• Like any good improv scene, that escalated quickly. Last Sunday, things were still relatively calm and now Anna E. Paone and I haven’t really left the apartment other than to pick up groceries and get fresh air since Thursday after work. I even turned down a spot on Vivek Netrakanti and Shenuque Tissera-Salazar’s very fun “Token White Guy” show on Thursday night. That hurt my soul. It really pained me to turn down a gig I was booked on but this is an unprecedented time and it’s not worth being out there, folks. No need to spread anything- even laughter. You can do that from home. Let’s let this thing pass and then get back to the #grind like it never even happened.
Anyway, here’s the story of half a week in comedy and half a week at home.
• Last Sunday, I did two great shows (one was mine). The first was a 5:30 PM New York Comedy Club Comedy Mob. I’d read that there were insanely long waits to get on these Comedy Mob shows and I was excited to see what the hype was all about. Well, the hype is very real. I showed up and there was a crowd of about 20. Couldn’t believe it. People at a 5:30 show! Then, the show was CHEESECAKE. That’s what I call shows where it’s impossible to do badly. The crowd was so onboard for everyone. Man, if every comedy show in New York was like this, we’d all have insane egos. Kevin Hurley has cultivated something special here. Look into becoming a part of this in some capacity if you can- it’s more than worth it and you’ll get a new tape out of it.
The second show I did was mine (FREE FRIES- it’s cancelled this week FYI). We had my pal David Rey Martinez host. He more than commanded the audience’s attention in a way I’d never been able to. As a result, we had the most attentive audience Veronica Garza and I ever had. The totally spread out room actually listened to every single comic which has maybe happened once before. I accidentally headlined and closed my set and the show by having Anna do her comedy party trick (must be seen to be believed). My pal Carbon Therrien from high school in Phoenix came by too. If we really are quarantined for a long time, this is the show of ours, I’m gonna remember best.
• This week, I was rejected from a comedy festival (said festival will remain anonymous). I did that thing where I emailed, “Is it possible to get notes on my tape? I understand you had a lot of applicants but it would mean the world to me to know what I need to do to improve.” Wasn’t expecting a response. Just wanted the power of being like, “Wow, they’re jerks too and didn’t even say anything back.”
Surprisingly, they replied. This is what they wrote, “Hey Matt, thanks so much for your submission, and for reaching out. Yes, you are correct in your assumption that we had a lot of submissions hah, and we don't make a habit out of giving notes, but.... I'd say just keep going my friend. You tape was pro, good opener from the rip, and the sound was good as well. Just those 3 things are a huge head start. The thing you have going against you in any of these festivals is #'s / volume. 1,000+ people submitted, and we only have 50 spots, and usually the way it shakes out is that half are women, so really for guys it's 25 spots, and then subcategories break down from there. Competition is just high that's it. Keep going though. Worse thing you could do is stop or have this be a deterrent to your progress. You're close my friend! Keep pushing, and hope to see you next year. Thanks (and please for the love of God don't tell anyone I gave you feedback or else I'll be glued to my email for the rest of my life hah)!”
So, not telling you which festival it is out of respect for the fest-runners but it’s nice to know that these Fests are actually watching our tapes and there are humans in charge who are willing to break down the process with you. A form rejection letter is the worst but sometimes you do get rejected for totally valid reasons.
• On Monday, I traveled to Hoboken for Doug Cafran’s Nasty Show at Willie McBride’s. This was one of the wildest shows I’ve been on maybe ever. In a good way. It started normally enough. There were a handful of audience members and comics were having lively, fun sets. Then Doug’s show regulars/friends of his came. These folks were funny, loud and you had to interact with them in order to make your set work. There was no just doing material. I furiously scribbled planned riffs so the set could have some semblance of liveliness and a throughline. Then, Steve Girard went up and did what I wanted to do but about 10,000 times better than I ever could. Seriously, he had one of the funniest sets I’ve ever seen for 11 people. He may be the best comic in New York (and Hoboken). High praise I know but this was one of those paradigm shifting sets. He’ll shake it off and not see it as such- I still did. This was just a set for him; he’s probably done even better. Either way, I was still up in two comics. Once again, I was headlining. I did what I could and spent 13 minutes interviewing the crowd with varying results and closed with an audience member coming onstage to play “Two Truths and a Lie.” Not exactly comedy but not exactly boring on my part. I’ll chalk this one up as an overtime win.
• Surprisingly, I haven’t watched as much comedy content as I would have liked this past week given the circumstances. That will certainly change over the next week. There’s still so much great stuff for all of us to catch up on which is something to look forward to. In fact, Anna and I have made menus so we have meals to be excited about, planned movies and shows to watch each day, books to read and little creative activities so we don’t burn out on any one project. This can just be a vacation if you treat it as such. Don’t get bored! There’s so much fun stuff to do- just plan it ahead of time so you avoid tedium. Anyway! To recap what I saw (it’s just one thing):
“Dave” (2020): This is the slightly under the radar Lil Dicky sitcom produced with Jeff Schaeffer of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The League.” The influence of those shows is felt so much that it feels like another pale imitation of “Curb” with a little bit of “Atlanta” rap industry stuff thrown in. Don’t know if you remember but Kanye tried to make his own version of Larry David’s show way back when on HBO and this feels kind of like that. Not to say that there aren’t great moments. At the end of the episode, we see Lil Dicky rap and he murders it. He’s so damn funny as a rapper. Sadly, the rest of the show is just fine. The episode follows the “I’m not successful as an artist” to “Oh, wow, he’s crazy talented” template but in this case, he actually is really talented. Just not sure a traditional sitcom is the best showcase for said talents. Maybe it gets better? Pilots are tough. Maybe there were a ton of studio notes that sanitized this? Excited to see where this goes and Hulu does have another episode available. Would RECOMMEND just for the curiosity factor.
