Look, I’m not an asshole. I’m into an eco aware towel policy. I’ve been a proponent of saving the environment- and I agree, I can reuse a towel. But these bathroom cards are getting more aggressive every year! I don’t think needing a new towel means I’m a thoughtless prick! What do you think?
45 years ago, the most popular science fiction franchise in history made the planet’s worst holiday special – And it’s free to see at Kiggins theatre!
This Saturday, see The Star Wars Holiday Special hosted by Star Wars Holiday Special super-nerd SKot Kirkwoood. SKot has been running www.starwarsholidayspecial.com for twenty years, and has forgotten more about Snaggletooth than you will ever know. He also contributed to the documentary, A Disturbance In The Force, winner of Film Threat’s Top Documentary of 2024.
Costumes encouraged! Prizes and trivia will happen! You will live! You will learn! And we’ll all rock out to Jefferson Starship!
Dear Portland;
Here’s how it works. As you pass through the Sunset tunnel headed east from Beaverton into Portland, you may, IF YOU MUST, honk one brief, cheerful honk. Honk to let the world know that you’ve dusted off your best city-slickin’ coveralls and you’re coming into town for tapas and heroin.
Beep!
That’s it.
You do NOT honk repeatedly, nor lean on the horn. That is not cute or cheerful. It is making the other Subaru drivers jump out of their skins.
And you DON’T do it whilst traveling back westward. You just…don’t. It’s not done.
Thank you for listening.
Nine years ago last July, the amazing Nicole Blaine (now the proprietor of her own venue, The Crow at Bergamot Station) invited me to participate in a comedy competition. Stand Up Showdown promised to put the comics in front of industry movers and shakers, network executives, and the like. The winner got into the 2017 SF Sketchfest, and got a meeting with someone.
It was held at Mission Impossible Westside, which is the best comedy venue to exist in the back of a Crocs store.
Walking in, I saw two friends of mine sitting in the back, and I thought, oh, they’re judges? They’re not industry movers and shakers. They helped run a dead comedy festival.
I thought my set went well. In the end, my comedy lunch was eaten by a cute young guitar comic who I never saw again.
There are only a couple names on this flyer I recognize. I thought I would post about how everyone who did well in this contest has quit, but I’m still here. And I’m still here because what I bring to the game is the willingness to suffer, and little else. But when I did a quick google, almost everyone is still doing stuff!
Hannah Dickinson- she has moved to NYC and she writes books and does comedy that appears to be influenced by sex and the city? That’s cool.
JR De Guzman- he was the winner. Cute filipino kid. Looks like he was a New Face in 2017, and was on a list of people to watch in 2022. He has 400K instagram followers. Has a special on Youtube. You don’t have to worry about JR.
Shawn Halpin- Bearded guy. Moved to Texas. Ex-Comedian. Calls himself a veteran and a patriot. Uneasy feeling.
Isaac Hirsch- Went to Sketchfest in 2017. Still doing comedy in Los Angeles.
Morgan Jay- I used to see Morgan around, at parties and stuff. Google says his comedy deals with dating and sex. Amazing. He’s on Youtube. He was on Wild’n Out.
Virginia Jones- This is me. I know what I’m doing, and you might know too.
Nina Manni- I ran into her a couple of times! She’s an expert in collecting points for travel from credit cards, and she’s a story editor for Lionsgate. Pretty cool.
Lauren O’Brien- She was on Love is Blind, and she does content on Insta and Youtube.
Jonathan Rowell- I forgot that this is where I met Jonathan! He’s very funny. He wrote on This Fool for Chris Estrada.
Kiry Shabazz- Got on Bill Burr’s The Ringers and was on Jimmy Fallon! Awesome. Did New Faces.
Brandon Vestal- Did a Dry Bar. Has a comedy special on Youtube. May be a republican? A good thing to suspect Dry Bar people of, anyway.
So, I had a real cruddy attitude to begin with. What I’ve found is that we’ve all found a path, or our path, or someone’s path. We’re all still out here scrabbling. And that’s cool!
