The Long Semantical

The night before last week's issue I had an assignment.  Troy Conrad, host of the Friday open mic at the IO West's Black Box Theater open mic, gave me some fliers for his show "Comedy Jesus."  He also asked if I might give him my critique of the show, assuming I went the next night.  He would tape the show, and the next week's edition for a television pilot.

 

I didn't have much else to do, so I figured I would.  The show consisted of videos and two acts of questions-and-answers with Troy playing Jesus.  The Q&A session had the extra curve-ball of a trio of late-comers, all three of which were loud, drunk women.  They kept on asking the same questions, they kept on agreeing with Jesus, except when he disagreed with Scientology, and they generally caused trouble.  If it were a stand-up that had to deal with this then there'd be hell to pay.  But this wasn't stand-up.

 

Troy's interpretation of Jesus was that of an accepting peaceful man that believed that it didn't matter if people were Christians, or even what they did behind closed doors (as long as it didn't hurt others), but that people should just try to be good people and get along.  In short, it was a Jesus I could really get on board with.  The other thing about the Q&A session was that he stayed quick, clever, and consistent with facts that he'd established about the character already.  There was a good sense of continuity.

The videos, for the most part, were clever pieces of satire, but they were quite uncensored.  So I wondered where he was shopping the pilot.  Showtime.  I gave my feedback, including a comeback line for drunken hecklers, wherein Jesus would take the beverages from the hecklers and say "--Okay, I'm just going to turn this into water right now."

 

The next night, I hung out at IO West again as it was the Sunday night open mic.  Sometimes I even hang out and check out the Improv Jam.  I try to get there relatively early so that I can get some free pizza.  It's sometimes gone if you don't get there early enough.

 

Sean Patton hosted and lamented his temp job in which he was chauffeuring French producers around.  The last act of the show was an act that said in a distracted manner, "Ask me a question."  So because the audience was made up of mostly comics, they asked questions that mainly made fun of him.  It was his lack of regard for the work necessary for stand-up that the comics reacted to.  The idea that someone with no experience or understanding of comedy, or even performance, could make magic out of the questions the audience had of this person.  That was the key difference between the Q&A presented here and the one on that same stage twenty-four hours earlier.  He asked about making a tape and sending it to clubs.  I stopped myself from telling him that they wouldn't be able to do anything with that.

 

On the plus side, my name was one of two drawn for the guaranteed spot on next week's show, so tomorrow (Sunday) night I'll be at IO West.  I've listed it below under Upcoming gigs.

 

It had been a long time since I'd been to Ireland's 32.  In fact I'd only been there once before, the Irish wake for Shane Kelley's version of the comedy and music open mic.  There were no Frank Sinatra songs, and there were not even quite as many people, but the show remained the same, a decent open mic.  To quote Andy Kaufman, "It took me an hour-and-a-half to get there," but I still got there at a reasonable time before the show started and got a relatively early spot, right after a young kid who was rather good at Word Dojo.

 

That was apropos as my set included primarily jokes related to grammar, so much so that I commented on that fact from the stage.  I decided that I should be wary of telling too many such jokes in one set or I'd come off as pompous and superior.  I thought that perhaps I should open my set with some character-based stuff alluding to my eccentricities and then follow it with jokes about grammar.

 

I wouldn't test my hypothesis out the next night, lately I haven't been going to Brew Co. on Tuesday nights, so I went to Synergy Cafe on Wednesday night.  Sean Patton and Dan Rosenberg, the usual hosts weren't there, so a substitute host was on.  It was one of his first times hosting and I wasn't expecting the introduction I got, "This next comic will offer to spell check and grammar check your act for you if you'd like, please welcome Eric Cheung!"

 

I grabbed the mic and cracked, "Well stand-up is a performance medium, so spell-checking is less necessary than a possible grammar-check."  I would have to save my experiment for another day as I simply told the jokes I was going to and hung out.  The show ended at 8:30, so it was a relatively short, two hours.  Just minutes later, Steve Hofstetter showed up.  Known for touring colleges and his album, "Cure for the Cable Guy," and the website The Comedy Soapbox he thought he might be able to get on and try some stuff, but the show was over.  We have a mutual friend so I introduced myself.

