I will be hosting for famous funny person Christian Finnegan, from Comedy Central and VH1’s best show ever, at Helium Comedy Club all weekend, with very funny Seattle comic Drew Barth. I still have comps left for the late shows Friday and Saturday, write me if you’d like to go- I’d love to see you there!
Over Labor Day Weekend I was afforded the opportunity to perform as part of the Famous Mysterious Actor show at Bumbershoot.
I held My Pet Monster and told jokes to people who were really not extremely sure what was going on. I don’t know what my facial expression is about, but I’m sure I thought I was doing something different.
I really enjoyed the show, and having “quality time” with some of my comedy pals from Portland, Salem, and Seattle. I liked having an Artist’s badge, which meant that I didn’t wait in lines with the “rubes”, and people looked at me, curious to know if I was famous at all, which I am not.
After the show, I leapt out onto the gangway, eager to suck all the life out of the Bumbershoot music and arts festival for FREE.
Within five minutes, I was shocked and appalled to realize: I HATE MUSIC FESTIVALS! I was surrounded by young people who were over-bandanna’d and facial-haired, and excited about seeing bands called things like Leather Wolf Eyes and The Bambi Sluts. I escaped the grounds and headed out to eat delicious Seattle vegan foods at Pizza Pi.
It was worth it to see Billy Bragg play a show in the warm twilight. He had a sore throat, but soldiered through to play a great solo set. He made fun of my laugh, which he has not done since I saw him at Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in 1992 when he played for an environmental activist’s rally. MEMMOORIIIES! Oh, and I found all the old people. We were all at Billy Bragg. Hilariously, not one but two concert-goers yelled at him that he should play music and not talk politics. GO TO A DIFFERENT SHOW.
Thanks, PROK! FMA! Bumbershoot!
This is my second year trying out for this comp! Yaaaaaay.
Postscript: about a third of these people are still doing comedy, one is dead, and three are pretty successful!
Seattlites, I stand before you proclaiming that this year’s Bumbershoot comedy line-up will be not only good but great.
I have been afforded the opportunity to join my favoritest talk show ever, the Famous Mysterious Actor show, alongside Billy Wayne Davis! I will be there at the Comedy Theatre West, The Vera Project Stage, for a wonderful show that starts at 1:15 with candy and screaming. Please join me!
A Stranger quote from the ravishing and hilarious Lindy West:
Famous Mysterious Actor Show
The Famous Mysterious Actor, host of the hilariously surreal late night talk show parody known as The Famous Mysterious Actor Show, performs in what appears to be a Mexican wrestling mask, soiled army parka, and black fright wig. He was not born to fame, but is more than willing to thrust it down your throat.
I was recently in Asia, and it seems that there is no segment of the world population that is more adorable and more self-hating than Japanese girls. Everyone knows about double eyelid glue and tape, but I became very attached to a product that looked like a potato peeler that was supposed to be rolled on either side of one’s nose to create a more Western nose. This is, of course, impossible. The nose is not made of silly putty and can’t be molded from the outside. Most importantly, they all want to weigh under 100 pounds, regardless of height or build.
I bought a magazine in Narita airport so that I could pretend I had been to Japan, and found this article with a hundred pictures of girls with the reasons all of their bodies suck. One girl is thin, but her chest is *too* thin! One girl accidentally formed a bicep muscle! One girl’s body flaw is that her tits are too big. HER TITS. ARE TOO. BIG. Additionally, bitchy little insets from failed pop stars talk smack about these cartoon girls.
This is why anorexia is still Japan’s most popular hobby! A popular surgery involves cutting a ligament so that one’s calf muscles atrophy and shrink away, leaving a stick-thin leg. Pretty! This makes me feel slightly better about the state that we’re in. At least I’m allowed to work out and have muscles, instead of just starving myself puny. I’m also glad to be back in the states because I don’t usually have this conversation at home:
Cassie: I saw your photo on Facebook!
Me: Oh, really?
Cassie: Yes, you looked very thin (indicating on face and neck where I used to be thin). Were you thinner when you were younger?
Me: No, actually I came out this size. I looked down and saw my mother’s bloody feet. I exploded her. Please pass the fried rice.
