Chris Millhouse is my Hungarian Parlament of Comedy

Despite having lived there for two years and made about half a dozen visits besides, it took an entire decade for me to actually visit the Hungarian Parlament building.  And it wasn't for lack of trying, I was just foiled at every turn.  Kind of like trying to see Chris Millhouse do a set.  I first saw Chris on LiveAndOutLoud and thought he was pretty amusing, started following him on Twitter and saw him tweet about being up at the Comedy Store for Potluck.  I completely missed him that night and I keep missing him every other time I try, so now this has become a quest.  A quest which was foiled again this Sunday when I actually made it to Potluck early.


And actually, Potluck is a lot like trying to get a ticket to a Parlament Tour - needlessly complicated and confusing.  Who's going up when?  Who knows.  And this coming from a woman who speaks "Comedy Store Lineup" fluently - I can generally look at the OR list on any given night and tell you what time the 11:45 set is actually going to start within +/- 3 minutes.  Not so much on a Sunday.

But I did get to catch a few other guys I've been wanting to see - Brandon Christie, Benji Aflalo and Marc Hatchell.  The crowd was kind of weird - they just sat stone-faced like it was a staring contest instead of a comedy club.. until about midnight when they suddenly started finding everything funny.  And, well, with good reason.  The pop-ins were pretty good - I was already over the "release the Kraken" jokes 5 minutes before they started but Avi Liberman has the best Kraken bit I've heard yet.  There's something about his understated delivery in the face of an omelet missing cheese or crappy BoA fees that completely cracked me up.  And there were other good sets, including my favorites Nick Youssef and Sarah Taylor.

So, one of these days, I'll finally figure out the system and see Chris Millhouse.  Of course, now he has a lot to live up to because when I finally saw Parlament, it blew my mind.