LOS ANGELES LIVES

These days...

2008-08-02T23:30:00.000-07:00

I heard a cover of that Jackson Brown song "These Days" (actually, I only knew it as a Nico song) on the radio, and I think hearing a different singer do it made me pay more attention to the lyrics. The first one that caught my attention was this: "These days I seem to think a lot / About the things that I forgot to do."

Okay, yes, I haven't written in my blog for a few weeks! I know. But here's another lyric that caught my attention: "Don't confront me with my failures / I had not forgotten them."

Got it, everybody? I know I haven't posted anything on my blog in a long time! But I have my reasons. Namely, no time. I'm in the middle of moving to a new apartment, and it's quite an ordeal. Really. After all I've been through, I plan to die here, just so I don't ever have to move again.

Also, I don't have much to say. I've been to a few shows lately (not very many because I've been busy with the move), but a lot of them were shows featuring people I know. And, quite frankly, I'm not really comfortable writing about a show when I know the person or people involved. Can I be critical? What if they Google themselves, come across my blog and don't like what I said? Will they be upset with me?

Frankly, I'm not really qualified to critique any show I see. Of course, most people in the blog-o-sphere aren't qualified to critique anything, and that doesn't stop them. But, still, I feel like I've made my opinions pretty clear (for example, I don't like people in the audience talking during shows*). Perhaps the reason I haven't written anything in so long is just that I don't feel the need to say anything.

As of today, I have been living in Los Angeles for exactly six months. When I got here, I was unemployed and had nothing going on and no prospects. Going to shows was a great way to get out, be involved and see what's going on. I'm not done with it yet, but I do have things going on now, and I just don't have room to see new shows on a regular basis. If you'd like, I can keep writing about seeing the same ten or twenty people in the same three or four shows, but it certainly gets tedious for me to think of new things to write.

Perhaps when I get settled down, I'll pick up again or think of a new format for the blog. Maybe I'll be like Rosie O'Donnell and just take August off. But then, I don't have the same uncontrollable need to express myself publicly that she seems to. I also write in complete sentences. I don't know how many people this will affect, as I never installed a stat counter to see how many of you actually read this. And far be it from you to leave comments!

If you've made it this far, then you get the gist: I'm done blogging for right now. So all I really have left to say is thanks and goodbye. For now.

* Funny story (well, more ironic really): I went to the Johnny Ramone tribute at Hollywood Forever last night, and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers got up to tell a story about Johnny. Apparently the Chili Peppers were playing at a festival with The Ramones, and they got the idea to run on stage naked during The Ramones' set (this was the 80's, so seeing the Chili Peppers naked was still novel). Afterwards, Johnny confronted the Chili Peppers and told them he thought this was the rudest, most unprofessional thing possible. This story was ironic for two reasons: 1) it made Johnny, who was being memorialized, out to be kind of a dick, and 2) during his introduction to the story, Flea chastised somebody in the audience for talking over him, which is annoying but still far less annoying than, say, running on stage naked during somebody's set.

L.A. LIVES?

2008-07-15T23:12:00.000-07:00

I was originally going to call this blog L.A. Live. But then I found out some enterprising corporations beat me to the punch. So I did the easiest thing and added an 's'. Don't think Hemingway wouldn't have done the same thing (A Farewell to Arms, anybody?).

Now 'lives' can be a verb (to live) or plural noun (more than one life). And what does this mean? It means that Los Angeles lives; it's a vibrant, exciting city. And it refers to the lives of the people in Los Angeles-- or at least my life and those of the people with whom I interact. But mainly it refers to live shows. Got it?

SAY THE WORD, SKIRBALL CULTURAL ARTS CENTER

2008-07-11T11:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.skirball.org/index.php?option=com_ccevents&scope=prgm&task=detail&oid=23

Oh yes, I have a blog. I had nearly forgotten. Sorry about that. Let me just get right back into it.

I didn't know what the Skirball Cultural Arts Center or even "Say the Word" were exactly when I arranged to see the latter at the former. But I got free tickets, and I knew that the Skirball is only two bus stops from my apartment on 761. So how could I go wrong?

My wonderful girlfriend (or G.F.) is in Los Angeles indefinitely, so she came along on this excursion with me. Since we are sharing one car for the moment, travel can be a bit difficult, but in this case, it didn't seem to be an issue. I took the bus to work in the morning, and she kept the car for the day. I then took the bus to the Skirball and gave her the choice of taking the bus there or driving. She opted to take the bus (remember that, it's important for later).

I arrived at the Skirball about an hour before the show and walked aroud the perimeter until I was able to find pedestrian entrance. The building and grounds are very nice, similar to the Getty, to which I took G.F. two weeks ago (for Fridays off the 405, which I highly recommend). I entered and looked around for some signs or something to indicate where I should go. Finding nothing helpful, I asked the gentleman sitting at the front desk.

I told him that I had come for "Say the Word" at 8 (this was a tricky show because it actually has two names; 'Say the Word' is the series, and 'A Declaration of Independents' was the specific show). He told me the show wasn't at 8 then checked his computer and said that it in fact was at 8. He directed me down the hall toward a table and said that the box office would open at 7:30.

I was a bit confused because I had been told that the doors for "Say the Word" opened at 7, allowing people to come in, enjoy the cabaret-style seating and eat the light fare available for purhcase. But I went down the hall and saw the table/box office, which was situated next to Zeidler's Cafe and a small food cart. I figured this must be the place and sat to wait for G.F.

As I waited, I noticed that the crowd of people milling about me seemed to be a bit older... than dirt. I also noticed a lot of photos of Israel on the wall. I also looked at the posters in front of the theatre I had been directed to and wondered why they were all for The Los Angeles Theatre Company's production of "Broadway Bound." The headshots of Jonathan Silverman and Henry Winkler made me even more curious. Was it possible that the charming, gregarious man at the front desk had given me the wrong directions?

I decided to explore the center further and see what I could figure out. First, I walked out into a courtyard where a wedding rehearsal seemed to be taking place. As I walked around to a portico, G.F. called to say that she had arrived, and I went back inside to meet her.

I expressed my concerns to her, and she said that since we were both hungry, we might as well eat before doing anything else. We checked out Zeidler's Cafe but were told they had no availability despite there being numerous conspicuously empty tables. We also decided that we probably didn't want to pay $35 for what appeared to be a buffet of mostly brown foods and got a veggie sandwich from the food cart.

We then went outside and ate the sandwich while watching the wedding rehearsal. The wedding party didn't seem to mind having an audience. When we were done, I presented to G.F. the evidence that made me suspect I had been misdirected, and she agreed to confront the gentleman at the desk with both a listing for "Say the Word" and a map of the complex, at which point, he directed us to the correct building.

We stopped in to pick up our tickets (which were in fact stickers) then decided to walk around outside a bit more since the grounds were quite nice and we were still very early for the show. First, we were accosted by a docent who wanted to make sure we weren't lost. Then we went through an open gate to a balcony overlooking the courtyard where the wedding rehearsal had been. Despite the gate being open, when we got onto the balcony, a guard called to us from the courtyard to say we couldn't be up there.

When we finally got into the auditorium, the lights were low. The seats and tables were, in fact, set up cabaret-style, and there was a bar and a table with food for sale in the back. We ran into some familiar faces, including Linda Bailey Walsh, who will be appearing soon at The Laugh Factory and the Improv and the Chuckle Hut and a bunch of other comedy clubs. Beth Lapides, the evening's ring master, also walked around mingling with people and gave G.F. a crystal. I already have one from the last show of Beth's that I saw. G.F. told me that I was being awkward about introductions and hugging versus shaking hands. Even if I know somebody, if I've never touched them before, I never know whether to use a hug or handshake as a greeting. I did a few handshake-into-hug combos. But G.F. made me stop at unhooking women's bras. She's so critical.

As the show got started, I couldn't help but think that the space could have been more intimate. It was fine, and they did everything they could to set it up well, but it was still an auditorium. Beth went first and read a piece from a new book she is working on. It detailed her transition from a skeptic to a believer in anything and everything new-agey. Then she did a slide show demonstrating the connection between crop circles, flashes of light appearing in digital photos, a swami and angels.

Discussing the show with G.F. later, we agreed that Beth's writing about her new age pursuits doesn't necessarily lend itself to laughes. And I'll use a lesson of Beth's to explain why. Fun isn't funny. Drama and comedy come from conflict. Things going well isn't particularly funny. The funniest moments in Beth's piece came when things didn't go well. For example, she showed pictures of her seeing the swami in an off-the-shoulder black dress to see a swami while everybody else wore baggy white clothes, and she said, "Nobody told me we had to wear white." Were Beth more skeptical of the mystic (thus creating a conflict), it might be far less enlightening for her but funnier for the rest of us.

Stephen Glass read next. You may have heard of him. There's a movie about him, though I must say that he's much more charming in person than Hayden Christensen is in the film. He's also very funny-- really, very, very funny. Merill Markoe said that she intended to write a new piece for the event but just couldn't because she had recently finished a novel (writing it, I believe, not reading). Instead, she read an old piece from a book she had written, which was hillarious.

Wayne Federman, who was next, was perhaps the only person reading who actually stuck closely to the show's theme, "Declaration of Independents." Only he didn't really stick to the theme, and he didn't read much or tell a story as such either. He mostly talked about holidays and a bit about the Skirball itself, which he said should be called "a Jew Center." At least that answered some of my questions about the place. I still don't know why we couldn't go on the balcony.

The last person to read was Cindy Chupak, who is perhaps best known for writing for Sex & the City, a little show you may have heard of or at least heard some gay men and 40-year-old women talk about. Her piece was comedic but a bit more murky emotionally and, like Beth's, had a clear narrative structure. I think it was indicative of her background writing for television.

As we left, G.F. talked about what a good time she had and said that she'd never been to a show like that with professional writer/performers (I guess "Show and Tell," which I had done a week earlier was amateur hour or something). We got to the bus stop around 10 or so (I wasn't really paying attention) and waited. We talked and waited some more. Then the talking stopped, and we were just waiting.

Soon G.F. started worrying. Was the bus going to come? Neither of us had checked on the Metro website. Unfortunately, she's very good at worrying. She came up with all sorts of theories about where the bus might be and how we might have missed the bus. Eventually, I said that, if she was really worried, we should probably call a cab, which is what we did.

We got home a little after 11 and stopped at In-N-Out for G.F.'s first burger animal-style (she loved it). After checking the Metro website, I saw that the 233 was supposed to stop at the Skirball at 10PM and 11PM. I don't know if we were at the stop at 10, and we left just before 11, so I can't say whether the schedule was accurate or not. But this only reminded me why riding the bus in Los Angeles is such a dicey proposition. The cab only cost $13, which wasn't bad considering we had seen a $15/person show for free. But still, we should have used the Skirball's free parking. Oh well. Next time...

LAST DAY OF SCHOOL + CONVOY, UCB

2008-06-12T00:09:00.000-07:00

http://losangeles.ucbtheatre.com/shows/1482 http://losangeles.ucbtheatre.com/shows/1631

First I asked my agent's former assistant to go see this show with me (so Hollywood, I know), but he was going to Philadelphia for his bachelor party, and apparently that took precedent. Then I asked her current assistant, who was very eager but said that he couldn't go to a show that ends at midnight when he has to go home to Palos Verdes and be back into work at 7:30 in the morning. Sounds like my agency hires some pussy assistants. So finally I called my friend Adam, who now lives around the corner from the UCB, but I got no response from him. Apparently some people aren't interested in being asked to go to a show an 11PM show at 10PM. But he's the one who once called me at 11PM to see a midnight showing of An Inconvenient Truth (I didn't go, so maybe I started this). The long and short of it is that I went alone.

I was surprised at the lack of a line in front of the theatre. Don't get me wrong; the show was still packed, but there wasn't any line. I'm not sure why not, but then I'm not sure why there usually is a line when most people make reservations in advance. I'm also not sure how so many people are able to go out that late on a Thursday night. Some very deserving topical news shows are happy to get 50 people at a show with a very prime time slot (Sunday at 9, come see!). Yet apparently Thursday night at 11 was a great time for all these people. Not me. I was tired all day Friday. I was no good at work. Luckily the highlights of my day were calling Hewlett Packard for customer support (I was offered a new printer for $378 then paid $39 for tech support to tell me that the ink cartridges were empty) and a two-hour lunch.

Last Day of School has a lot of UCB regulars, Neil Campbell, Nick Wiger, Drew DiFonzo Marks and Paul Rust, when he's not making movies. If you spend any time at the theatre, you've probably seen these guys. They start improvising by asking somebody in the audience to read a text message saved on their phone.

As far as initiations go, I suppose it's interesting, but the result is not much different from taking a single word from the audience. I was surprised that the group had as much trouble with basic long-form improv essentials like agreement and listening as they did. I have taken some improv classes to perhaps middling results; I am nowhere near as adroit or seasoned as these performers. However, I can say that while the audience obviously enjoyed the show, by the standards taught at the UCB, it was not successful.

A lot of the biggest laughs in the show came from the performers confusing details that had already been established. One character said he was a delivery man from Papa John's, then another character said she had called Domino's. This led to a recurring joke about people calling one company to talk to another, which was very funny. But, as improv, it was sloppy.

Convoy's performance had a lot of disagreement, which is not unusual for them. Of course, the first rule of improv is 'never say no' (or, according to David Alger, "Say Yes-and!" followed by "Don't Block," which kind of adds up to not saying no). Most neophytes are immediately drawn to contradicting scene partners because conflict is, after all, the source of all drama. Every play, movie and TV show starts with conflict, and this works when you have the luxury of determining the plot in advance. When you make scenes and stories up as you go along, disagreement can be very problematic because it doesn't lead a scene anywhere, except perhaps a resolution, which then concludes the scene.

Agreement is essential when you are beginning to improvise. But, as both Last Day of School and Convoy demonstrate, good performers can outgrow it. In fact, most scenes in Asssscat feature some sort of disagreement. And this makes me wonder about the alchemy of long-form improvisation. Obviously, practice helps, as does being comfortable enough to forget the rules. But how do these guys manage to do it so effortlessly when so many people (many of whom were in my improv classes) struggle to even make a scene when they are following all the rules? Is improv really more of a tool than a product? These are the questions I pondered while I drove home after the show at midnight (it did end promptly, which I appreciated).

UNCABARET, M-BAR

2008-05-17T15:15:00.000-07:00

http://uncabaret.com/

Devotees of this blog may notice that I am in fact writing this post two weeks after seeing the show I’m writing about. And I appreciate that attention to detail, really. Thank you for caring. Now I know how Nikki Finke felt when she took those week-long breaks during the WGA strike. But really, guys, you need to spread your wings and fly, okay? You can’t be so dependent on me and my fantastic blog all the time. I’ve got a lot going on. I recently took a yoga class, and today I bought a yoga mat, so that’s become a big part of my life. I’ll try to fit the blog in, between sun salutations and child’s pose, as long as it doesn’t disturb my sit bones.

