• Last night (Tuesday, June 11), I went to Union Hall to film the show The Lesbian Agenda for a number of great comics incuding Sophie Elizabeth Santos, Sabrina Wu, Melody Kamali, Sami Schwaeber, Mindy Raf and Robby Hoffman. I’ll be honest, I’d never met any of these incredible comics before yesterday and now I’m a huge fan of all of them. I’m a huge fan of this show too. I hadn’t been before but was incredibly impressed. They packed Union Hall out, the show had a lot of love put into it (the host Sophie did very funny prepared bits like songs and fan fiction in between comics; my favorite thing in comedy when the host does prepared bits in between acts) and there was a musical act too (Sami Schwaerber who murdered it). Also, a special shout out to Robby Hoffman who closed the show and said, “I’m gonna end on this,” and the crowd audibly “Aww’d.” I’ve never seen a crowd want to see a comic do more time so badly. Check this show out if you get a chance; it’s a good time.
• Had my 27th Roast Battle this weekend against Jon Schuta at Comedy Fight Club and lost dropping my record to 13-14. I had a solid first round but Schuta came out swinging and killed it. Just like applause break worthy jokes every time. By the time we got to the second round, it felt insurmountable to pull off a comeback. I was right. My jokes were good and nothing REALLY bombed but Jon was dishing. Kudos to Schuta. This was not even close to Fight of the Night status though. Our fight was fairly tame next to the incredible battle between Mike Kramer and Steve Girard. Kramer is unlike anyone else in comedy; the dude gets onstage and rips off his shirt like a wrestler, taunts and imitates the judges and delivers his jokes at an exasperated yell. The performance is funnier than any joke anyone could write. It should be mentioned Steve Girard won the fight though. He brought it too.
• Finally got around to watching all three seasons of “Documentary Now!” on Netflix. Can’t believe I’ve slept on it for so long. For anyone that’s not familiar with the concept of the show, it’s simple. Helen Mirren introduces each episode that mocks a different documentary. There are parodies of “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” “Grey Gardens,” “Wild, Wild Country,” VICE documentaries, the LCD Soundsystem/Talking Heads concert docs, Marina Abramovic performance art and my favorite “Searching for Gary Larson” which is a parody of the genre of docs where people seek out their celebrity heroes and find themselves. Also, Anna E. Paone and I saw “Booksmart” at the Roxy Theater on Saturday night. If you haven’t been to the theater, you should go. It’s in an old hotel with a jazz club and feels like something out of the 1940s. Great environment to catch a movie in; the only downside is you can’t sneak in a double feature because there’s only one screen. As for the movie itself, I really dug it but I couldn’t stop thinking about all the ways it paralleled “Superbad” and felt like a commentary on it. From the two best friends, the failed relationships, to the going to different colleges misunderstanding (spoiler!), I just felt like I was watching an inverse funhouse mirror version of the movie. “Booksmart” definitely still stands on its own comedically (maybe the most impressively edited comedy I’ve ever seen) and even improves upon “Superbad” too in a lot of ways. It was just SUCH an homage that I wasn’t even sure if it was intentional or not. Yes, I see the irony in that all of the “Documentary Now!” sketches are parodies and me praising them. The difference is they are clearly making fun of the subject as opposed to maybe or maybe not.
• This is embarrassing but I spent a good two hours on Saturday morning, updating mattlevycomedy.squarespace.com (yes, I kept Squarespace in the title and it looks horrible on mobile but good on desktop). I threw my half hour in there from last year (if you want to check it out, it’s six five-minute late night sets because I love the five-minute late night format and also didn’t want to do 30 minutes in a row. As a bonus, Brian Baheintroduces me in a different way for every clip) and put up a Comedy Stray Notes Archive if you ever want to go back and read old ones! I realize that is incredibly unlikely/narcissistic of me but you read this far and you might want to know what was going on with me comedically in March 2019? Now you don’t have to scroll through Facebook; it’s all one Command F click away.
• Last Wednesday, Anna Paone and I took the PATH train out to Jersey City to Bobby Dee’s for Brandon Sager’s show. The town is kind of sleepy and people were genuinely curious/excited to see a comedy show going on. Crowd trickled in and a fun bar show manifested itself. Brandon did a hell of a job setting the room up, hosting, promoting (there were fliers in the bathroom in case you were in the bathroom and didn’t know a show was going on) and being a one-man showrunning band. Honestly, he’s doing a service to all of us with the hard work he puts into such a good show. The crowd was something else too. One guy had three wives and was very proud of it. I had a great time; go out to Sager’s show if you get a chance, it’s a nice change of pace from New York City.
• Well, I’m on no shows this week but I am taping a few. Something interesting always comes up too. So I’m banking on that. Always keep faith in something interesting coming up.
See you at the mics, folks!
