• Think back to the time before you moved to New York (and if you never moved to the City, imagine your perception of the City). What did you think it would be like? Busy, indifferent to you and expensive? Yeah, those are all accurate. As for me, I imagined myself rubbing shoulders with the sketch making elite and joining their inner circle, becoming great friends and then we all worked at SNL together in like two years. Well, that didn’t happen. Still, glimpses of what I imagined it would be like still flicker from time to time. Last Friday, I attended “Always Happy/Never Sad” sketch show hosted by Jed Feiman and Nehemiah Markos at the Chelsea Music Hall that featured one of my sketches. I don’t know how they did it but they completely packed out this large showroom and had 100+ people attentively watching internet sketches. It felt like a dream. My favorite sketch of all is in the comments and about a start up “about to disrupt the industry” aggressively recruiting a developer. The link for that sketch is in the comments.
• Went to Mo Amer’s headlining show on Thursday night at Carolines with Anna E. Paone. Mo absolutely destroyed with material about America’s co-opting of Hookahs and Hummus. Even better was his absolute destruction of a heckler toward the end of his set. Mo was talking about how he recently did a show in Montana and the heckler said something like, “You don’t even know where Montana is on a map.” Mo took him apart pretending to be scared of this know it all. Really wish it had been filmed. Even cooler than Mo’s set was seeing Nataly Aukar and Dina Hashem open the show. They both did very well and got the ball rolling for what was a great show. You gotta book both of them as soon as you can before they start headlining on the road themselves.
• OK, this is extremely nerdy but I have been trying to read as much about 80s SNL as I can and while doing research stumbled upon a website called OneSNLaday.com. Basically, some dude named “Stooge” got his hands on every single episode and writes a review of every single sketch. Boring to most, fascinating to me. Really fills in the gaps of my SNL knowledge. For example, I had heard about the bizarro 85-86 episode hosted by George Wendt and “directed by” Francis Ford Coppola but I didn’t know about the actual sketches. This tells you about the quality (based on his opinion) of every single piece. A lot of them aren’t great and don’t age well but it’s fascinating to read about what the show put out in its lowest moments that aren’t written about in “Live From New York” or “Saturday Night: A Backstage History.”
• Was honored to perform on two shows this week. The first was Drew Drevyanko and Stewart Fullerton’s show out in Ridgewood at a bar called Sweet Jane’s. The place is kind of a classic rock bar and a great hang show. I’ll be completely transparent though. I had a very weak set. Sometimes, you just don’t have it. And it wasn’t the room to blame. Micah Walsh went up right before and had a standout set. Went up cocky and just never got them. Commented on the bar’s menu and sounded like a Coastal Elite. Never really won them back. But that’s OK. My next show went a little better. On Friday, I did Koshin Egal and Alexander Ryu’s show at 2A and went first since I had to leave early. Had way more fun and while my set was hit and miss, there were a few really good moments. Still came across as a Coastal Elite though. Also, want to give props to Nick Whitmer who followed me and had a really tight, fun 10 minute spot. Haven’t seen him go up in awhile and was really impressed.
• Would like to go on the record and say that everyone needs to see all of “Bojack Horseman.” Finished the second half of Season 6 this week and was floored by the quality. They mix unbelievably stupid with poignancy in a way that I’ve never really even seen any other show attempt. 100 years from now (if global warming doesn’t come for all of us), college comedy courses will be teaching their students about the show. I look forward to them explaining who Zach Braff is.
• It’s not exactly “comedy” per se but the satire in the Miley Cyrus episode of “Black Mirror” was dead on too. It’s called “Rachel, Jack and Ashley, Too.” I kind of loved it. It’s a nice coming of age story from the perspective of a fan mixed with the tale of a pop star who is over her fake public persona all with a futuristic, tech bent. Not at “San Junipero” level (not sure if “Black Mirror” will ever reach these heights again but I hope they do) but it’s definitely one of the better episodes I’ve seen for sure.
• Matthew Tenenbaum and Alexander Payne’s webseries episode that I plugged last week is now available to watch online! DEFINITELY give it a watch. Gets better on every viewing to be honest. The link is in the comments.
• Comedy stuff going on for me this week is pretty limited. There is no FREE FRIES tonight (pushed the lineup back a week) because of The Oscars. I gotta be honest- I wouldn’t want to hear me doing crowd work over the show either. Only show I have this week is doing the New Talent night at Carolines tomorrow. First time on the stage. Will report back on it next week.
Like a Grateful Dead cover band might say, “Keep truckin’, my friends” (Would they say that? Sounds right)