Anyway, to the show at hand: UnCabaret. UnCabaret (or “UnCab” as I will heretofore refer to it) has a rich history that I’m sure the enterprising Greg Miller has publicized somewhere. It functions as a space for comedians to perform without being tied to a particular format. I have a feeling this is more liberating and enjoyable for the comedians themselves than the audience or anybody else for that matter. Imagine doing ‘sets’ at a place called ‘The Laugh Factory’ or ‘The Comedy Store.’ The language just drips with portent. You do a routine you’ve probably done 20 times before in a set amount of time. The aim of these clubs is to crank out laughter like a factory or sell comedy like a store. It doesn’t do much for the creative process.

So UnCab is an alternative space that can lead to some very amazing things, most notably “God Said Ha!” I know tickets cost money, but I’m not sure how much because I was able to swing a comp (yeah, I know, it’s impressive). I did, however, have to pay for a valet at the lovely strip mall that is home to M Bar, which is in turn home to UnCab. When I got inside, I decided to sit at the bar in the back because I was alone, and most of the seating consisted of tables for groups. I did not, however, want to buy a drink, which made me a bit uncomfortable sitting at the bar.

Greg, the afore-mentioned enterprising one, was trying to get the show started, but Beth, the star, was mingling and handing out crystals. I said hello to Greg, and he gave me a crystal. He said it was for sending and transmitting, which must explain all those faxes that have been coming through on it. Beth finally got on stage and announced the show’s line-up: Laura Kightlinger, the Sklar brothers and Taylor Negron. She joked that not all of them were there yet, or at least I assumed it was a joke.

Moments later, a woman entered and ordered a drink at the bar. She wanted to put her drink and those of some friends sitting at the bar on her card, but the bartender had some problem with that. So she abruptly offered to include me and the man sitting next to me in her party and pick up our drinks. I had no idea how to take this or whether I should actually order a drink, and as this generous woman walked off to the bathroom, I saw that she was in fact Laura Kightlinger, which only confused me more.

Beth began talking, and at least part of what she said was re-purposed from various blogs and other pieces she’s written. She was prone, however, to digressions, and every time Greg flashed her a light from the back, she lamented that she hadn’t yet covered what she meant to.

Laura returned to the bar and asked nobody in particular why the man next to me and I hadn’t gotten drinks for ourselves. Before I could answer or order a drink, something else caught her attention, and she didn’t say anything else to me for the rest of the night. Let that be a lesson: you only get one chance at a free drink from an IFC star, so you’d better take it.

As Beth continued, a woman in the audience started yelling at her. I’m not sure what she was saying. Beth joked that there’s no talking at an UnCab show. Laura said the woman was drunk as a skunk, and seeing the woman in the parking lot afterwards, I have to agree. I’m not even sure how she was standing up, which is why I was especially frightened that the friend she had come with appeared to be letting her drive home.

Beth engaged the drunk woman for a while, at least long enough to get her to shut up, and finished. Laura came up next and told a real embarrassing story about telling a fake embarrassing story about the Sklar brothers. Beth talked to her from offstage with a microphone, which is a bit disturbing at first.

The Sklar brothers performed next, and they seemed to be a good fit for the format—or lack thereof—because they have each other to play off of. I have to admit that, being an only child, the entire sibling relationship is foreign to me, especially the relationship between twins, which is foreign to many people. I assume they must have very good chemistry if they grew up together and decided to make their careers together, and I imagine this is why they interact so easily. I don’t know that they had any material prepared for the performance, but they were able to wing it magnificently.

Taylor Negron performed last, along with a guitar player named Logan, who is so young that I am jealous. They are going to New York soon for a one-man show, with Taylor doing his thing, and Logan playing guitar. Taylor said that if the show doesn’t make enough money, he will be drummed out of show business. He then performed a highly-abridged version of the show, including some Janice Dickinson jokes that I’d heard him do at Sit ‘n Spin a few months earlier. He told a number of poignant/absurd stories including one that ended, “Guys, here’s a lesson: if you have a three-way, one person is always going to end up using the clock radio as a pillow.” He also did impressions of pretty girls chewing gum and people answering the phone 20 years ago. None of it made much sense, but it was surprisingly entertaining.

On the way out, I had to wait a very long time for the valet to bring my car up, which gave me a chance to mingle with the people leaving the birthday party at the Cuban restaurant next door. I don’t know why they treated me so shabbily, perhaps because the outside of my car is so ridiculously dirty (I have many good reasons for not getting it washed). I also got to spend enough time around the crazy drunk lady to confirm that getting stinking drunk and heckling people is just not cool.

LOS ANGELES COMEDY FESTIVAL, MCCADDEN THEATRE

2008-05-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.lacomedyfest.com/index.html

I don't have much to say about the three acts that I saw at the Los Angeles Comedy Festival (Olga Karavaeva, The Comedy Jesus Show and The Queers of Comedy) other than to suggest that the Queers get a three-chip video camera and tripod. Instead, I'm writing an open letter to the three people who sat in front of me. I don't know anything about these people, so I have no way of identifying them other than by their appearance. The gentleman in the group was wearing a Cosby sweater. This was in fact the Cosbiest sweater that ever Cosbied. One of the women in the party apparently gets her hair done at the Alyse Beasley School of Beauty. And the other woman, the hipster of the group, had jet black hair with two spit curls, bangs and a two-foot braid. Any one of these hairstyles is hard enough to pull off individually, but all three is a Bad Hair Hat Trick that could only be topped, perhaps by the addition of a tonsure.

I don’t know if these people are crazy enough to Google themselves by their strange appearances, but I legitimately do want them to read this letter. So I hope they stumble across it somehow. Perhaps I can start one of those ‘flame wars’ I’ve heard so much about. Now, without further ado:

Dear Dr. Huxtable, Ms. DiPesto and Possible Member of the B-52's,

I cannot stand you. Had I any doubt about my inability to will laser beams from my eyeballs, you have disavowed me of it. Could I, you would have been severely lasered. Severely.

Sadly, no matter how fervently I stared, your heads remained in tact.

Continually talking to performers in the middle of their acts when they are not soliciting responses from the audience is at best questionable. But having tangential conversations amongst yourselves at full volume while sitting in the front row of a small theatre with 12 people in it is rude to the point of verging on psychosis. Are you totally unable to read social cues? Did you fail to notice that nobody else in the theatre was doing this and that the performers were clearly grimacing every time they heard you? Yes, they engaged you—but only in the hopes that would shut up so that they could go on with their routines. Just to clarify: you were not a part of the routine!

I have to assume that you are not young. Dr. Huxtable has gray hair and clearly hasn’t shopped since 1992. Despite Morticia’s attempts to dress youthfully and style her hair—let’s say—“creatively,’ her face wasn’t keeping any secrets. Further, I have to assume that you three are employed or at least not destitute because you paid $12 a piece for tickets and, clearly, more on libations. Perhaps you subsist on some sort of government subsidies, but I doubt it. No, I assume that the three of you must hold some sort of jobs and interact with others on at least a quasi-regular basis. So how have you failed to glean even a basic sense of decorum?

I would normally guess that you were drunk, but I don’t think that’s the case. You seemed perfectly lucid and functional. Your behavior was consistent and lively. In fact, you seemed excited about just being in public (which does pay some credence to my theory that you are escaped mental patients). When Olga the juggler went into the audience to find a volunteer, Dr. Huxtable was very quick to make faces and raise his hand (much like a goofy young child desperate for attention), and Ms. DiPesto pointed to him quite readily. It didn’t strike me as the behavior of people under the influence of a depressant.

I don’t know much about drugs, but I can’t think of any that would make somebody act so giddy and stupid. (Cocaine, perhaps?) And my inability to attribute your behavior to one chemical or another has me even more perplexed and perturbed.

How did you three find each other? I imagine you perhaps working together or meeting at a party and saying things like, “You enjoy going to live performances and prattling on to the chagrin of both the performers and the rest of the audience? Me too!” and “We should go together sometime!”

Are you members of a club for annoying people? Are you aware of how incredibly obnoxious you are? Do you ever, for even a moment, consider the feelings and propriety of the people around you?

I can’t stand to hear people say that, because they hold a full-time job, they want to do nothing but zone out when they are done with work for the day. I enjoy being active and taking on challenges outside of my job. But dealing with you is not one of them. I paid for a ticket to see the show just like you did, and, while that is no guarantee that I will enjoy the show, I would rather not be so distracted by you that I cannot enjoy it.

My own concerns aside, please be considerate of the people performing. Clearly, we weren’t at a Jerry Seinfeld show. If these people made any money from the performance you saw, it was nominal at best, and with 12 people in the audience, I don’t think they got much exposure either. Even if the acts weren’t great, they clearly required time, effort and dedication. Why distract them continually?

At this point, I’ve run out of synonyms for ‘annoying,’ so I will simply say that it is only a matter of time until science perfects the laser/eyeball technology. And when that happens, you had better steer clear of me for the sake of your own big, stupid heads.

THE MATCH GAME, UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE

2008-05-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

As a kid, I used to watch the syndicated version of The Match Game that aired in the early 90's. As a nine-year-old, I enjoyed it quite a bit. But I think it really paled in comparison to the original Match Game, when Charles Nelson Reilly was that much younger and drunker. Now I look forward to watching the reruns on Game Show Network every time I fly JetBlue (along with reruns of The Avengers on BBC America). I was excited when I saw that the UCB has a monthly UCB game show because I honestly think that talented, funny people will be entertaining just fooling around together. It's the reason people enjoy spending time with their friends. And a game show gives the proceedings a nice structure to work within. That's why I was especially excited when I read that the UCB's Match Game is not some ironic parody of game shows. It's just a game show, done live, with comedians and contestants. How could it go wrong?

Before the show, an intern comes around and takes names of people who want to be contestants. I did not want to be a contestant. I don't like audience participation, even when it's solicited. Some people really enjoy being on stage and being part of the action, but not me. I went to see the show, not be a part of it. I get too self-conscious in those situations. But I was with my friends Adam and Lauren (Adam sometimes uses a pseudonym, I don't know why, something about identity theft), and they thought it would be funny to put my name in. "What are the chances you're going to get called?" Lauren said. I don't know what the odds were because I don't know how many people put their names in, but I do know that Lauren probably increased my chances drastically when she put the slip with my name on it at the top of the pile.

As usual at the UCB, the show was packed. Jimmy Pardo is the host, and the man has game show hosting in his blood (also in his job description, he hosts something on Game Show Network). He walks the fine line between charming and smarmy perfectly. You could call him smarming. And he never stops talking and cracking jokes. Even if they aren't great, he keeps the air alive. Jimmy spent a lot of time talking to one very unfortunate teenager in the audience named Eli. Eli was very large, especially for a 17-year-old, and seemed to have a good sense of humor about the whole thing, so Jimmy spent a lot of time asking him jokes and making fun of him. At one point, Jimmy asked Eli what his favorite band is, then said, "I don't know why I thought that would be funny."

The panelists were Matt Walsh, Pat Francis, Dannah Feinglass, Paul Scheer, Paul F. Tompkins and another Paul whose last name I forget. The first contestant was a girl from the audience who was really into the whole experience and had actually been a contestant before. She joked around with Jimmy, which I don't like. As I've said before, so many of the people who go to the UCB act like they're a part of the show. I think many of them expect that if they are funny and cool enough, they will be asked to star in a TV show or something. Then, it came time to call the male contestant. Normally some angel somewhere has their finger on my shoulder at these times, but this time, Lauren beat the angel (that's right: Lauren beats angels), and I got called.

Jimmy made a joke at the start about me looking like Alex P. Keaton and after that, mostly left me alone. My plan was to act inconspicuous and play the game like a regular contestant trying to win. Of course, I was being self-conscious, but I felt that as long as I did that, I wouldn't get made fun of. For the most part it worked, Jimmy mostly told me that he liked my answers and thought they were good. He admonished the other contestant a few times for trying to give funny answers rather than trying to win.

The ironic thing is that she did win, but quite a bit. She picked up most of her points on one question, "'Boy,' Jacques said, 'The French army must really be running out of money, they just pinned a ___________ on my chest.'"

This question came in the third round, which is the only round with questions designed to narrow the guests' answers down and thus give the contestants a chance to actually win. Otherwise, the contestants are mostly coming up with funny or outrageous answers, and since they are all professional comedians, they tend to go in a lot of different directions. My third round question was, "I stayed at the cheapest hotel they other night. They actually made me share a _________ with a stranger."

As I saw it, the obvious answer was 'bed.' But sharing a bed-- even with a stranger-- is not that uncomfortable if it's a large enough bed. I also considered the mint that is left on the pillow but wasn't sure how to phrase that to keep with the syntax of the original question and didn't want to lose points for specificity, which is possible. While mulling this over, I made extended eye contact with Dannah Feinglass, who seemed to be looking into my soul.

I finally settled on 'pillow' because I decided that would be far more uncomfortable to share than a bed. Most of the panelists went with 'bed'-- so obvious. The Paul whose last name I can't remember went with 'mint', and then Dannah Feinglass came up with 'pillow.' She said that she had tried to look into me and do a mind meld, and I decided that obviously both Dannah and Lauren had supernatural powers, and Dannah was using hers for good.

With only one point, I, of course, did not play in the final round, and the other contestant only ended up winning three dollars. When I left, I was amazed that the show had lasted almost two hours because it really flew by. I can't remember the last time that I've laughed that much at a show. I almost feel bad that I didn't give Jimmy a little more to make fun of, but I was glad that my plan to avoid ridicule had worked.

MAIN STAGE SKETCH, iO WEST

2008-05-04T15:30:00.000-07:00

http://west.ioimprov.com/io/shows/21

You may recall that a few months ago, I intended to see the Mainstage Sketch show at iO West with one "Dean" (Dean, of course, being a pseudonym for a friend who is a mafia informant). That didn't work out, but now that I am a contributor to iO West's show "Big News", I can get free tickets, and I am somewhat more familiar with the theatre's schedule. So I decided to brave the wilds of Hollywood again, and this time, I took public transit, so I was really braving it.

If you're an Angelino, you might be asking why I would take public transit. If you live in any other major metropolitan area, you might be asking why that's such a big deal. Well, here's why I did it:

Gas prices are $4/gallon for regular in Los Angeles, and while a bus and subway ticket still cost more than gas alone, I still have to consider wear and tear on the car, oil changes, etc., so the price kind of evens out.
I don't know if you've heard about this global warming thing, but one method of curbing carbon emissions that is cheaper than buying a hybrid with a huge fuel cell battery you won't be able to get rid of is using mass transit. A more expensive method is buying carbon off-sets, which are kind of like when the Catholic church used to sell indulgences.
Parking in Hollywood is ridiculous.
If I want to drink at iO West's full bar, I don't have to worry about driving home.
I feel bad seeing buses drive all over town with nobody in them.