It’s sometimes hard to remember: other people can win stuff, lose stuff, get cast in something, have a hot podcast and still be struggling for recognition every day. Because we all are!
This is the set that nearly took first place in Helium Comedy’s annual Portland’s Funniest Person contest. It was shot by Randall Lawrence. Many thanks to everyone who came out to support me. It meant a lot. Thanks also to Suzette Smith for writing it up for the Portland Mercury, that was cool also.
Here’s a link to a nice write up by Portland’s coolest publication, The Portland Mercury- but this is the bit I liked best:
Casner performed second to last, and cleverly began his eight-minutes with a bid for sympathy, saying he wished he wasn’t the “first male comedian after Virginia.” He meant VIRGINIA JONES who had just practically singed the stage with her devastating read of male comics, which also cinched her place as first runner-up.
If anyone could survive and thrive on the heat from Jones’ wake, Casner was the comic to do it; he opened with a respectful, glowing description of his nonbinary partner being too hot for gender.
Casner’s rise has been long but steady, possibly interrupted by the time he spent outside Portland, refining his style in other scenes. In 2023, Casner regularly described himself a “soft-handed cowboy,” but has since trimmed his handlebar mustache back to Ned Flanders proportions. He won the honors wearing a down-to-earth baseball cap bearing the logo of a paint company in Forest Grove.
A sizable portion of the audience seemed to think Jones was a new Portland comedian, but she actually just moved back to the scene recently, after over a decade in LA. She performed the most put-together set of the evening, drawing from her extensive touring to riff about disgusting British proclivities that we don’t even have a name for in the US.
Every year, Helium cancels its open mics for four months to concentrate on Portland’s Funniest Person. In that contest, 250 people are brutally whittled down to 8, and then someone wins, usually a white guy.
There are roughly one thousand preliminary competitions. They are judged by the audience, so it’s super important to hype up your friends and family and get them to come. I didn’t understand that the first time I competed in 2010, and never made it out of the first round.
I mean, that’s OK. Most people don’t.
The first round was 11 people to get to 3, which felt very do-able. The first round has people in it who’ve never been onstage before, people who have only done comedy on the back of a dog cart, etc. once I had my comp list filled, I was pretty secure in my ability to move on- however, some very funny people I like and respect didn’t seem to.
This show was the most fun, because Arlo Weierhauser and Adam Pasi roasted EVERY participant. The weird racist guy, the lady with the notes, and me, who they said looked like Wednesday Adams after her third divorce. Clearing this round, I was in the top 27% of participants.
The next show felt intense- there were several comics I really liked on my show, and we were cutting from 14 people to 2. Me and Jeremiah Watkins made it through, and were now in the top 3% of everyone in the comp. Kyle Kinane greeted me warmly at the end, and that was nice. I’ve always really dug Kyle’s comedy and he is a mensch to boot.
The finals didn’t worry me as much as the semi-finals, although the cutoff is the same- somehow, 14 to 2 felt harder than 8 to 1. This is probably because I am bad at math.
I liked my semi-finals set tho, here it is:
The morning of the finals, I woke up and thought, well, whatever happens, it’ll be over soon. I had a nice day, had lunch with a friend and spent the afternoon preparing my finals set.
I turned up and sat in a green room, meeting the comics I had not worked with yet.
Then, the show started, and went by very quickly, and then it was me, and I had a good set. Everything went exactly how I wanted it to go, and that’s all I could do. For a while, I thought, well, I’ve won this thing. Nobody had a better set than me, but that’s not entirely how it works. Our hard-working host, Ben Harkins, did a stall set so the tallies could be completed.
Then, we all filed out onstage, and I got the #2 spot behind Jordan Casner, who is a nice fella and all around good guy. I was now in the top .8 of all participants.
I immediately started scheming for what I would do next year, although there is probably not a good reason to compete next year, except for REVENGE. Congrats to Brent Lowry, who also placed, and congrats to everyone who got through to finals. Let’s all go to sleep.