 

From there I went with a bunch of friends to Wendy's then to Westside Eclectic the venue for a new show run by Matt Baetz and Sean Patton.  It was in a touristy neighborhood in Santa Monica, not dissimilar to Westwood near UCLA or Hollywood and Highland, so I thought it'd be worth checking out to see if it'd be worth the commute to go to if I decided to pursue getting booked on it.  The show itself was great.  This week was hosted by Matt Baetz and featured Sean Pearlman, Sean Patton, and Matt Champagne (who headlined).  The audience was attentive and quick to laugh.

 

I didn't really get a good idea whether or not it'd be a good idea to go to the show on my own as I got a ride home.  Mr. Patton switched cars to the one he needs for work and dropped me near enough to my apartment.

 

On Thursday I went to Sabor Cafe and very nearly got on.  Rich even said I'd probably get on towards the end.  So I waited, but I didn't mind that I didn't get on.  I wasn't even booked.  The non-Jesus-Q&A comic was able to sneak on as the very last act and mentioned he was from Boston.  Someone asked about how much Boston sucked since most of the comics were Rich's buddies from New York.  I asked what the best thing about it was and he nearly started a riot by saying how tolerant and un-prejudiced it was.  Boston is many things, among which my favorite city, but it still has a lot of problems when it comes to race.  It has a notorious history for its prejudice, from the Red Sox being the last team to integrate to the bussing issue in the 1970s.  It's one of the whitest major cities in the US and as a result there's some level of ignorance.

 

But that wasn't the reason I was less willing to stay quiet about the act.  I spoke when I probably shouldn't have and as a result got dragged into a lengthy discussion of the format of stand-up versus that of performance art and what bookers are attracted to versus whether or not the audience had a good time.  The one argument I didn't want to reveal was the idea that I thought he was looking for an easy way out.  He had explicitly said that he didn't want to write and memorize jokes so he decided to make noises into a microphone.  From there, he decided to retool and go with the Q&A format.

 

Friday I went to toss some applications at the main branch of the public library.  It's a beautiful facility.  I've often compared the Boston Public Library to a museum, but the LA one is even more so.  It's at least double the size with three floors below ground and three above open to the public.  Each floor is so big they each have their own HR department.  On the main floor is a lobby that consists of circulation, information, and a gift shop.

 

Straight from there, I went to both Black Box and Groundworks, as is my habit.  Troy had recruited me to say something for the Jesus show on videotape in a character.  I was to play a guy that worked at the Temple at which Jesus got angry.  I played a guy interested in money-making schemes.

 

When more comics showed up I dropped the sheet--er toga, and we were all videotaped discussing the ramifications of a potential return of Jesus.  My contribution was that I thought that the world would demand proof since so many people over the years had claimed to be Jesus, oh and that Jesus wasn't white.

 

I've continued to perform pretty strong sets, even at the open mics, and I hung out at Groundworks longer than I usually do.  I talked to a friend about possible jobs and then went back to IO West.

 

But as I had the previous week I went into the bar on the way to the main stage.  I saw even more people I knew from my time at Emerson.  And the funny thing was they were all Emersonians from within about two or three years of each other.  I graduated in 2003 and most of them were people who had graduated between 2002 and 2004.  It seemed that the younger Emersonians hung out elsewhere, UCB and the show at the Ramada.  I felt more at home here.

 

I grabbed an application for an internship at IO West and stuck around to check out the mainstage show "Friday Forty."  It was done in the style of a game show in which the three contestants answer questions about the past week in current events and pop culture.  Each had a forty of Budweiser and if they finished they got an extra point.  If they finished another one they got...another point.  Yippee!  In a style that reminded me of the television version of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" there would be several characters that came out and implied questions to be answered.  The person with the most points once forty questions had been answered won forty dollars.  One of the most prominent characters was "Shaggy" from Scooby Doo as played by Sean Cowhig, a classmate of mine who had much longer hair than I remembered.  It was more like mine.

 

Thank you, I'm Eric Cheung.  I'm on MySpace and Live Journal.

 

Upcoming gigs

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November 19th: Sunday. 11PM.  "Stand Up Hosted By Sam Saifer."  IO West.  FREE (plus FREE PIZZA if you get there in time).