The LA Metro website estimated that it would take me between 15 and 30 minutes to take the 750 from Van Nuys and Ventura to Universal City then take the Red Line to Hollywood and Vine. I admire their optimism, I really do. But I didn't trust it and left myself about an hour to get there. This was good planning. While the bus was waiting at the stop when I arrived, I waited in the Universal City subway station for about 20 minutes before the train came. Los Angeles subway stations are much nicer than New York's. Perhaps that's because there are only six of them, and nobody ever uses them.

I got to the show just in time and sat behind a very good-looking guy-- one of those guys with shaggy hair and flip-flops-- who kept kissing a girl with short hair throughout the show. Frankly, I could do without this. Just watch the damn show. I love my girlfriend, but we're usually able to go an hour without kissing. Maybe we're just old-fashioned.

The current Mainstage Sketch show is titled "Three's Company, Four's a Conglomerate," and corporations are a running theme. There's a "business persons' convention" that frames several of the sketches. And one recurring character is an ad executive who decides to give Ford's new car an unfortunate name. Many of the sketch's dovetailed in some way or another-- characters or situations from one sketch appeared or were mentioned in another. I like that idea, but I think that it's difficult to do well because the material must all be generated concurrently for it to be truly organic. If the connections are made in the revision process or even in a more collaborative manner, they often just feel contrived. Mr. Show is perhaps the best example of this. I'll admit that I'm not a big fan of Mr. Show and haven't seen many episodes, but I do know that each sketch was connected in some way to the preceding sketch. Each sketch, however, had an individual game (except for certain sketches that changed games part-way through, which was especially confusing). For me, these connections didn't add much.

The Upright Citizens Brigade tried to incorporate several jokes and characters into many sketches throughout a season (like Supercool and Reset Smith), which is most likely the result of their improv background. This had the potential to feel contrived as well, but at its best it felt like a good callback or running joke that managed to build on itself. It appears when it's funny and natural and makes sense. I have seen several sketch shows that attempt to do this, but I don't know that it ever comes together in the way that it does in improv. And a good sketch troop like Harvard Sailing Team can do without it.

The crowd at the show was not huge or terribly responsive, which may have colored my opinion of it, but overall, I would say it was solid just not revelatory. Some sketches worked better than others. The performers were all committed, which helps a lot, and none of the sketches were exceptionally bad. One or two sketches, like one about a guy who thinks that a woman at a bar is coming onto him, just didn't land. Some other more elaborate sketches, like one about performance artists doing the news and one about a plumber who thinks he's Zorro, really seemed to capture the audience more. Perhaps because they were more dynamic, but then who wants to dissect comedy like that?

RICHARD LUCAS, COMEDY CENTRAL STAGE

2008-05-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

http://richardlucascomedy.com/

I know Richard Lucas from working with him at the UnCab Lab, run by Beth Lapides and Greg Miller (yes, I am trying to include as many tags in one sentence as possible, also let me say: Mylie Cyrus, Vanity Fair, Annie Lebowitz, tax rebate). So when I heard that he would be doing a solo show at the Comedy Central Stage, of course I wanted to go.

I left work just before 7 and called my girlfriend. While talking to her, I stopped in CVS to buy wiper fluid for my car (I had been putting it off for months in order to save some money, but finally my windshield was just too dirty, and I caved only to find that wiper fluid is only $1.49/gallon, which is actually less than water, and that is why I will be drinking nothing but wiper fluid from now on). I drove from Beverly Hills to Hollywood and stopped at the Fatburger on Santa Monica for a quick dinner. I waited a few minutes before going in to finish my conversation. By the time that I ordered, it was just after 7:30, a half hour before the show was to start.

I haven't been to Fatburger in quite some time because I live only one block (yes, one block!) from an In-N-Out, which satisfies my burger and fry needs. I was taken by a) how much more expensive Fatburger is, b) how comparable the service was to In-N-Out's and c) how mediocre their fries are. I love fries, and I only eat them once a week, so I like to make sure that I only get the best possible, and I was disappointed. Further, Fatburger's fresh-brewed iced tea dispenser was empty, so I could not make the Arnold Palmer I love so dearly.

The point of my lament is to explain why I almost did not arrive to the show on time. Luckily, my regular parking space was still available (I have no idea why this spot is always just waiting for me there), and I ran to the show. Actually, 'ran' might be strong, but I was definitely going faster than a walk. We are, after all, talking about a comedy show. I like Richard, but would I run to see him? I don't know. I got to the theatre just in time and took a seat dead center in the front row because it was the only one available. Normally, this would be a good seat, but I know that Richard can... get fixated, let's say (just ask Jim Hill's tailor), and I didn't want him to make eye contact with me and not be able to look away the whole show or something.

As it turns out, Richard was able to get through the whole show and only make eye contact with me once or twice. His material (I would not go so far as to describe it as a 'routine') is very much about obsessing over the minutia of everyday life in a rather tense, neurotic way. This is a very fine line to walk. Everybody can relate to Richard's material because the topics are so general (an awkward encounter in the supermarket, a sportscaster's odd wardrobe choices, a fatuous boss). But we all manage to deal with these things, and I'm sure that, in reality, Richard does as well. While most people might devote an inordinate amount of mental anguish to seemingly superfluous events and details, talking about it can come off as obsessive or petty. Richard has crafted his act in such a way that he gives voice to and expounds on these topics without belaboring them, and I think this is really essential.

I think that one of the keys to Richard's act is his act, which is to say his performance. When Richard is on stage, he takes on a certain persona. First of all, he wears a blazer (which partly facilitates his discussion of Jim Hill), and he tends to stick his hands in his pockets rather aggressively. It gives him a formal, introverted mien. He also speaks in a halting, pensive manner that amplifies his discomfort and matches his cerebral material. I did notice that Richard's blazer kept catching on his belt. He readjusted it several times, but it caught my interest because Richard seems to be so aware of oddities in other people's appearances (like his family members' pleated pants and dated hairstyles) that I would expect him to have noticed this and worn a different belt. Or perhaps it's done intentionally to add to the discomfort.

As per usual at the Comedy Central Stage, Richard walked off stage, the audience got out of their seats and walked down to the stage then waited for him to come back out so that they could congratulate him. Going backstage at the end of the show is really just a formality there. But then, if anybody thrives on formality, I have to imagine that it would be Richard.

WORD PLAY, THE FAKE GALLERY

2008-04-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

http://wordplayshow.com/

Alan Olifson produces "Word Play," and I think I first heard about it from his website. He is a writer and humorist whom I'd seen at "Show and Tell" when I first arrived in Los Angeles. I like his work, although he does tend a bit too much towards a jokey/stand-up style than I prefer. "Word Play" takes place at the Fake Gallery, which is located in a funny part of town. It is just east of the 101 and just north of Koreatown, so it gets some spill over of crazy Asian-style businesses, like the huge golf center on the corner of Melrose and Vermont. It is a fairly rundown part of town, except for the block or so of old buildings that Fake Bar is located on, which has been turned into some weird hipster mecca.

I arrived just before the show was scheduled to start and had to spend several minutes looking for a parking space. I was very sensitive about parking in the wrong space-- or even the wrong way-- in this part of town because I actually received a ticket while parked in front of Los Angeles City College for being "too far from the curb." I had no idea this was even an offense and should say that I was by no means in the middle of the street. But cops in Los Angeles are insane, so I didn't want to tempt fate again with a questionable parking job.

When I got to the door, the woman taking names said I looked like I wanted to go to see the band playing next door. I don't know why she would want to turn me away like this-- was she trying to tell me I'd be happier there? Frankly, I didn't think that I would. But, I also didn't have cash (not my fault, my boss was supposed to give me cash for parking and didn't), and apparently the pen and clipboard she had weren't equipped to take debit cards. So she sent me to the gas station several blocks away, which, she had heard, has an ATM.

The gas station did have an ATM, and I made it back well after the show was supposed to start, but (not surprisingly), it hadn't, and I made my way to the back to get some wine. I like any show that gives out free wine, although I have found that these same shows tend to charge about $10 for admission, so the wine is really only free in the same sense that the candy at Pinata is. In this case, the wine was Charles Shaw Merlot, which is really just flaunting the disparity in the wine:admission price ratio. I mean, that wine is famous for just how cheap it is, and that's what they serve?

I took a seat in the balcony, and the show started with Jessi Klein. Jessi went to Vassar College, as did I, and was also part of a comedy group called Laughingstock, which I kind of was as well (it's complicated, there were rallies and crying involved). I met her briefly when she was doing development at Comedy Central. Now she's living in LA and writing for Samantha Who?, which reaffirms my belief that every single man, woman and child in the U.S. (excluding my mother and girlfriend [despite some dreams I had about the latter]) would become a television writer at a moment's notice. It does make the marketplace a little crowded.

Jessi started her story about going to her sister's wedding and a DJ on stage began playing music. I quickly caught on that this was the show's hook, a DJ creating a soundtrack for the stories. Jessi seemed a little distracted by it and often stopped to comment on the music. I'm not sure that it added much really.

Carl Kozlowski, who is apparently "America's Funniest Reporter" (I think Seymour Hirsch might beg to differ), read next. Carl told a moderately humorous story about playing Cheese-a-saurus Rex, the Kraft Mac & Cheese mascot. I probably would have enjoyed the story more had I not heard it less than two months earlier at "Show and Tell"! C'est vrai! J'accuse, Carl Kozlowski, j'accuse...

I suppose that I can't complain too much about Carl repeating stories. After all, when a writer finds material that works for him, he might as well get as much mileage out of it as possible, like Tom O'Keefe and his wedding dress. Or me. The blog entry you are reading right now was lifted entirely from a Psych paper I wrote junior year of college.

Alan Olifson read next. As I said, I've seen him at "Show and Tell" as well, but this time he was reading new material. Or at least material that's new to me, so I didn't mind. Again, he relied more on jokes and punchlines than I'd care for. He's no Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling, but I feel like strong material needs less embellishment. Since the whole show was Alan's doing, I paid particular attention to how the music augmented his story, and... It didn't so much.

Personally, I could take or leave the music. The DJ did a good job, but it was simultaneously too integrated into the show and not integrated enough. By that, I mean that the music was cued to specific lines in the stories (Jessi mentions singing "Happy Birthday," and the song plays), which is a bit cutesy and matches the literal meaning of the story while not necessarily complementing the tone or theme as such. Contrarily, the storytellers rarely acknowledged or interacted with the music, and I mostly tuned it out.

Taylor Negron, who went next, told perhaps the best story of the evening. You may recall that the last time I saw Taylor (of course you remember, you read and catalogue all these entries, right?), I was a bit disappointed. This time, he did something similar, but I feel like at least part of it was possibly grounded in reality, and I think that made the difference. Frankly, I don't care if the story I hear is entirely true, and in Taylor's case, I know that it's not. But I'd like to think that it's not a total fantasy. I am curious as to why he told a story about living in West Hollywood then wrote in his bio blurb that he lives in Venice, but I'll let that slide.

In his piece about modeling for Janice Dickinson, Taylor was obviously not saying anything true, and therefore it had no emotional resonance. In this piece, which was about being conned by a Buddhist carpenter and having his house robbed by a gay meth-head amongst other things, he spoke more openly about himself. Even though much of what he said was more of a fantastical spin on reality, I was able to connect with it because he was touching on emotional-- if not factual-- truths.

The night ended with a piece by C. Brian Smith, who is apparently a writers' assistant impervious to being Googled. The "Word Play" website advertised an appearance by Annabelle Gurwitch, but C. Brian took her place for whatever reason. I didn't mind. C. Brian did a story about being gay and losing his virginity in Connecticut, perhaps the most uptight state of all. As the title of his piece suggests, he really doesn't seem gay at all. And his description of wanting to suck another man's testicles did leave me wondering... Does anybody really want to do that? Isn't that just part of the foreplay? Wanting to have sex with another man is one thing, but sucking testicles isn't pleasurable for the sucker. Why would you want to do that?

Comments?

UNCAB LAB SHOW, M BAR

2008-04-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.myspace.com/uncabgrads

Let's address an issue about going out: drinking. Monday night I went to a networking event at Falcon, a bar in (sort of) West Hollywood. It was free, but I was there to mingle, and the bar was very nice, so I figured they deserved to make some coin for letting us up-and-comers use the place, and I bought a beer (Heineken, $5.50). That night, I had cash. Tuesday night, I met some people from "Big News", the iO West show, for free pizza. Afterwards, they all went to the iO West bar. iO has the best bar of any comedy theatre that I know of in LA. Places like Laugh Factory that do a lot of big name stand-up shows probably have pretty good bars. But theatres like UCB and bang. that do sketch and improv shows tend to have a cooler of Pabst and soda. iO West, however, has a full bar that even stocks Hendrick's, the best gin in the world. Again, I had a beer (Smithwick's, $5). This time, I did not have cash and was told that I would have to open a tab and spend $10 in order to use my credit card. I eventually arranged a deal with another drinker whereby he paid me cash to buy him a drink, and I was able to spring my credit card. Wednesday night, I stayed home, and my roommate, happy about just having gotten engaged, offered me a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. Thursday, I went to M Bar to see the UnCab Lab show, and I was under no obligation to purchase alcohol as the show has no drink minimum. Still, they don't get the biggest crowd, and I've gone twice now without getting anything to eat or drink. I know that finding a venue for a show can be difficult because most theatres and bars don't want to lose a night of business, so I felt like I should contribute something just to help keep the show going. And I had another Heineken ($6 this time, thank you very much!). This time, I thought I had cash but did not and had to walk three blocks to an ATM in order to pay.

Technically, each event that I went to was free, but I ended up spending about $20 on drinks. Considering that this was during the week, and I am not making much money at the moment, that's more than I'd like to spend on alcohol, especially with gas and food prices going through the roof. Admittedly, I did not pay for any of the events that I went to, so you might say that I was substituting the price of admission with the cost of a drink, and that is usually how I rationalize this spending. Nonetheless, it does add up. Drinking is also sticky because most people in LA drive everywhere they go (oh yes, I also got a $45 parking ticket while trying to park near iO West, which, as I've already mentioned, is quite difficult). I want to support the shows that I see, but if it's a weeknight, and I am driving home, I'd really rather not drink. Having a beer does lend a nice, convivial feeling to the whole event, but I am very apprehensive about the way that alcohol has pervaded the whole enterprise.

When I arrived at M Bar for the UnCab Lab show, I was surprised at how empty it was and wondered if I was there on the wrong night until I noticed Sheila, who I know from the Lab. I should say that I was no more than 10 minutes early for the show. Unfortunately, M Bar has very comfortable booths lining the perimeter of the room, and people like to sit in these rather than in the tables in the front of the room. On nights when the crowd is thin, this really makes the room feel emptier than it is and the laughter quieter than it is. Regular M.C. Tom O'Keefe worked the crowd at the top of the show. He talked about his failed relationships, as per usual. Tom, if you didn't know, broke off an engagement shortly before the wedding and now has a wedding dress in his closet. He gets a lot of mileage out of that. Nobody tell him that the subject of next month's Moth StorySLAM is 'weddings.'

