• Wednesday might secretly be the best night for shows in NYC. Yeah, Friday and Saturday are great but after going to Comedians You Should Know for a second time, along with Side Ponytail and Let’s See What Else, I’m picking Wednesday as the best. This week at CYSK was a standing room only, perfect hour and change of comedy. Got to see Saurin Choksiand David Drake open the show with ten-plus minutes of very tight material that really got the room rolling. It never stopped. Throughout the night, I saw Nataly Aukar, Kat Radley, Gabriel Pacheco and Gordon Baker-Bone LIGHT up the room. The show is called Comedians You Should Know and it makes a lot of sense- every set felt like a late night set we’ll be seeing on TV in the next six months. If you haven’t had a chance to hang at the show, make it a priority. This show is the reason you moved to New York.
• Sunday night, on the other hand, is kind of a wasteland. There is the Knitting Factory which is the gold standard for weekly shows in the City and always bangs but I’m not sure of other options. Please feel free to let me know in the comments. Luckily, there is always Matt Maran’s incredible Comedy Fight Club though. The show’s been running strong since 9/11/2015 (yeah, I remembered the date it started). It’s my favorite comedy homework show (show where you have to write stuff that isn’t your normal material) by far. I spend weeks working on stuff and even if it sucks (which it has many times), I love the challenge. This week, I roasted Jeremy Schaftel, a guy I had never met but became fast friends with. I came up with 34 (!) jokes about Jeremy and then whittled it down to my nine or so favorite. You do three jokes in two rounds and then I always try to have three ready for the possible triple overtime. Jeremy clobbered me in the first round, I won the second round and I eked out a win in Overtime (the strategy is to always do the shortest joke possible in OT). Jeremy’s jokes WERE better though. I don’t know how I won. Schaftel said, I was, “if the five second rule was a person.” No one’s ever captured my essence better. One of the judges even said, “You guys are picking the wrong people to win” (the crowd votes). He was right.
• Thursday is a good night for comedy too- that’s when I host my show at V-Spot. This week, we started light. At 9 PM, when the show is supposed to start, I think there was one guy in the room. Just some guy who wanted to watch a show all by himself. It was kind of beautiful. Miraculously, other people started showing. The show chugged along like a lil choo choo. Anna E. Paone was our Vanna White giving out gifts to the crowd from a raffle and things started to feel good like a normal, solid bar show. It was such a relief. I don’t know how Jack Finnegan and Luke Gralia always pull it together but they always do. Every single audience member feels like a huge win. On Friday, I was back at V-Spot hosting a second consecutive night on Teresa Sheffield’s show and people came out big time. Same room, tons of audience. The place rocked so hard. Nathan Macintosh was amazing and had the best joke about paying rent I’d ever heard. Also, major props to Martin Urbano who went first and had my favorite set of the year. I don’t want to give anything away about his interactive style but it is something you need to see live. The guy is elevating the form. Book him if you haven’t already. And if you don’t have a show, find a bar, build a following, just so you can book Martin. It’s worth it.
• This might make you question my judgement of all the things I praise here but I finally got around to seeing the Dana Carvey flop “Master of Disguise” this week (it’s on Hulu) and I loved it. Don’t discount everything I said before. I swear I have taste. The movie is objectively not good but there are some very inspired jokes that you should see if you have 80 minutes to spare (it’s really only 70 minutes; the last ten minutes are outtakes- it was the early 2000s when they still did that). Yes, some jokes are extremely dated/sexist/problematic/racist but if you get past those, there are some nuggets of gold and looking for something you never got around to seeing. Also, of note, I randomly watched “Portlandia” Season 7 Episode 5 and there is a sketch about movie theaters in that episode that blew my mind (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb6A0JR5BNI). Finally, SNL was fine this week but the second to last sketch about a woman who has a bit part in an adult film was so smart, so fully realized, so funny that I’m surprised it’s not an Oscar-nominated short. I was told and I could be wrong that it was written by Julio Torres and that makes total sense. He spins gold. See it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HVH_I04ZrM.
• Shot a sketch last Friday morning starring Usama Siddiquee, Mark King and featuring Barak Ziv in my apartment complex. They were all very, very funny making the script way better than it was (they improvised the button to the sketch out of thin air!) and we got it done in three hours which is pretty remarkable. Also, if you’re someone filming sketches and looking to hire someone to shoot for you, hire Kate Nahvi. So easy to work with and talented.
• On Saturday morning, I was on Frank Terranova’s podcast as a guest with Jay Welch. As the City’s biggest Jay fan, I just sat back and listened to the two of them talk. If you listen to the episode when it comes out, you’ll be surprised I didn’t leave the room after I introduced myself off the top. I really didn’t say much at all. If that comes across as bitter, that’s not what I’m getting at. For me, listening to Jay and Frank talk was such a joy, I really had nothing to add. They’re both so incredibly funny, it made for a better experience to just be a listener who was there for the actual thing. Definitely catch it when it comes out.
• Hit 100 sets in 100 days on Brianna Murphy’s New Year's Day Challenge. This is my second time doing this challenge and both times, Ian Russo and Caitlin Peluffo did double the number of sets everyone else did. That’s insane. We all gotta work harder to get on their level ‘cause whatever we’re doing- they’re doing double.
• People need to know that Seth Pompi’s Library Mic is back on! I went on Monday and it was just me, Peter Wong, Tobin Miller and some other guy I don’t know. It’s one of the City’s best mics and deserves a great turnout. I will say a 12-minute mic (four people doing three minute sets) is nothing to complain but my opinion is that 18 people at a mic is the perfect number since everyone typically stays if it’s under an hour AND it still feels like a good time because it’s not too small. Make that happen! Also! Seth is screening his documentary “Hysterical” about Alan Shain and Gary Marinoff again in May (you can find the event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/341791299798798/). If you missed it the first time around, definitely go see it. It’s the best doc about open mics in NY by a long shot (I don’t know what number two is).
• Finally, quick shout out to Robby Leon. He’s the guy at open mics making us all work harder. Every mic his jokes have tags upon tags on top of punchlines and are always good. I remember when he started and now it seems like he’s ahead of all of us. Robby is one of the few people I always make sure to stay and see if we’re at a mic together- I’ve told him this but I just want to see what he’s working on. Book the guy if you haven’t already. He’s another comedian you should know.
I’ll be in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Taipei with Andy Levy, Susan Levy (my mom isn't on Facebook), Ben Levy and Sam Levy (yeah, I tagged my family) until April 30, so there might not be a Comedy Stray Notes for awhile. Watch “Master of Disguise” to pass the time
