths (like me) in the crowd start spouting.  It's really a heroic effort.

07 May 2010

What Day Is It?

Wherein I attempt to beat Time and discover my new musical guru, that you can't go back to 20 again, and that I have a serious nerdy glasses fetish


LINKS Space 15 Twenty 01

AJ McLean at The Roxy

Lady Sinatra Viper Room 2


02 May 2010

Dan Madonia & The Silent Comedy on The Real Sunset Strip

Wow, just wow.  Trina had really been talking up The Silent Comedy for the past couple of weeks and she was not wrong.  Firstly, check out the moustaches!  And then take a listen to the music.  I really don't think any of these YouTube clips do them justice - and everyone at the show on Saturday agreed that this was the best of their recent performances.  Trina had specifically instructed me to wear my dancing shoes and she was not wrong.  I started out standing in the back, sipping my drink and mostly just nodding my head and tapping my feet, but by the second song it was as if my body had taken me right up to the front and started dancing of its own accord.  I had no choice but to give in and boogie down.



I feel like now I'm damning Dan Madonia with faint praise, but he was terrific too.  It's just that The Silent Comedy was mind-blowingly awesome so I had to start with them.  But the night actually started with Dan and he was terrifically funny.  There was one point where the crowd almost turned on him, but he quickly saved it and had pretty much everyone in the place laughing.  And, apparently I can not go see comics anywhere without somehow inserting myself in their act - it isn't just the Comedy Store that brings that out in me.  Dan had this almost throw-away line like "Who's got some tits I can snort some coke off of?" and one guy in the corner was very adamantly raising his hand, so I raised my pointing finger toward him and got "I like how you're volunteering other boobs when you have a perfectly good set, yourself." heh.

Not really sure how The Real Sunset Strip is going to follow an awesome night like that, but heck, I'll settle for about 75% of the awesomeness