The theme of the evening's UnCab Lab show was "Death and Taxes," though Tom pointed out very accurately that nobody performing adheres to these themes. He then incorrectly attributed the quote from which the expression 'death and taxes' is taken to one "Oliver Wilde." I thought that perhaps Tom, who has a law degree, was citing a learned barrister whom I'd never heard of. In actuality, he was talking about Oscar Wilde, and I was fairly certain that he was incorrect because Oscar Wilde's quotes tend to be logical anomalies. They also tend to involve China settings. I was not sure who did coin the phrase about death and taxes, however, and neither was anybody at the show. In general, I am interesting in the province of various quotes because some of my favorites are regularly attributed to more than one source. And then there's the thing Gertrude Stein said about Oakland that I thought Dorothy Parker said about Los Angeles (it still works). Someday I'm going to write an article about it for some publication, but not today. What I did do today is find the original death and taxes quote, which seems to be attributed only to Benjamin Franklin.

Tom introduced the first performer, Ray Barnhart, who I'd seen at one of these shows previously. He is also doing a show at M Bar called "Ray Barnhart Likes Girls" on April 30th with a lot of the women who regularly perform at the UnCab Lab shows. Other regular performers included Tim Coyne, host of the trademarked Hollywood Podcast, Rebecca O'Brien and Traci Swartz. All of them have developed their acts pretty well and have very natural rhythms, although they were still met with perhaps varying responses. Traci always closes the show because she also produces it, and I guess she feels like that gives her the right to do whatever she wants. Her style is very literary and academic, which I like a lot. What perplexes me about these shows is that I think many of the more seasoned performers are on par with a lot of people doing very similar stuff with a lot more notoriety. I would put Traci and Rebecca's work on par perhaps with David Sedaris's. Granted, he is slightly more polished, even in person (yes, I've seen him live), but the rest is there. And it makes me wonder why David Sedaris is on This American Life or in The New Yorker every other week and able to sell enough books and CDs to afford a house in the French countryside and an apartment in Paris. Of course, he went through a long period of doing odd jobs to get by before he found success, and both Traci and Rebecca are building some momentum, but they are still not even at the same level as even, say, Taylor Negron.

Some new-comers performed this time as well, namely Jenny Novak, Aaron Levitz and Melanie Reno. Melanie, as you'll see from the hyperlink on her name in the previous sentence, has a pretty extensive background doing stand-up comedy, but here she was trying to do some more personal, less joke-oriented material, and it went well even if she did run out of time. Jenny and Aaron did well, especially considering that they were popping their cherries. I think both of them have some work to do before they've developed the persona or rhythm of some of the more established performers. But that is why this is called a Lab show and doesn't cost any money.

BIG NEWS, iO WEST

2008-04-20T16:00:00.000-07:00

http://bignewsreport.wordpress.com/
I talked to Mike Hughes, who writes for and directs "Big News," recently, and he complimented me on my last entry about the show. I don't quite remember what I wrote about the show, and I don't want to check because I may have said something really nasty. Of course, he didn't act like that was the case, so I have to assume that I didn't. But still, I'm sure it wasn't entirely complimentary, and you never know what somebody might take offense at. This is the downside of having a blog; sometimes, people read it. Luckily, that's pretty rare for me. It reminds me of a story from high school. I had a really terrible History teacher freshman year and wrote a really terrible evaluation of him. The next year, I needed to get his signature on a form, so I went to his classroom and asked him to sign it. He said, in a very intimidating Jersey accent, "Alright, I'll sign it. But I wasn't happy with what you wrote on my evaluation."

I told him that I honestly could not remember what I had written (it was about nine months earlier). Apparently not believing me, he said ominously, "I can recognize handwriting, you know?"

I'll admit that writing a bruising end of the year evaluation was probably not the most mature thing to do. But I was 14 at the time. The teacher, however, was well into his 50's. So I kind of have to wonder who came out of that interaction the bigger man...

Anyway, I went back to see "Big News," which is a good show to see more than once because the material is new every week. I was told that I could see the show for free if I identified myself as a writer, but I hadn't bothered to put my name on a list or anything. So when I went into iO West's bar/lobby/box office, I timidly told the guy selling tickets, "I think I'm a writer."

This was good enough for him, and he gave me a ticket. I did not, however, get a program, so I will recount the show's sketches from memory, which is far less reliable than a photocopied piece of paper. The week's big political news was that Barack Obama said that financially-depressed Pennsylvania voters are bitter and some other stuff. Of course, the news media did not let this go, and neither did the charismatic Hillary Clinton, who claimed to be an avid hunter or something ridiculous that I wasn't really paying attention to. Perhaps she went with Mitt Romney. Since this story was in the news so much, a lot of the show, especially the first half, revolved around it or touched on it. It was funny, but like the story itself, I could have done without so much of it.

Perhaps the funniest sketch of the night, and the one that everybody working on the show seemed to like, was "The Pennsylvania Sucks Show" about two guys from New Jersey with a cable access show about how much they hate Pennsylvania and all the attention it was getting because of the primary there. What was nice about this sketch is that it was topical but also felt timeless. Some of the jokes were dependent on quotes from the week's news, but the idea itself was not nearly as ephemeral. Just repeating or doing direct satires of stories from the week's news can be tiresome because we've all seen these stories ad nauseam in the news cycle. Taking a story or even topic and bringing it down to earth without using a lot of impersonations can be a much more effective method of creating a situation and sketch with a game and beats, etc.

I hope Mike Hughes likes everything I just said.

COMEDY WALK, DOWNTOWN COMEDY CLUB

2008-04-10T13:19:00.000-07:00

www.comedywalk.com

All apologies for this entry's tardiness. My girlfriend has been visiting, amongst other things, and I just haven't spent the quality time with the blog that I should. But I did have quite a time going to the Comedy Walk, which isn't much of a walk, at the Downtown Comedy Club, which isn't much of a club, and I will commence telling you about it... now!

The Downtown Comedy Club is apparently owned by an interior designer who has a cable show. I didn't catch his name, and no information about him appears on the club's website, but before the show, I did overhear him talking with a very strange man who recognized him, which is how I know who he is. I can also tell you that he has a very large neck, so large that you get the impression his head might just fall in. Anyway, this man owns the Club, but Garret Morris is the public face of it. It is located in the Hotel Alexandria, which was at one time the place for celebrities and dignitaries in downtown Los Angeles. That time was around 1940.

The hotel has fallen on hard times, as has all of downtown, and the owners were supposed to be renovating it and selling condos there. But when I went, that plan didn't seem to have come together yet (and I say that with a heavy heart because I love it when a plan comes together). I was actually surprised when I arrived downtown to find that parking was incredibly limited and people were walking all over, going into restaurants and galleries. I thought that perhaps I had misjudged downtown Los Angeles, perhaps it wasn't as dead as I thought it was. As I walked toward the club, however, I noticed a large police presence and wine and cheese tables set up at many of the galleries. Though I am not certain, I suspect that the Comedy Walk was tied to a larger First Night-type event for the whole downtown area.

When I arrived at the Hotel, I was quite confused because I've never been to a comedy club in a dilapidated hotel cum half-way house, and I was promptly greeted by a police officer who said I looked lost. I told him I was looking for the comedy club, though I have to assume he already knew that, seeing as the rest of the building seemed to be occupied by derelicts and transients. I took advantage of the police officer's cheery demeanor because I suspect it is the only time a Los Angeles cop has been nice.

I found my way into the club, which is located in a partitioned-off half of the hotel's ornate ballroom. The bright spotlight and cocktail tables make the place feel like David Lynch had started a comedy club, and the whole place was pretty empty. When the designer started the show, he said that Garrett would normally be the emcee but was not there that night because he was at a wedding. The replacement emcee started by saying how nice it was to see people at the Downtown Comedy Club for once, and I wondered how bad their attendance must normally be if 20 audience members is considered an improvement.

As the show got under way, I noticed that the strange guy who had been talking to the designer earlier (paragraph 2, sentence 2) was heckling the comics. Perhaps heckling is not quite the right word because he was not saying anything necessarily antagonistic. He just seemed to think that he was part of the show and could have a dialogue with the comedians on stage. I don't like that. I can't stand that. And the fact that this guy had braces on his teeth made him even more annoying.

More people arrived as the show continued, and after a while, I would say the audience was actually pretty large. All the comedians performing were good with working the crowd, although if you've never seen a stand-up live (a really professional stand-up that is), you might not realize how strangely choreographed their routines are. At some point during their sets, I would say that each of the comedians I saw struggled with something, either remembering what to say next or telling a particular joke, and each comedian had a unique little patter or rhythm to cover up. Several comedians complained about either being on stage too long or not have enough time to get through their material. Either way, however, they attempted to make a joke of it, which is really essential. As relaxed or casual as a comedian might appear to be, they know that they cannot lose an audience by breaking their persona.

Around 10, I decided that I wanted to check out some of the other things downtown had to offer before it was too late, so I left before the show was over and don't know how it ended, but the audience just kept pouring in. Some of the galleries downtown were interesting, and a few of the restaurants looked really nice. But as I walked back to my car around 10:45, I did notice that the streets were a lot less busy than when I arrived. As much as I'd like to romanticize downtown Los Angeles, I think it still has a long way to go before it is like, say, New York. On the way home, I did play the theme from Moonlighting on my car stereo, however, just for a nostalgic thrill.

STORY SALON, COFFEE FIX

2008-04-09T12:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.storysalon.com/?page_id=9

Again, I had been clicking around online ('surfing the web' as it were) and came across Story Salon, which apparently began 12 years ago in a North Hollywood coffee house. It is essentially what it sounds like, a group of people gathered together in a comfortable atmosphere to listen to others telling stories. At least that is the idea. I was particularly enticed when I saw that Story Salon is now being held at Coffee Fix, a charming little coffee place just a few miles from my apartment. I like Coffee Fix and the fact that they have live events, and I thought that Story Salon sounded interesting. Granted, I've been to more than a few storytelling events in the past few months, and I'm starting to think that Angelinos like nothing more than talking about themselves in front of a lot of people. Perhaps this is a vapid town after all.

I got out of work a few hours early on Wednesday, which was exciting because I thought I'd be able to work out, which I haven't done since I started temping. Of course, I lost most of the time that I gained by leaving early while sitting in traffic on Beverly Glenn, so once I got home and got ready to go work out, I decided that I wouldn't have time to do so if I also wanted to eat dinner before going to Story Salon. And I did want to eat dinner.

As it turned out, I just barely had time to finish with dinner and get out of the house by 8:20. I didn't know exactly what to expect from Story Salon, but I have been to a number of similar events, and if I've found one common denominator, it is that they don't start on time. I imagined walking into Coffee Fix at 8:30 (the designated start time) to find a group of people milling around, order some coffee and have time to find a seat before the show started. In reality, getting there took a few more minutes than I expected, and I didn't arrive until 8:35.

When I got into Coffee Fix, I was chagrined to find that the show had already started and that the microphone (i.e. the center of attention) was right next to the front door. When I entered, I felt everybody's eyes on me (and the crowd filled the place pretty well, so there were a lot of eyes). I sheepishly took a seat on a stool located immediately in front of the door. The stool was in between two others, both of which were occupied, and the occupants both glared at me suspiciously. Not wanting to raise their ire any further, I made sure to perch on the stool very gingerly, thus letting them know that once the first storyteller was done and the time was right, I would find a seat with the rest of the audience.

Finding a seat with the rest of the audience proved to be fairly difficult, however, as most were taken, but I did spot one towards the back on the aisle and took that. As the next story began, I noticed a certain familiarity between most of the audience members. To wit, at one point, something in a story caught the attention of the woman seated in front of me, and she turned around to tap the shoulder of the man sitting behind me. She was not perturbed by the fact that I was in the way. No, she simply reached her arm right past me and tapped away. This has prompted me to create my first rule for seeing live shows: if you know somebody else in the audience well enough that you anticipate that you might want to touch them for any reason or in anyway, make sure that you clear the path of any innocent bystanders before the show starts.

The woman sitting in front of me actually did not seem to understand boundaries very well at all. She frequently called out during stories at things that caught her interest and, in general, seemed to think that she was part of the show. I don't enjoy this, but it didn't seem out of place at this show. As I said, most of the people reading seemed to know the host and the people in the audience, which allowed them to converse and interact convivially. Of course, for the one poor moron who just happened to show up not knowing anybody (me), this was quite alienating.

The stories themselves were nice enough and kept my attention, but none of them were told with a great deal of flair, really. One was by a mother who curses in front of her children, one was about a woman trying to rent an apartment to an eccentric applicant, one was about protecting Kate Moss from paparazzi. The one that I enjoyed the most was about hiking in Griffith Park, which while not terribly sensational was the most literary. They were the type of stories you would tell your friends, which is just fine. But putting on a show with microphones, an audience and a host suggests something more formal. Since the show is right near my house and happens every week, I may go back, but for an outsider, this is not the most welcoming show I've been to.

RHAPSODOMANCY, GOOD LUCK BAR

2008-04-06T20:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.rhapsodomancy.org/

If you don't know about the frenzy of concern regarding the health risks of blogging started by this article, I want you to read it and then think long and hard before complaining that this post is perhaps a few days late or poorly written. You people just take and take and take! And what do I get in return? Not comments, apparently.

I had originally been planning to go to Asssscat this Sunday, mainly as a social thing. But, I was going through some Los Angeles/writing websites and came across "Rhapsodomancy" and figured it was worth a shot. I don't like socializing anyway.

Getting to Good Luck Bar was a little tricky because it is at a very confusing, poorly-marked intersection. However, I got there with time to spare and was pleased to find that the suggested $3 contribution at the door was not too strictly enforced. I offered to pay $2. I'm not sure why I thought this would really make a difference. I had another dollar, so I really should have done all or nothing. But I guess the generous altruist and the cheap unemployed person inside of me were doing battle.

The show was set up in a back room with some couches, but the crowd spilled out into the bar and really took over the whole place. I would have sat on a couch, but they were all taken, so I had to stand because I didn't want to sit down at the bar and give the appearance of perhaps wanting to buy a drink. A number of people in the crowd seemed to be friends and relatives of people reading. Wendy C. Ortiz, the curator and host of the event, said that she knows all of the readers personally, so I guess this is a pretty close-knit little operation. I did recognize Will, a StorySLAM regular, there. So I guess I'm part of the crowd.

