Comedy Stray Notes
• One of the great perks of doing comedy in New York City is you get to do it in a variety of offbeat venues. There are apartment shows, library open mics, corporate gigs (never seen a laundromat show though like you hear about in the big cities). My favorite though is stopping by the hostel. A long time ago, Gerrit Elzinga told me about this curiosity of a show that he advertised as great stage time. In New York, you often go up an only do three-minute spots and rarely get time to stretch your jokes’ legs. Not at Randy Epley’s show. You do ten minutes. Almost exclusively for audiences that don’t speak much English. So it’s a bit unwise to do your jokes since the people aren’t gonna get them. I estimate I’ve done the show 50 times since first hearing about it in 2015 and each time is an adventure. Randy always does time in between with jokes about his family that I can’t get enough of. And I always learn a lot about people visiting NYC. This last show there was just one audience member from Belgium. So it’s basically a conversation and it ended with the guy telling us (there were comics in the room) that he stole a feather from a bald eagle. That’s a hell of a souvenir to bring home.
• Everybody is rightly talking about how great the new Netflix show “I Think You Should Leave” is. They’re all right about it too. HOWEVER, there is a better (in my opinion), under-appreciated sketch show sitting on Netflix waiting for you to discover it. It’s called “Hot Date” and my comedy friend Luke Kelly-Clyne executive produced it. Just ran past it (it was unfairly buried by Netflix) and was completely blown away. The sketches are all about modern relationships and one about couples that Venmo back and forth for every purchase hit home harder than anything else I’ve seen this year. Another sketch predicted the song, “Thank U, Next” two years before it came out. If you’re looking for a digestible, extremely funny show, make this your next one.
• SNL finished up their season this week with Paul Rudd hosting and it was pretty fun. Not a classic but respectable. This was an interesting season. There were a few true standout episodes (Matt Damon, John Mulaney were both good all the way through) and some great sketches. I honestly think every single episode had one fantastic sketch. Here’s my list to prove it (Jesus, I’m a nerd):
Career Day (Adam Driver episode)
Baby Shower (Awkwafina episode)
A Frightening Tale (Seth Meyers episode)
America’s Got Talent; Wait, They’re Good? (Jonah Hill episode)
House Hunters (Liev Schrieber episode)
Space Station Broadcast (Steve Carell episode)
Netflix Commercial (Claire Foy episode)
First Impression (Jason Momoa episode)
Weezer (Matt Damon episode- which I believe was written by Steven Castillo who I’ve never met but am Facebook friends with and a huge fan of your stuff; this was my fifth favorite sketch of the season)
Leave Me Alurn (Rachel Brosnahan episode)
Mr. H (James McAvoy episode)
Valentine’s Song (Halsey episode)
Roach-Ex (Don Cheadle episode)
Chad Horror Movie (John Mulaney episode; favorite sketch of the season: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF6gExZu-2M)
The Impossible Hulk (Idris Elba episode; close second favorite)
Future Self (Sandra Oh episode)
New HBO Shows (Kit Harrington episode)
The Actress (Emma Stone episode; this was my third favorite)
Romano Tours (Adam Sandler episode; this was my fourth favorite)
Etiquette Lesson (Emma Thompson episode)
GoT Tribute (Paul Rudd episode)
I love SNL. Can’t wait until next season.
• In smaller news, I had my weekly show at V-Spot last week and as always, it started small. I think we had six people when it began. I memorized every audience member’s name. There was even a guy named Giancarlo. Never met one of those outside of my knowledge of Esposito and Stanton. Also, our regular, Tonja Fabritz came and won a mug that said, “Improv” on it. Either way, the show rallied and got better as we moved along. There were a lot of standout sets and as the crowd grew the show just got better. The night peaked with Anna E. Paone’s trivia question: “Who wrote Hamlet?”
• Got a solid week of comedy stuff ahead. Tonight I am on Max Fine, Paul Spratt and Misha Han’s show at Niagara at 8 which I’m very excited about. Tomorrow, I’m doing Rebecca Kaplan’s “Hot Licks at Cool Bar” show at 6 PM as well as my own show at 9 PM at V-Spot with Tristan Smith. Call me “sitcom character who accidentally plans two dates and goes on both of them” because I’m double booked, baby. On a serious note, I have a friend who is very sick and we will be trying to raise money for him and his family at the show this week at V-Spot. Would be amazing if you came and gave a buck or two; it would be going toward a very good case.
Thanks to the cast, crew, Lorne and everyone else- it’s been a great week