Fall Arts Preview By Anne Adams, John Chandler, and Randy Gragg
Photo: Michael Schmitt
“You know what really gets my goat?” asks Virginia Jones. “Wolves.”
Pause … hope … laughter.
In the suspenseful lifestyle of casting one-liners for yuks (and bucks), Jones is one of a growing cabal of local weekend warriors tackling stand-up comedy—and, sometimes, slowly, starting to shape their work schedules around the gigs rather than vice versa.
“The great thing about stand-up,” she asserts, “is that you can work and hone until you get it just right … It’s completely unlike brain surgery.” Pause … hope …
On September 4, Jones will perform in the Grand Dames of Comedy showcase at Hawthorne Theatre and host two open-mic nights for Curious Comedy Theater, Portland’s first and only nonprofit comedy group.
“There’s a lot of new energy,” Jones says, noting the three-year-old Bridgetown Comedy Festival’s importing of such nationally acclaimed acts as Patton Oswalt and Janeane Garofalo and the opening of city’s first comedy chain franchise, Helium, which lifted off this summer.
Why the sudden P-town laugh riot? Is it our coping mechanism for rising unemployment? Indie-rock fatigue? Jones calls it a perfect storm of rising national interest (e.g., the reality show Last Comic Standing), plus the growing chops of locals like Shane Torres, Christian Ricketts, and Marcia Belsky.
“There’s all this hungry talent,” she says. “They book anywhere they can—old-man bars, Thai restaurants—just to some get mic time.”
“When I started doing showcases, going to comedy was only slightly less hip than going to a funeral,” Jones adds, without pause but with plenty of hope. “I think now it’s starting to explode.” —AA
CURIOUS COMEDY THEATER’S COMEDY ROULETTE
Oct 8-23, Nov 6-20 A small cast of improvisational cutups including Stacey Hallal, Bob Ladewig, Virginia Jones, and Josh Fisher will redirect their comedy sketches and prepared material based on whatever the audience wants to see. Can we handle that much responsibility? Curious Comedy Theater, 5225 NE MLK Jr. Blvd. 503-477-9477. curiouscomedy.org
GREAT DAMES OF COMEDY
Sept 4 at 8 A slew of she-larious locals storm the stage in (presumably) diamonds, feathers, and big hats for a little X-chromosome humor. Picture the rowdy gals and quiet introverts from your high school all grown up and cracking wise. Belinda Carroll hosts.
Many thanks to the all-powerful and benevolent Anne Adams for including me.
There’s a show opening this weekend that has been a big topic of conversation amongst the local comics for a couple of weeks. Like musical tribute shows, we’re doing a cover show of our favorite dead or retired comedians all July, as a paean to the form and as tribute to some of our heroes. I think it’ll be really interesting.
1. We’ll have the opportunity to share some older work that we care about with a new audience, which is always cool.
2. Like singing your favorite band at karaoke, there’s a certain satisfaction in posing as someone you respect, stepping into their skin for a minute. When I re-made some of Leigh Bowery’s costumes and wore them around, I really felt like I was understanding things about Leigh’s tendency towards invention over craft, his willingness to be uncomfortable, and his desire to be a spectacle. I am hoping to come away from this show with a similar perspective.
3. I am hoping to learn something from behind the act, by trying to impersonate the timing and cadence of my favorite comedian. Will I get laughs in the same places? Also: will I get laughs at all?
4. My comic is a perfect fit for me, we’re both black-clad Texans with a perverse streak a mile wide.
5. Apprentice painters from the renaissance period forward have cut their teeth by copying the masters. This is much the same.
1. Comedy, above all other arts, doesn’t have a rep for aging well. Will older material translate?
2. Will our comics be able to communicate what’s funny about this stuff? Everyone knows comedy is not just in the material, but also in the performance. Well, not everyone. Most people. There was an incident recently where a comic from Davenport, Iowa reproduced Patton Oswalt’s act uncredited, but did not get Patton’s laughs, because he’s not Patton and doesn’t bring his timing, voice, face, etc. to the show.
3. In a medium that values creativity over all other things, is this a worthwhile exercise?
What do you think?
These and other questions will be answered at 8 PM this Friday at the Curious Comedy Theatre at 5225 NE MLK!