The show was billed as "writers reading," I believe, which is also how "Sit 'N Spin" is advertised. This show, however, is focused much more on the literary end of writing than the comedic. That is not to say that it wasn't funny, however, all four of the writers had a pretty good sense of humor and got at least a few laughs from the audience. But their work itself was much drier.

Ana Thorne read a personal essay about her relationship with bras, which was perhaps the lightest and most endearing of the pieces. Two poets followed, and I have to admit that I have a lot of trouble with poetry. I've just never understood it, and I don't even take the time to read the poems in The New Yorker, even though they're right there. I was surprised at how accessible I found Karen Harryman's work (she has a new book and Googles herself quite frequently, so she might be reading this). Calling a poet 'accessible' might not really be a compliment in the poetry world, as far as I know. But I liked it.

The last writer, Robert Montoya read an amazing story that I sincerely hope was fiction. He said that a professor at a reading once called his work 'scumbag' fiction, and, like the professor, I don't typically like scumbag fiction. I don't know how many authors are legitimately down and out scumbags. I guess I could buy it when Charles Bukowski wrote in that mien, but on the whole, the writers that I know are pretty fey and milquetoast. I think they just gravitate toward seedy characters and settings because of the lurid appeal.

And that is all that I have to say about "Rhapsodomancy." I would try to add more, but I am quite tired from work (tomorrow it will be a week, a week of work!) and don't want to give myself a heart attack.

PINATA, BANG.

2008-04-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.myspace.com/pinatashow

I called the Comedy Central Stage on Tuesday to make reservations for "Sit N' Spin" on Thursday night, but they were already booked solid. I knew that "Pinata" was playing at bang. that night, and "Pinata" and "Sit N' Spin" are essentially the same thing, so you might think I could just as easily go to the former. However, going to "Pinata" gave me pause for two reasons: 1) it costs $10, unlike "Sit N' Spin," which is free and 2) it's nowhere near as popular as Sit N' Spin. I've found that Los Angeles is not too different from most high schools, or even junior high schools, in that those are not part of the in-crowd are nobody.

Why does "Sit N' Spin" attract large, upwardly mobile audiences when "Pinata" fills about half the seats in a much smaller theatre? Perhaps because "Sit N' Spin" has bigger name talent, like Carol Leifer and Taylor Negron. Or do those people perform at "Sit N' Spin" because it's already popular? I think the same conundrum exists with certain theatres as well. UCB is packed every night of the week, but I've never been to a show at bang. that's been more than half full. The only answer I can think of is that people in this city just naturally gravitate towards what is perceived as being popular or trendy or en vogue at the moment. But maybe I'm just buying into east coast stereotypes about Los Angeles. It's also a city whose only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light, you know?

Anyway, getting back to the night of the show, I was uncertain about going to "Pinata," more because I didn't want to pay than because I was afraid of being uncool. And after my second consecutive day of work, I did kind of feel like driving home and watching TV (add to that eating fast food, getting married, buying an SUV, having kids, abandoning my quaint habit of 'reading' and voting Republican). But I decided that, having earned some money, I deserved to spend at least a little and reasoned that I watching some people in a theatre reading essays was no more taxing than watching The Wire on my couch.

I got to the Fairfax district with time to spare, which was good because I needed to find an ATM since I had no cash, and bang. only takes credit cards on ticket purchases over $20. I stopped at the bank across the street from bang., but they had no ATM. I could perhaps draw some conclusions about the Fairfax district having a bank with no ATM, which might be considered inflammatory to some, but I won't. Suffice it to say, I was pissed off. The news stand had an ATM, but that was out of service, so I finally had to stop in a pizza place with an ATM, which I was not happy about!

I did get my money and get in to see the show, however. The essays were not especially funny this time around, and I can see you saying that perhaps this is why "Sit N' Spin" was sold out and "Pinata" was not. However, the last time that I saw "Sit N' Spin," I was equally non-plussed. So I'm not buying your argument, and frankly I've had about enough of your lip! Actually, not all of the essays in this month's show were meant to be terribly funny, like the ones about cancer and AIDS. All of them had some laughs in them and none were as grim or harrowing as Neil Dickens' harrowing tale of buying an expensive loft with noisy neighbors, but on the whole, it wasn't a laugh riot.

After the show, some of the audience members (did I mention one of the funniest actors from one of my favorite canceled TV shows was in the crowd?) were surprised by how much having candy thrown at them hurt. Admittedly, it is a shock to the system, but Christine, the producer, does warn the audience about it before the show. I wonder if not having candy would lower the price of admission at all because if so, I'd put "Pinata" easily on par with "Sit N' Spin."

THE MOTH STORYSLAM, TANGIER

2008-04-01T16:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.themoth.org/storyslams

After last month's story didn't go so well at the Moth StorySLAM, I was all ready this month with a much better story that I had actually 'workshopped' (I got some 'notes,' it was all very artsy and Hollywood). Being April 1, the show's topic was 'fools', which is a good topic because it gives storytellers a lot of room to work in.

When I got to the show, I was very tired because I had been staying up late to work on my Mencia submission. One of the hardest parts of being unemployed is keeping on a schedule, in part because I don't actually see a point in keeping on a schedule. As long as I'm awake roughly 16 hours a day and asleep no more than eight (14 at the absolute max), I can still do everything I need to get done, and it's not like I have to be on time for work or anything. But I still feel like getting up early will make me more productive, even though I'm clearly a night person. Having heard from other people who have written submissions for sketch comedy shows that they tend to crank them out in a few sleepless days, however, I decided that I should take this approach to my own writing (even though I didn't really have a deadline) and stay up as late as possible working on it. So I had two conflicting motivations: part of me wanted to stay up as late as possible writing, and part of me wanted to wake up as early as possible to keep looking for work.

As a result, I was tired, which I already mentioned. But I felt that being tired gave me an advantage at the StorySLAM because I wouldn't be so hyped up about winning and would be able to approach the whole thing in a calm, cool manner. I felt this would make my storytelling that much more charming and seemingly off-the-cuff.

When I arrived, I quickly said hi to Kerry, the producer, and took a seat. An older gentleman sitting near me starting talking to me about the show, which he seemed a bit confused by. He knew the topic was 'fools' and wanted to know if he'd be penalized for simply mentioning fools in his story rather than crafting a whole story around fools. I tried to explain that I thought this would be okay and was, in fact, more of an effort than some storytellers make. The man peppered me with a few more questions, though I can't remember what they were.

When the show started, he was the first person to be called on stage. He talked with Brian, the host, about how he didn't think he could comply with the SLAM's strict time limitations and other policies. He said that he had been a part of the Los Angeles storytelling community for a long time but had no formal storytelling experience. I don't know quite what he meant by that. Brian, however, encouraged him to go ahead and give it a try anyway.

The gentleman actually told a very nice story about the years that he worked as a public school teacher, and some fools. His scores were fairly impressive, except for one 5.6. The audience booed this score, and I can't say that they were wrong in booing. However, I feel like the scores at these shows can generally be a bit subjective and/or superfluous. Of course, on the day that I win, I will say something different. But I've never seen a score below five, and I think that's because the judges feel like they want to demonstrate good sportsmanship and not castigate anybody who made the effort to get up on stage. This does, however, diminish the effectiveness of the scores. If anything, the scores should just start at five, like the SATs automatically giving you 200 points on each section. Then, of course, judges would be afraid to give fives and would start scoring from eight or something, so I guess it's a lost cause.

As the night went on, the scores got very generous, perhaps as a result of the booing. This was much nicer than last month's SLAM, which felt quite icy by comparison. When we got to the half-way mark, Kerry asked if I was going to tell a story, and I said I had put my name and asked how many names were in the hat. She said 12, which is certainly an improvement from February, when only eight people total put their names. But it did mean that two people would not get a chance to go up.

The second half of the show picked up, and the high scores continued. One or two people actually received 10's. To me, that was perhaps a bit excessive. The stories were good, but none of them were perfect by any means. As we got closer to the end of the show, I noticed that my name hadn't been called yet. I am perfectly aware that if 12 people submit their names for 10 spots, two of those people will not be called on. But I couldn't believe that I'd be one of those two people. I was ready, in my tired, laconic way, to get up and receive my 10's.

That didn't happen however. A few previous winners, including Ryan McGee, who won last month, got up. But I didn't. I think being tired blunted the pain, but I was still discouraged. Why did I have to go first last month when the audience could barely even hear and then not get to go up at all this month, when the judges were clearly drinking?

BIG NEWS, IO WEST

2008-03-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.myspace.com/bignewsshow

There's an issue with seeing shows in Hollywood (or doing anything in Hollywood for that matter): parking. I don't want to pay for parking, but I have only found one spot anywhere near Hollywood where on-street parking is readily available (I hope you don't all go clicking that hyperlink and taking my parking space). And this spot is still many blocks from iO West, many frightening blocks. Hollywood (or, more specifically, central Hollywood, i.e. Hollywood Blvd., i.e. the places in the title sequence from Entourage) is to Los Angeles what Times Square was to New York before tough-on-crime drag queen Rudy Guilliani became mayor. And going east of Highland, which is where iO West is located, is taking your life in your own hands. Of course, as I write this, I am pretty certain that I heard gunfire about a block from my apartment in Sherman Oaks less than an hour ago, so I guess Los Angeles is just a dangerous city.

I considered taking a bus to iO West because I've really wanted to take a bus somewhere in Los Angeles since taking one back from Long Beach airport recently. The day-and-a-half I spent traveling home on LA Public Transit was quite exciting, so I've wanted to get in the habit of taking the bus. Unfortunately, the Metro website estimated that the trip would cost $5 and take two to three hours roundtrip, which is significantly more expensive and time-consuming than my car. So I stuck with what I knew.

When I arrived for the show at 10, the bar in front of the theatre was packed. I was surprised to see a theatre other than the UCB actually had a crowd and was afraid I might get shut out since I hadn't made a reservation. When I got to the box office, however, I found that the crowd wasn't there for the show, and there was still an abundance of tickets available.

One nice thing about the iO West theatre is that it has a bar in front of the house, and a waitress comes through during the show to take drink orders. I didn't order anything, but I really like being able. Unfortunately, one gentleman in the audience had one too many beers and started talking to the cast during the show. He eventually excused himself from the show, and I get this is the impression that this is not the first thing in his life that beer has ruined (perhaps including his life itself).

"Big News" is a sketch show that takes its material from the week's news. Being a pretty avid Daily Show/Colbert Report viewer, I don't always need more topical comedy at the end of the week, but I do enjoy it when it's done well, so I wasn't complaining. Unfortunately, I think comparisons between this show and TV shows like D.S., C.R. and Saturday Night Live are inevitable. Of course a show like "Big News" can be just as good as anything done on TV, but for some reason topical comedy does not seem to be the province of live stage shows. And I must give everybody involved credit for regularly producing a whole show in one week's time. It must be quite a commitment, and I imagine they do not get much monetary compensation. If I had to venture a guess as to why topical comedy is so popular on television and not these sorts of live shows, I would say that it's because people are used to getting their news from television and radio and not live theatre (in fact, I would not recommend relying on live theatre shows as your primary source of journalism). Therefore, TV shows have more latitude in parodying TV newscasts. TV shows also have an easier time incorporating news footage and sound bites than live shows, which I think helps as well.

In the week preceding my trip to see "Big News," comedian Sinbad made headlines by revealing that when Hillary Clinton claimed to have been under sniper fire on a 1996 trip to Bosnia, she was actually being greeted by a young girl with flowers (it's sort of the opposite of that whole "We'll be greeted as liberators" thing in Iraq). Granted, this was very funny news. The fact that Sinbad was the linchpin of the whole story is what really puts it over the top. Unfortunately, however, about half of the show was filled with sketches about it.

Other topics included Nancy Reagan's endorsement of John McCain (he's going after the youth vote), the United Air pilot whose gun discharged during a flight, the US government accidentally sending nuclear weapons to Taiwan and a story about Chelsea Clinton that I had not heard. Admittedly, it was a pretty fertile week for funny news stories, and that's not including my favorite story of the week.

Shows like this can really rise and fall around whatever happens to be in the news on a given week. Without getting too digressive, I think this is one of the essential differences between The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. D.S. (yes, my use of abbreviations is erratic) focuses primarily on the day's major news stories. C.R. focuses more on the Colbert character and uses that to delve into smaller stories and editorial pieces much more freely. I think this really gives C.R. an advantage because D.S. must always be responsive. The same is true for "Big News" (remember? the show I was writing about). Further, many of "Big News"'s sketches are predicated on a previous knowledge of the news story in question, which can limit the show's accessibility. Obviously, they go with bigger stories most people who follow the news will have heard. But I know there were a few in there that Robert Siegel didn't tell me about.

I should mention that "Big News" also included a special guest appearance by stand-up comedian Vance Sanders. Vance was at his funniest when talking about what a failure he was. Maybe this says something. The show also featured a pretty talented impersonator named Phillip Wilburn and an actress who looks uncannily like my ex-girlfriend (no link, it's too haunting for me already).

ALL GIRL REVUE, FANATIC SALON

2008-03-28T21:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.google.com/calendar/event?eid=dGRrdTRvYzZwcjM5ZnA0bm9ja3NrNjlpdTAgZmFuYXRpY3NhbG9uQG0&ctz=America/Los_Angeles

I apologize for several things. First, my tardiness. I have been seeing shows pretty regularly, but I have been working on a submission packet for "Mind of Mencia" as well, and that takes time. Those "du-da-doo" noises Carlos makes don't write themselves (I'm not sure if that is the correct onomatopoeic spelling of that noise; frankly, I'd be a lot happier if they did write themselves). Second, I apologize for the very long hyperlink at the top of this post. "All Girl Revue" and the Fanatic Salon don't exactly have the best websites in the world, so it was really the best link that I could come up with.

I first heard about the Fanatic Salon when I saw an ad for the theatre in LA Weekly. I like branching out and going to new theatres (especially ones that don't charge an arm and a leg like the Groundlings!), so I was excited to check it out. I also like to see women do comedy or comedy type things because women don't have much presence in comedy. So I figured seeing "All Girl Revue" was like affirmative action.

I didn't know what to expect exactly, though Fanatic Salon's rather Spartan website should have been a clue. First off, let me say that Google Maps seems to have trouble with the theatre's address, 3815 Sawtelle Boulevard. As I learned, the theatre is actually located on Sawtelle just southeast of Venice Boulevard. Not knowing quite where to go added to my travel time, but I still got there and was able to find on-street parking. I also got to see part of Culver City, not the desirable part, however. I will assume that there is one, but I have yet to see it (except for Dean's house, which is in Culver City and is quite nice).

When I arrived at the theatre's storefront, I found that the entrance was actually in the back, so I approached the pleasant little garden area the theatre has set up in its back alley. I saw a podium that I assumed was for ticket sales and a table with some free wine and beer on it. There were three people at the table with the wine and beer but nobody at the podium.