• Tuesday was all over the place. After work, I headed uptown as fast as I could to record an episode of my favorite sports podcast “Who’s On First” hosted by Matt Maran and Anthony Passaretti. Made it just in time and got to an amazing brownstone apartment in Washington Heights. Turns out this is Dave Columbo and Laura High’s production studio. They record podcasts, sketches and video here. It’s an amazing resource to creative people who need a place to make their ideas come to life. They both sat in on our podcast where Matt, Anthony and I talked Little League baseball, Anthony’s run in with an Astros fan as a tour guide and Maran becoming a switch hitting catcher to elongate his career- he just did anything he could to stay in the game. I had a fantastic time recording it and was honored to be asked on. If you’d like to listen, the link is in the comments. It’s about an hour and not bad for wandering the streets or cleaning or whatever you do these days now if you like hearing dudes talk baseball.
After the podcast, I took off as fast as I could to make it to super comedy producer Matt Vita’s show all the way downtown by the Barclays Center. Let me just start by saying that Vita is the patron saint of New York comedy. He produces FOUR shows in the City plus one in New Jersey and all of them are equally fun. He comes from the punk scene originally (not the Good Charlotte type- I asked) and his DIY spirit to putting on a show is infectious. This show, entitled “The Gnar Father Presents” is a fun weekly in a back room I felt I had definitely been in before. Even cooler, Matt introduced me by using “Comedy Stray Notes” as my credit. He’s done it before and it always feels cool. My set was mostly about finding a guy in the crowd who had just quit his freelance gig a job and turned the thing into a networking event to see if anyone in the crowd had a gig for a “Digital Strategist.” No one did. The rest of the show was a varied mix of comics from different scenes. Always nice to see people on shows I don’t recognize. The last comic who I didn’t know did an extended riff/bit type thing about whether or not he should take a girl out he met online. We all spied on her Instagram. It was a fun, live element to comedy. I like when it feels truly live at a show. Kind of like punk.
• Had kind of a fun week doing comedy online. In this time of social distancing, everyone who does comedy should get on ComedyWire. It was built for this kind of moment in history. You can write two jokes about every headline they put on the site and feels a bit more productive than throwing your ideas into the void that is Twitter (more on that in a sec). Even more special about ComedyWire is they have $25.00 writing challenges. I won one this week! The prompt was “Best excuse for being late.” Mine was “Sorry, I was in the middle of your podcast and it was great.” That’s it. A fine joke. Still made $25. Get on it if you need to scratch a creative itch. You might even make some cash.
As for Twitter, I am crazy active on the platform. I’ve Tweeted every day for a few years now (missed a few days here and there) and have yet to actually truly go viral. I mean, I sort of did last week with a 450 like Tweet. That’s not REALLY viral though. This week, I Tweeted something earnest using a hashtag that read:
In times of crisis, bodegas are the backbone of our society. #nyccoronavirus
Not exactly funny, a bit tongue in cheek. Somehow, it spread like wildfire. The Tweet went up to almost 4,000 favs (it’s at like 3,950). No idea why. I’ve Tweeted probably 30 times since (there’s not much going on) and many Tweets of mine that are superior have not eclipsed 60 favs. Just goes to show, you really can’t predict what people like. I never would have guessed that this would be the big viral Tweet but I’m not mad. It’s exhilarating to look at your phone and see that 600 more people have fav’d a thought of yours in the past three minutes. When it rains on a Tweet, it can really pour. Tried to follow as many of these people back as I could and reached the limit for people I follow. Got about 100 new followers out of it. I’ll take that for not leaving my apartment.
• Finally, the last true comedy event I went to this week was Round Two of Comedy Madness at Carolines. 16 matchups. Caitlin Peluffo hosted damn well and the show moved at a nice clip for, you know, a show that has 32 comics. Takes a real attention to detail on the host’s part and she rocked it. As for those 32 comics competing, there were some truly great matches. Shout out to two in particular though. The first was Ja-Ron Young vs. Rachel Lenihan. I’ve been a fan of both of theirs for years and watching them each kill in totally different ways for two minutes was a real spectacle. Heard many people in the crowd say, “You both should have moved on” to them as the night ended and they were right. My other favorite was Bret Raybould vs. Pete Burdette. I loved watching two of the scene’s best go against one another in almost matching Hawaiian shirts. When Bret revealed he was wearing a nearly identical shirt to Pete’s, It was one of those special surprises that caught even Pete totally by surprise. I’m not going to forget it anytime soon.
• As for me this week, I’m not planning on leaving the apartment but I plan to do as many comedy-related things as possible. Already looking forward to writing this again next week. It’s all I have (other than Anna).
Glad you read this. You didn’t have much else to do. In fact, if you want something to do, check out my sketch I released last week. It’s actually sort of about quarantining on a cruise, it’s a little over three minutes long, a friend told me it’s the best sketch I’ve ever done AND the link is in the comments.