Finally one man noticed my presence and got behind the podium, though he didn't seem too forward about, you know, selling me tickets. So I said, "I'd like to see the show." He then asked me, "Did you park the car?"

I thought that perhaps this was some sort of code. But, not knowing the appropriate rejoinder, simply said that I had. He then asked if my friend had already gone in or if I was there by myself. I was starting to get a clearer picture of what was going on in this man's wine-addled head; however, I don't feel like being reminded that I am seeing a show alone. After we were finally able to establish the whole ticket issue, he asked me where I was from. He was starting to make the ticket takers at bang. seem like dashing bon vivants and charming raconteurs. I told him Sherman Oaks, and he seemed skeptical, so I explained I was originally from New Jersey. He told me that I look like somebody he knows from New York then explained that the wine and beer had been provided by the performers and was free to anybody seeing the show. I figured a nice glass of Red Truck Pinot would take the edge off the conversation.

The theatre itself is quite nice (you can see a picture on the website), but when I got inside, I realized that this was another show performed mostly for friends and family members. The front row was filled with people I took to be parents, and just about everybody in the audience either got up and performed or seemed to know somebody in the show. Apparently, the ad in LA Weekly had not brought in the crowds it was designed to.

I always feel a bit uncomfortable seeing these sorts of shows, especially when the host asks me personally what I'm doing there. In a way, I can understand why getting an audience can be difficult. But Los Angeles is a big city. So what's everybody doing? Watching American Idol? Are they all waiting in line to see Asssscat? Why not go see a show on a Friday night? Jezebel James isn't on any more...

The show got underway and consisted of women (mostly middle-aged, married women) telling stories or doing performance pieces akin to stand-up. One woman read a poem. After that, the show ends with about 10 minutes of long-form improv that the audience can participate in. While some of the material and performances were polished and entertaining, the show never quite rose above the level of something performed for friends and family.

I don't really see myself recommending this show to anybody else, the same way that I would, say, "L.A. Women" or even "Sit 'N Spin," which are comparable shows. I saw the show because I was curious, and I ended up being entertained, but for somebody who doesn't see a lot of shows, this one just might not be worth the effort (of course, the free wine helps). I would say the same of many of the smaller shows that I see. I do not know what the people doing them have in mind, the shows are often just not of the caliber to attract a substantial audience. Perhaps I just answered the rhetorical question I posed two paragraphs ago.

THURSDAY 3/26: UNCAB LAB SHOW, M BAR

2008-03-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.myspace.com/uncabgrads

In the past two weeks, I've been in New York City, Connecticut, New Jersey, Oakland and Tahoe, but now I'm back in Los Angeles and seeing shows again. I had wanted to see Slow Children Crossing at The Comedy Central Stage on Wednesday because, according to their blurb, they are "L.A.'s hottest new sketch comedy troupe." The video they have posted on MySpace is called "Black Ken" and imagines what it would be like if Ken, from the Barbie line of dolls, were Black. Slow Children's blurb also describes them as having "a dash of 'Chappelle's Show'," and I guess that would be the dash, since most of Chappelle's sketches followed the premise: 'What if ______ were Black?' Unfortunately, I didn't get to see Slow Children because, with all of my traveling, I wasn't able to call for reservations until late in the day Wednesday, at which time the tickets were all gone.

I didn't need tickets-- or money-- for The UnCab Lab Show, however! I went to last month's UnCan Lab Show, and since then, I've started working with the UnCab Lab myself. I've met some of the wonderful people who performed at Wednesday's show and Tom O'Keefe. A lot of people have been involved in the Lab for a while, and some of the people who performed last time were just there to watch this time, which gave the evening a nice communal feeling.

M Bar was not terribly full, which is a little surprising. I guess shows like this probably don't pull in a ton of people from the street, but I imagine everybody involved tries to get as many people to come as possible. And it is free. And food and drinks are available, but the wait staff isn't pushy about making people order. What more could you ask for?

I arrived at 10 exactly, possibly even a few minutes later. When I got inside, the show had not yet started, and I noticed that the crowd was mostly congregating in the back of the house. I decided this probably wouldn't be best for the performers and took a seat up front. A few other people liked my idea and followed suit, but on the whole, most people stayed in the back.

Unfortunately, I think that did make things more difficult for everybody. Performing comedy for a live audience is quite difficult. Charlie Chaplin has a line in the film Limelight about audiences being headless beasts, but I can't find a direct dictation anywhere, so I'll just paraphrase: they're fickle at best and stupid at worst.

Don't get me wrong; performing for a live audience who responds well can be great. But so many minuscule factors can make a difference in their enjoyment of a show, like seating for example. Laughter is infectious, so the closer people are to each other, the quicker it spreads. A small crowd scattered throughout a big room just will not laugh much. Sure, they might not chuckle, but if they aren't close enough to hear other people laughing, they'll be self-conscious about laughing very loudly. This is alright, except I think most people are unaware of all the factors at play and will judge shows based on their reaction to it, and that's where the stupid part comes in. I've seen the same material get huge laughs and dead silence, and both audiences were certain in their response to the material. Of course, they can't both have been right; they were judging the intrinsic worth of the material based on their visceral reactions, and their failure to recognize this was... stupid.

The reason for this digression is to put my response to the Lab show in context. The audience laughed, sometimes. But I certainly don't think they responded on the level that the performers expected or deserved. Some performers spent a lot of time getting comfortable on stage, playing with notes or the mic stand or their hair. And I think that might have been because they were not comfortable with the audience's response. Apparently one comedian at the stand-up show that proceeded the Lab show was so frustrated with the audience's response that he threw the microphone on the floor and walked off stage. This is not a good way to respond.

After the show, I was talking about the whole issue with one of my class mates. It is one of the many, many things that makes stand-up comedy difficult. Think of the scene in Annie Hall when Diane Keaton sings on stage for the first time and somebody drops some dishes and a phone rings (while you're at it, think about the rest of Annie Hall too, it's a great movie). Clearly, the audience is distracted. How do you regain their attention? What if you never had their attention in the first place? What if you're performing for 5 ESL students in a theatre that seats 50? That last one happened to me.

"It appears he's gone drinkin', sir."

2008-03-14T23:11:00.000-07:00

You'll notice a paucity of posts for the next week or more. Unfortunately, I am going back east for work. I say 'unfortunately' because I will be missing a lot of shows I really want to see. If you'd like to check them out, they are:

3/15: "Un-Cabaret" + "Hollywood Podcast", M Bar + "The State Live", Upright Citizens Brigade
3/17: "Guys with Feelings", Comedy Central Stage
3/18: "Roommating Live", Upright Citizens Brigade + "Thirty:30", Comedy Central Stage
3/19: "It's Criminal", M Bar
3/21: "Word Play", The Fake Gallery

Sure, some of these shows are conflicting, and I could never actually have gotten tickets to see The State. But since I can't got anyway, it doesn't really matter.

Part of me wishes I had gone to see more shows before leaving, but I was busy, and frankly nothing caught my interest. And on Friday, I stayed home to watch the premier of the last TV show I worked on, The Return of Jezebel James.

I'll admit that we didn't do so well with the critics, but I actually enjoyed it. I had a few misgivings about the format, but when I saw the final product, I was pleasantly surprised. I know that multi-camera comedies aren't in style at the moment, which I think is part of the reason the critics didn't like the show. I also think some of them just weren't paying attention. But ten years ago, when Seinfeld, Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond were hits, saying "I don't need a laugh track to tell me when something's funny" wasn't nearly as cool as it is now. And frankly, I think most TV at the moment (especially network television) is atrocious, so critics are really just comparing bad to worse and don't have much high ground to stand on.

Anyway, enjoy yourselves in my absence. Go see some shows. And if you happen to find yourself at home Friday night at 8:30, why not turn on Fox?

iPROV + L.A. WOMEN, BANG.

2008-03-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.bangstudio.com/la-women/

Since seeing Asssscat on Sunday, I haven't seen any other shows this week. That's partly because I've been busy and partly because I hadn't heard about any shows I really wanted to see. Also, I didn't mind saving some money on tickets and gas. I had heard about "L.A. Women" a while ago, however, and was looking forward to seeing it because it sounded interesting.

So I went to bang. and dealt with one of the weird front desk people. Seriously, every time I go there, the person at the front desk has trouble hearing me or acts vaguely autistic. I guess they aren't making any money, so you have to take what you can get.

The crowd this time was quite a bit larger than normal, and I noticed some people going through special publicity packets featuring headshots and resumes for all the performers appearing that night. Also, somebody had set up an hors d'oeuvre display with wine and cheese. And just call me Veronica Mars because I suspect something was afoot there.

The show started with iProv, an improv team I had seen the first time I went to bang. A lot of the people in the audience seemed to be interacting with them and calling them by name. This makes me suspect that they had stacked the audience with friends. Also, their whole show was much more polished than the last time I saw them. This time, the lights and music were much better, and their audience warm-up was incredibly high energy.

So here's what I think was happening: Ezra, who is a member of iProv and directed "L.A. Women" (and is from Freehold, New Jersey, where my father, cousin and uncle work and my mother frequently goes to the mall), got some talent scouts in, plied them with free wine and cheese and tried to impress them with a responsive audience and good production values. He's crafty all right. I'll give him that.

Unfortunately for him, the show was hampered by two crazy audience members. One was a young woman who seemed to know a lot of people in the show and at the theatre. She also enjoyed rocking out to the interstitial music, had no sense of personal boundaries, liked to call out performers' names in the middle of the show and would raise her arms out to the stage in an 'air hug' every time she laughed at something. The other was an older woman who talked very loudly through the show as though she were watching it on television. The younger woman with her shushed her every time she said something, and Ezra actually said something to her as well. But that didn't stop her. They say crazy is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. I'm not sure exactly what result this woman hoped to achieve by talking, but I can tell you what she got each time: a shush.

That aside, iProv performed well. All three members (Ezra Weisz, Gretchen Enders and Mitchell Roche) are great performers. As improvisers, they have an odd habit of not giving their scenes context. In the strict Second City school of improv, you try to establish the 'who,' 'where' and, preferably, 'what' of a scene within the first three lines. By the end of one of iProv's scenes, you might have an idea of who the characters are and where they are. From time to time, you can discern what they are doing.

After iProv, "L.A. Women" began. It's a two-person show with Sabrina Hill and Jennifer Tracy, both of whom are very talented and neither of whom turn up very substantial results on Google. They perform a series of vignettes based on the lives of women in Los Angeles. Yoga and shopping are common themes.

Though the show is at a comedy theatre, and it is funny, I wouldn't qualify it as a comedy show per se. The vignettes are more scenes than sketches in that they don't necessarily hinge on a single joke or comic idea. Some come close, like the scene about a woman interviewing to be a doula and the final scene, which has an amazing dance number in it. But others, like the one about a lesbian couple, feel more like mini-plays (imagine if Arthur Miller wrote an episode of The L Word).

As a result, I found myself wanting more jokes, more patterns and more games. I was listening to an interview with old codger Edward Albee in which he said that he wants audiences to approach each of his plays as though it's the first play that they are seeing. Perhaps if I could have done that with "L.A. Women," I would have been a little more accepting of the hybrid form because I wouldn't have known it was a hybrid at all. See how that works?

ASSSSCAT, UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE

2008-03-09T14:35:00.000-07:00

http://losangeles.ucbtheatre.com/shows/741

I have decided to stop seeing Asssscat for a while. For one thing, I won't be in Los Angeles for the next two Sundays, but that's mostly coincidental. For another thing, I'm tired of typing "Asssscat" because getting four S's in a row is very difficult. Really, try it. I always end up with three or five. But mainly I'm tired of the other jerks who go. Not the jerks who I go with; they're okay.

At this Sunday's show, however, Matt Besser and Matt Walsh actually took to chastising audience members. Of course, they stayed cool about the whole thing, like when an older sibling or cousin is babysitting and tells you not to do something without yelling. As a child, I always responded better to that than I did to being yelled at because it creates a kinship between the disciplinarian and the subject. You feel they still like and respect you but just want you to refrain from whatever you're doing in your own best interest. This did not work with the audience at Asssscat.

Unfortunately, Besser and Walsh started soliciting audience participation during the introduction. That led to an awkward encounter with an asshole sitting behind me. Apparently, he thought that he was very funny, especially the joke he made about child molestation. The hosts engaged him for a while before Besser finally said, "I don't like that guy." Generally, if the host of a show told me in front the of the rest of the crowd he didn't like me, I'd stop talking. Such was not the case with this gentleman.

Several other audience members decided to join in and started yelling at the performers during introductions, monologues and even a few scenes. Of course, improv always starts with a suggestion from the audience, and in this case, the first person to call out said, "Doing it in the butt." That is kind of pathetic. At the top of the second half of the show, Besser had to take away the bottle of Jim Beam that one guy had brought on stage.

I know that I might sound uptight, and I probably am. But this kind of thing really irritates me. More than anything, I am annoyed that these jackasses think they are... I don't know, entertaining? Smart? Funny? I assume they have some reason for acting like that. I'm sure the Jim Beam was part of it.

Whatever the case, I feel very uncomfortable. I know that Asssscat has always been about goofing around, and once or twice, I remember the hosts asking audience members to throw any drugs they had on the stage. The difference is that the hosts were still the center of attention. When that gets challenged, and they have to fight for focus, the whole thing gets awkward. And as enjoyable as it is, waiting in line for an hour-and-a-half to see a show with a bunch of people being jackasses just isn't worth it.

PINATA, BANG.

2008-03-06T21:13:00.000-08:00

http://www.myspace.com/pinatashow

Thursday was the fourth consecutive night that I went to a show, and I had originally planned to make it five, but bang. was closed when I arrived for their show "The Write Stuff" on Sunday night. Hopefully, this will make up for the fact that I have not yet made plans to see any shows next week (I haven't come across anything that struck my fancy, not that I was looking) and the fact that I may spend next weekend and part of the following week in New York brainstorming ideas for Spike TV's Men's Choice Awards Show (don't ask me how that happened, I have no idea, but please send any ideas you might have for what men would want to watch on an awards show.)

Thursday night's show was yet another personal essay show. Yes, I like them quite a bit. Are you surprised? I do write a blog. This time it was Pinata at bang., and I was excited to go because one of the people reading was Kevin Maynard. I worked with Kevin Maynard on a certain Showtime series I will not name (because IMDb refuses to acknowledge that he or I worked on it, but I can tell you stories...) Kevin was a writer, and we spent many hours talking about how much we loved the movie Step Up.

I arrived and found that making reservations had been superfluous because, like the last time I went there, the crowd at bang. was pretty small. As I waited in the lobby reading the unfunny comics in LA Weekly, I noticed a couple in a bean bag chair snuggling. This was disturbing enough, but then I noticed a cameraman videotaping and taking snap shots of them. Admittedly, I rarely go a day in Los Angeles without seeing somebody with a 3-chip digital camera shooting some footage for something, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why this couple needed to be so well documented. Perhaps they were on a reality dating show? The man looked vaguely like a Baio of some sort. But do they all have reality shows? Doesn't he have to do something notable? Like be 45 and not get married? (Apropos of that, I went to a bakery by my apartment for some coffee the other day and overheard a conversation between the gentlemen who produce Scott Baio's reality show and their latest stars, a band trying to make it in LA-- looks like they've got another hit on their hands.)

When I went into the theatre, I was dismayed to find the snuggling couple was sitting in front of me and had now moved onto smooching. Yes, they were quite affectionate. And the cameraman was taking photos of them from every angle. I hope you can see me retching clearly in the background.

The show started, and the first essayist, Kate Danley, read a piece about meeting Kitty Carlisle Hart. Kate was a down-on-her-luck actress who got the chance to perform and later have dinner with Kitty. Kitty asked Kate how her acting career was going, and Kate feigned some enthusiasm. Kitty then told her to drop the pretense and said that she understood. Kitty explained that she called 6 o'clock the 'suicide hour' because "you wait all day for the phone to ring, and by 6, you know everybody's left the office and you won't be getting any calls." It was quite touching and also a fairly apt description of my own job search.

Kevin Maynard was next. The Kevin Maynard I remembered from the unnamed Showtime series was many things. A rogue, a knave, a gadabout, a jack-of-all-trades and any number of other antiquated euphemisms. He was not, however, a 5'5" gay man who compares his love life to the time he did ecstasy. Apparently the appellation Kevin Maynard is not unique in Los Angeles. This was disappointing.

As the show progressed, the couple in front of me continued to smooch. I use the term smooch very deliberately. It was not making out. I know what it looks like to sit behind two people making out because that is how I spent an entire semester of Art 106 in college. What this couple did was too cute for the term 'kissing' but more intimate than 'pecks.' So I say they were smooching-- quite a bit. I wondered if essays made them feel particularly affectionate. I also wondered how they even paid attention to the show in the midst of all the smooching. And I was still confused by the cameraman following them.

Don't get me wrong; I love my girlfriend. But we're from the northeast corridor, where emotions are frosty to match the weather. We are uncomfortable with public displays of our affection. To be honest, the private ones are pretty icky too.

One essayist, Neil Dickens, read a very serious essay about three years of misery living in an expensive loft with a noisy neighbor (his cries of "There were no disclosures!" still haunt me). The next essayist, Andrea Abbate, told perhaps the funniest story of the evening about how her abusive marriage ended with her having an abortion. I am not being facetious; the most sombre essay of the night was about a man with noisy neighbors, and the funniest was about domestic violence. Makes me feel a lot better about the tepid reaction my story about not liking a suicidal guy got.

When the show is over, the essayists throw candy out to the audience (remember, it's called "Pinata"). This is a bit jarring because fun size candy bars can actually be quite painful if they are thrown at you by the handful. Do not, however, refrain from picking up the candy. I got a Kit-Kat bar, a bag of Peanut M&M's, a Reeses peanut butter cup and several Milky Way bars. However, I left quite a bit of candy on the floor around me because I felt shy taking it. First of all, I try to keep away from food made by major corporations. Secondly, I did not want to have too much sugar that late at night. And third, I felt self-conscious about scooping up so much free candy. But, if you go this show yourself (the first Thursday of every month, if you're interested), heed my advice and do not be shy about picking up all the candy you want. You already paid $10 to get in, and you can always save it for later, and if you don't, you will kick yourself afterwards.

SHOW AND TELL, UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE

2008-03-05T11:51:00.000-08:00

http://showandtellshow.com/

I will admit I've started to repeat myself a bit. I've already been to Sit 'N Spin, The Moth StorySLAM and Show and Tell twice. But, in my defense, I've been doing this for a month now-- a month and three days, actually. And, to be fair, I probably would've gone to see Sam Pancake's show at the Comedy Central Stage if Comedy Central's website were easier to keep track of and I had been able to check the date. But I did enjoy Show and Tell a lot the last time I went, so I had no problem returning.

After a very hectic day that involved a two-hour interview with an employment agency that ended with me finding out that the job I had applied for was filled weeks ago and that the best position they had available was a "hip assistant" to Jada Pinkett Smith ("hip assistant" means that you are joined at the hip apparently; yes, joined at the hip to Jada Pinkett Smith; it's everything I dreamed of the proud day that I graduated with honors from Vassar), I had to drag myself out the door to see this show. But drag I did, not for me, but for the blog and, yes, for you. And for Jada Pinkett Smith. Mostly for her, in fact.

Matt Price led off the show, and he's the type of guy that you sworn you've seen before. Perhaps it's his extensive resume of co-staring roles (check the last hyperlink) on shows including the beloved Arrested Development. But more specifically, in my case, I think it's because I had seen him perform less than a week earlier at Sit 'N Spin. Matt actually produces this show, as well as a few others at UCB, and his stories are pretty consistently entertaining.

Other performers included Molly Prather, Danny Warren (whose website is sadly lacking), Cecily Knobler, Carl Kozlowski and Jason Nash (whose website really puts Danny Warren to shame). Cecily, Carl and Jason all gave great performances, though I have to say that I am still put off a bit by the straight 'essay reading' format because it is deceptively difficult. The writers often prepare things for themselves to say that are more elaborate or articulate than what they would probably say in conversation. As a result, a simple missed word can screw up a whole sentence or string of sentences, and readers will often get half-way into a sentence or phrase before realizing they are reading it at the wrong pace or with the wrong tone.

Most of the stories trended toward a certain self-deprecation (being immature, working as a mascot for Kraft Mac & Cheese, dating a guy for his money), which I do get some strange pleasure from. Like Sit 'N Spin and my last trip to Show and Tell, the audience seemed to be more upscale and professional than those you see at the average UCB show (no Justin Long this time though). The exception being the obnoxious people sitting behind me who screamed quite a bit, especially at the mention of a bong, and were discussing the purchase of cheap, bootlegged pornography before the show started. Also, I think one of them was a drag queen.

THE MOTH STORYSLAM, TANGIER

2008-03-04T22:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.themoth.org/storyslams

Jennifer, a lovely script supervisor with whom I worked in New York, read last month's post about going to a Moth StorySLAM (see, you're not the only one reading this thing). She got in touch with me because she too is in Los Angeles, working on one of my favorite TV shows, and lives in Los Feliz. She had been to several Moth events in New York (where the whole enterprise is much more popular) and wanted to check out a StorySLAM with me.

For the past month, I had been preparing a story. The topic was "Scars," and I had actually seen the Scars show in Manhattan before leaving. Naturally, some people tended toward some pretty intense stories, though others kept it light. I wanted to talk about an attempted suicide that I had been a party to, but of course, that's a lot to bite off in a five minute monologue. Further, my attitude toward the suicidee was not exactly sympathetic, and I am aware of how terrible that sounds, but the guy was kind of a jerk. I think if I had enough time to work on it and explain it, I could make some sense of it, but as is, it just wasn't working.

I had workshopped the piece on Sunday with the good people at the UnCab Lab, who did give some good notes. Unfortunately, that only gave me two days to rework and relearn the piece, and it was still running long. So I was timing myself in the car on the way to the show.

When I arrived, I found Jennifer, but the show itself was not in its normal room (I say "normal room" when I've only been once, but Kerry the producer kept apologizing for not being in the normal space, so I assume that is the case). Instead, it was in the restaurant area of Tangier, which is very nice but not suited for such an event. The audience couldn't really see or hear very well. Also, the mic was very quiet, so when Brian Finkelstein, the host did his introduction, nobody really heard him.

Just as I was explaining to Jennifer that I was worried about doing my piece because it wasn't quite ready and I felt that if the audience didn't respond well, they'd be passing judgment on me and how terribly I come across in the story, I got called up to the stage. I was the first person to go, and I was very uncertain that the audience could even hear me because they certainly didn't seem to be listening.

My performance was certainly not my best. I was rushing because I was worried about time, and I hadn't really committed it to memory, so I glossed over some points I wanted to make. Also, I was so nervous about the audience's response that I didn't really engage them. And they certainly didn't engage me. I guess I could be optimistic and say they were trying to be polite in not interrupting my story with laughter when I made jokes. But really, it just didn't go over so well.

My scores were, let's say, respectable. I got one 8, which I can't complain about. And Jennifer kept encouraging me, by saying it is hard to go first. The next storyteller rambled on about something for quite a long time and required several bird whistles to realize it was time for him to finish up, and I certainly think that if I had gone after him, I would have gotten much higher scores. But I contented myself to say that it was just a rough crowd and realized why stand-up comedians are miserable people.

Then, as the stories continued, the audience warmed up, and by the end, they were going crazy and giving people 9.5's. Ryan, a regular with an Irish last name that I don't know how to spell, won. I do have to say that losing by a lot feels much worse than losing by just a little. Either way, the scoring system is really a double-edge sword because it makes something that should be more casual very competitive-- at least for me it does. Maybe other people can handle it, but I go crazy preparing so that I can be the best (not really the case this time), and then I get nervous, etc.

Next month I'll try something different, and maybe I'll win and write about how great the scoring is. But until then, can't we all just get along?

LIVING ROOM SERIES, THE BLANK

2008-03-03T14:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.theblank.com/livingroom.htm

First, let me apologize for not having posted anything for almost a week. I'll assume some of you noticed. I attempted to see a show at bang. on Sunday, but when I arrived, the theatre was closed. I don't know why, but needless to say, I couldn't see any show there. I did see a show the next day, which I will begin writing about shortly, but it was a long show, and I did not get to write a post about it afterwards. So I'm just posting it now, with another post to follow immediately. Hopefully this has not been a problem for too many of you.

The Blank Theatre on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood has a weekly reading series, known as the Living Room series that serves as a workshop for plays in progress. I once interned at a theatre in New York City that had a similar program. The Blank's reading series, however, was much more impressive. Of course, the actors were on book, but the blocking was complete, and the script ("Nocturne" by Bradley Rand Smith) was of a much higher caliber than the shows I was used to seeing done as readings. And having been one of the people who selected plays for the reading series, I can tell you: those were the best of the bunch.

I hate to say this, but I'm not sure if LA's Theatre Row is ever quite going to take off, at least not any time soon. The theatres and galleries there are nice, but they are few and far between. Parking is pretty scant, and I never feel all that safe walking from my car to the theatre. The Blank apparently has plans to build a 500 seat theatre, but considering that their current space holds about 50, that's a big leap for them.

When I arrived at the show, I was glad to find that the "suggested donation" was not as strongly suggested as at City Garage and opted not to pay anything. The audience was about half full, which isn't bad for a staged reading on a Monday night. The stage was dressed for The Blank's current production Dickie & Babe: The TRUE Story of Leopold and Loeb. This is one of two plays about Leopold and Loeb currently playing in Los Angeles. It doesn't bode well for my Leopold and Loeb play (that's true, by the way, I did write one).

As I said, the script and show were quite polished. Michael A. Newcomer played the lead, a conflicted reporter, and bore a resemblance to Emile Hirsch ten years from now. His mother was an East German concert pianist played by Caroline Lagerfelt, who looks like Blythe Danner. The crux of the play was an interview the reporter does with an American geo-terrorist whom he suspects of being responsible for his mother's death. The terrorist was played by Peter Allas, who alas looks only vaguely like Jon Turtorro but sounds and acts a lot like Al Pacino, which was made particularly ironic when his character said he wanted Pacino to play him in the movie of his life.

The cast was filled out by the reporter's girlfriend, played by Sharon Jensen, who's a combination of Vera Farmiga and a young Terri Garr and may have played a prosecutor on Law & Order for a few years. John Herzog, who played the reporter's agent, looks like Adam West. And Marty Lodge, who played his father, is somewhere between James Widdoes and JK Simmons.

Overall, my only problem was that the pieces of the play never came together for me, intellectually or emotionally. It was quite complex, and the timeline jumps around quite a bit. This allows the author to reveal information to the audience in a very deliberate sequence, which is effective, but I am not totally certain I actually understood some of the finer points of the plot. The protagonist seemed to be struggling with a lot of personal issues against a backdrop of much larger, geo-political issues. And that's never easy-- to experience or write about, believe me...

SIT 'N SPIN, COMEDY CENTRAL STAGE

2008-02-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.sitnspin.org/

I went to the Comedy Central Stage twice this week. I don't mean to repeat myself, but I liked Sit 'N Spin so much that I wanted to go back. I had originally planned to go with my friend Meredith, but like Dean before her, she canceled on me. This is perhaps for the best because I had a rather tumultuous day and probably would not have been great company. When I was at the Convoy show, I thought I saw a sign about parking for the Hudson Theatres and had planned to investigate upon my return. However, by the time that I arrived at the show that night, convenient parking was the last thing on my mind, and like a creature of habit I parked in the same spot I'd used twice previously.

You might recall that in my previous post I mentioned some movement on the job front. In fact, on Tuesday, I got a call from my agent (already an accomplishment) and was asked in for a meeting about writing on a new TV show. I was incredibly excited and did not even begrudge the guys from Convoy their success that night.

Driving home from Convoy's show, however, I noticed my car was making a very strange noise and got worried. The next day, I called my father and asked him to listen while I waved my cell phone over my idling car. He wasn't able to make a very precise diagnosis. He did suspect the sound might be coming from the exhaust, however, and said that I shouldn't drive the car until I could have it looked at. I told him about the meeting, and he said to rent a car for the day. That's not something I like to hear when I'm unemployed, but I took his advice.

On Wednesday night, after ruining my dinner (a story in itself), I booked a rental car online and spent the rest of the night preparing for my meeting. I woke up the next morning and was sure to call the rental car company so they could arrange my pick-up. I did forget, however, that my street gets cleaned on Thursday from 8 to 10 AM and did not move my car. When I finally remembered about this, I found the local constabulary was safely one step ahead of me and had already issued a $50 ticket.

Getting to the meeting was an ordeal in itself, not to mention that it was in Century City, where I never want to go again as long as I live. And the meeting itself was very quick, which surprised me. I called everybody I know afterwards and gave them a debriefing. Nobody, however, was giving me a terribly positive response. So I stopped at In-N-Out in Westwood for lunch, then got lost in Westwood for a while before returning home late in the afternoon.

I called my girlfriend and talked to her for a while, but I found I couldn't put the meeting out of my mind. I was also very tired. So she advised that I take a nap before the show. And this is what I did. However, I slept through my alarm and woke up at 6:30. This left me very little time to make and eat dinner before leaving at 7. Even though I still had some Double-Double sitting in my stomach, I managed to choke down some salad and headed out the door.

When I got to the show, as I said, I parked on the street a few blocks from the theatre. I got there at about 7:40 (the show was at 8) and was incredibly thirsty. I considered my beverage options at the charming Caffe Bacio, which is the epicenter of the Hudson Theatre complex. Of course, I wanted something refreshing, but my only options in that category were bottled water (bad for the environment), soda (bad for your health) and Vitamin Water (not very good for either). So I settled on coffee. I know, it was a strange choice, but it did quench my thirst.

I sat down with my coffee only to have the lid pop off and the coffee spill all over my hand. As soon as I was seated, an usher announced the Backstage Theatre was open, so I rushed to finish my coffee and go inside. This was not pleasant, and I had not finished my $2 coffee before deciding that if I didn't head into the theatre right away, the doors would be closed on me.

This was, of course, not the case, and I spent a good 10 minutes waiting for the show to start. I wasn't as thrilled with this week's crop of monologues as the last time I went to a Sit 'N Spin show. Each story was a pretty loosely-linked series of events, and perhaps the readers just didn't have quite the same personality as the people I'd seen last time (several of whom were in the audience).

Wayne Federman was the notable stand-out, and really, I don't know that his story or its prologue were really that much better composed than the others. I think his personality and neuroses just played better with the crowd. He didn't exactly tell jokes, but a lot of the things that he said were very funny. He also addressed Sean Penn's general pretension and a shot from Into the Wild that I know my friend John was not a fan of.

Taylor Negron closed the show with a fictional monologue about being a nude model for Janice Dickinson. I shouldn't let anybody at Un-Cabaret know this, but I was a bit disappointed because I've read his non-fiction writing and really enjoyed it. His piece was intermittently funny, but it didn't really amount to much or seem to have had much thought put into it.

As for me, I did not bother to hang around the theatre after the show or go to the Bungalow Club for food and drinks as the program urged me to. I wanted to get home so I could fret over how my meeting had gone in private. F.Y.I. I didn't get the job. So, don't worry, the blog's not going anywhere.

TUESDAY 2/26: CONVOY, COMEDY CENTRAL STAGE

2008-02-26T21:43:00.000-08:00

http://www.myspace.com/convoyimprov

You might remember a previous post in which I discussed Convoy, an improv group founded by some guys I had gone to college with. When I caught up with them upon returning to LA, they had some great news: Comedy Central had asked them to perform at the Comedy Central Stage so that they could perhaps do some business with them. Of course I was terribly, bitterly jealous, but all three are genuinely nice people (okay, maybe not Todd) so I couldn't begrudge them this success, and I arranged to see the show and support them.

I had planned to go with Dean (who's not getting that pseudonym lifted until he actually goes to a show with me) and his girlfriend. But Dean's girlfriend got sick at the last minute, so I had to go by myself. Obviously, I've done this before, but this occasion was especially uncomfortable because any number of people with whom I'd gone to college were there. I have a very good memory for faces and events (names, not as much), so I almost always recognize and remember these people, but I don't like approaching them. I'll tell you a story to illustrate all of the points I just made:

About a year after graduating from college, I was taking an improv class with a girl who had been in my class at Vassar. She and I had both been involved in comedy there and had met and spoken on a few occasions, so I remembered her right away. I was not sure how to approach her, however, because I didn't want to play dumb and say, "Did you go to Vassar?" when I know full well she did. At the same time, I didn't want to say, "Remember me? We were in the same class at college, and we met that time Patrick introduced us, and that other time you emailed me about something," because that's creepy.

So I decided to approach this girl like she just remembered me and start from there. We talked once or twice, and I figured we were cool. Then, the whole improv class went out for dinner one night, and I told another person that I'd gone to Vassar. This person immediately got the girl's attention and said, "Did you and Erich go to school together?"

As I found out, she didn't remember who I was, and it took a few minutes of awkward conversation to jog her memory. Then, after we had established that we went to college together, she asked me if I knew Laura Kramer (pseudonym). I said the name sounded vaguely familiar but couldn't place it.

The next week, I was visiting my old roommate Caitlin in Boston and asked if she remembered somebody named Laura Kramer. "You mean that girl who lived with us second semester of senior year?" Caitlin asked. Yes, that was the one.

Anyway, for this reason, I felt pretty uncomfortable mingling before and after the show. As for the show itself, it was only about a half hour long. Afterwards, I saw a bunch of middle-aged guys with their shirts tucked in and a woman go backstage along with some guys from Reno 911 and The State (sadly, not Michael Ian Black). I would say that these were the suits gone to close the deal, but executives at Comedy Central wouldn't show up in suits, so I'll call them "the striped shirts." Normally I would be terribly jealous of all of this, but I actually made some big progress on my work the day of the show as well. So I will simply say that Convoy is great and they deserve whatever's coming to them.

SUNDAY 2/24: THE BALD SOPRANO, CITY GARAGE

2008-02-24T14:38:00.000-08:00

http://citygarage.org/ionesco4.html

Well, I saw "The Bald Soprano," and I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.

To be fair, mention is made of a bald soprano, but that's the extent of it. I'll admit that I'm not familiar with Eugene Ionesco's work or absurdist theatre as such. And I will talk about the play within that context because that is, after all, how I saw it and how many people will come to it.

I decided to see "The Bald Soprano" because it had been recommended by The LA Times and LA Weekly, and I was interested in seeing a play. I decided to see the Sunday show because City Garage offered a "Pay What You Can" admission policy. I was upset that I'd be missing the beginning of my friends' John and Lillian's Oscar party. But, luckily, John live blogs the whole evening, so I was able to catch up with what I missed.

The show started at 5:30, but I left for Santa Monica as soon as I was done with the UnCab Lab's free seminar in Hollywood. Since you can't make reservations for a Pay What You Can show, I wanted to make sure I got in line early. Also, I knew that finding on-street parking in Santa Monica would be hella difficult, and I did not intend to pay for parking. I was right about the parking, but getting in line wasn't an issue.

Unfortunately, I only had a $10 bill with me, and I didn't want to pay that much. But asking for change for a nominal donation is difficult, and I didn't want to explain to the person at the box office that I was unemployed. So I tried finding some way to break the 10, but unfortunately, the Third Street Promenade isn't exactly the best place to make a cheap purchase.

After giving up on that, I went into the theatre (which is in the same alley as The Westside Eclectic) to get my ticket. The attendant, who was reading McSweeney's, explained a ticket normally costs $20 but I could pay anything, and I handed him the 10 and asked for $5 change, which is still more than I wanted to pay. The attendant, however, wasn't up to making change and made a big deal of asking the other people working at the theatre for money to give me change. I wouldn't say this was necessarily a ploy to get me to pay more, but I still felt very uncomfortable with the whole thing.

The theatre is quite nice if small. The space is charming and intimate, and the old garage touches add to its counter-culture credibility. The stage is made of roughly-hewn wood boards. Curiously, one woman brought her two young daughters. I wondered what their response would be, and from what I could tell it was confusion and disinterest, like when my mother saw No Country for Old Men.

As for my understanding of the play... Well, I might have asked the girls for some help. The thing about absurdism is that, as far as I know, no logic or meaning necessarily applies. What follows is simply a series of strange things happening and amounting to nothing. Watching people do strange things for no reason is funny for a while, but I soon get tired of it, and that's when I start looking for the meaning.

"The Bald Soprano" is obviously some bastardization of provincial, bourgeois mores, and the fact that "provincial," "bourgeois" and "mores" are all French words should say something about how central those ideas (and bastardizing them) are to French art and literature. But beyond that, it mostly consists of absurd, inexplicable behavior and dialogue. The actors were very committed and the directing crisp, but I did find myself checking my watch before the end. By the way, the play is only an hour long.

I love the idea of a non-profit, socially relevant theatre, like City Garage, but I have to say that I always feel alienated at these places. I am rarely as engaged with the shows as I expect to be (okay, a few of my mores were bastardized), and as a result, I feel inferior. However, I don't think I'm especially dense, so I have to wonder how a broad audience would respond to these plays. Probably like my mother watching No Country for Old Men.

FRIDAY 2/22: NOT TOO SHABBY, UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE

2008-02-22T12:31:00.000-08:00

http://losangeles.ucbtheatre.com/shows/754

I hate driving on Friday and Saturday nights because both KCRW and Indie 103.1 play techno music, and I feel like I'm being admonished for not being at a nightclub. So I'm left to listen to either classical or rebroadcasts of Canadian news forums.

I arrived for Not Too Shabby pretty early because you can't make reservations, and I've heard that it can get busy. This Friday, however, that was not the case, and I was the only person waiting for quite some time. This can be embarrassing because that block is busy at 11:30 on a Friday night. So I fell back on my favorite trick for remaining inconspicuous: reading LA Weekly. I don't actually think the newspaper fools anybody; I'm still pretty obviously alone, but it makes me feel less self-conscious. And I got to finish the JT LeRoy article I'd started the previous night at bang.

But then, as show time approached, the strangest thing happened. My friend David, an actor I met in London who does a great 'funny nerd,' got in line right behind me. He was there with two friends who were showing a video that night. We caught up and discussed a certain nutty, dog-wielding indie queen I used to work for.

On my way in, I also ran into Todd and Fernie from Convoy, who had been at the Human Giant show earlier, and suddenly, I was Mr. Popularity! I told them that I had just started a blog (no link, you're reading it right now) featuring them and that my girlfriend was worried I might attract a stalker. Fernie told a story about a woman from Wisconsin who found him online and painted a portrait of him. If anybody reading this right now would like to do that, you are more than welcome.

Not Too Shabby, or "Shabby" as the Convoy guys called it, is a chance for anybody to get up and do a sketch. There were some UCB regulars performing. Also, one guy who looked like K. Fed in a Cyndi Lauper wig. Like most UCB shows, the hosts (one of whom is Paul Rust) start with an introduction, and like most UCB shows, that introduction consists of them wandering around the stage, fidgeting and occasionally explaining the premise of the show.

The sketches themselves were alright for a free show. Mostly they were perplexing, however. Sketches generally have "a game," essentially the premise or the thing that makes them funny. And usually this game has some logic behind it. That was not the case at Shabby, though. The sketches had games, even if they did occasionally veer off into two guys wrestling. But, with a few exceptions, I could never figure out why the characters were doing what they were doing. Some sketches were funny, especially one about a snake, but without any logic, they all became exercises in post-modern irony. And don't you hate it when something becomes an exercise in post-modern irony just out of nowhere?

THURSDAY 2/21: GANG BANG, BANG.

2008-02-21T23:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.bangstudio.com/gang-bang/

Through a series of events that I will not bother to detail, this Thursday, my hair came to be quite a mess. I didn't think about it until I was leaving to see Gang Bang at bang. and realized I needed to do something so as not to look like Doc Brown. The best solution seemed to be wearing a hat, but I don't wear hats often and only had a wool ski cap available. Of course, I didn't realize I'd later be wearing a hat when I put on a shirt with a decorative hoodie that morning. And since it was raining, of course I wore my raincoat, which also has a hood. So I went to this show wearing a hat and not one but two hoods. Suffice it to say, my head stayed dry.

I came across bang. while looking in LA Weekly for comedy theatres and decided to check out their "late night" show Gang Bang (clearly, whoever wrote that on the website hasn't been to Not Too Shabby) because it is free. I'm not opposed to paying for a show, but if I have the option of seeing a free one, especially at a theatre I've never been to before, I'll take it. Bang. is in the Fairfax District or, as I like to call it, "That Strip of Delis and Sneaker Stores North of the Farmers' Market Where You Have to Stop at the Pedestrian Crosswalk." I've always been intrigued by this strip but never stopped because I never saw anyplace to park. As I drove around looking for parking before the show, I felt a strange combination of vindication and annoyance. Mostly annoyance.

I got to the show early because the website says, "Line forms outside at 9 pm; first come, first served!"

Don't let the website fool you. There were seven people in the audience. I did get to wait in the theatre's nice lounge/lobby beforehand. Other theatres should take note. The show consisted of two groups, iProv and The Set.

I'll give you a quick rundown of what they did. iProv asked audience members to write down song suggestions before the show and then started each scene by playing one of those songs. Mother, a house team at UCBNY, does this and calls it a "Soundtrack," and so shall I. Even though there were only seven audience members, they never got to my song somehow. Their scenes came together pretty quickly but didn't always go anywhere. They have my most sincere sympathy, however, for performing in front of seven people. I once performed in front of an audience of six ESL students. I learned that laughter really is infectious, so in a big room with just a few people spread around, it rarely travels very far. Also, it doesn't help if those people don't speak English.

The Set is apparently based on the set performed by Second City Improv. The performers throw topics out to the audience before the show, "Pet Peeves," "Things in the News," and get suggestions. Then they decide beforehand on several scenes that they will perform based on these ideas. I think this form should have a more descriptive name, but I don't know what to call it. "A Bad Idea," perhaps?

I know that's harsh, and I'm kidding. Like I said, getting a rise from a small crowd like that is very difficult, but iProv held their own. The Set, on the other hand, had trouble with agreement and capturing the audience. Also the times towards the end of the show when the performers kind of just stopped talking and looked at each other didn't help much. On the plus side, one of the women in the group looks like Kristen Bell. And one of the guys looks like Lukas Haas, which is not as cool because he never played a teenage detective (granted, that character he played in Brick wasn't far off).

WEDNESDAY 2/20: CAGEMATCH, UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE

2008-02-20T20:10:00.000-08:00

http://losangeles.ucbtheatre.com/shows/1054

If you haven’t been to Cagematch at the UCB lately or listened to the chatter in the line outside the door, you might not have heard about Convoy. It’s a team of three improvisers, Alex Berg, Alex Fernie and Todd “Alex” Fassen. If you check their biographies (I don’t know why I bother to include hyperlinks if you don’t click them!), you’ll notice they all went to Vassar College at the same time that I did. After college, they came out to Los Angeles to pursue themselves some comedy, and after three-and-a-half years, they are the reigning Cagematch champs, having won 35 consecutive matches. Cagematch, by the way, consists of two improv teams performing for 20 minutes and the audience voting for their favorite of the two.

Convoy also has their own show Thursday nights, and all three are members of Sentimental Lady, a house team that does Harold Night. Also, they have been asked by Comedy Central to perform at the Comedy Central Stage in lieu of a possible development deal. Yes, the fellows in Convoy are doing quite well for themselves. This does nothing for my self-esteem, but I am happy for them because they are genuinely nice guys and will hire me for their show on Comedy Central.

Having been in Los Angeles periodically since college, I’ve seen Convoy perform a few times and sent them an email when I got back into town. They said I could catch up with them after one of their shows, and after getting shut out of Monday night’s Harold for not having reservations, I decided to see Cagematch.

I have to say that I am glad the show and theatre are doing well, but the lines there are getting ridiculous. I arrived at 10:30 for a show at 11, and there was already a line. Native, the hip women’s clothing store two doors down has taken advantage of this by staying open for people in line to go in and shop. I am impressed by their initiative and acknowledgement that most people (especially the people shopping at such stores) work during the day and have more time to shop at night. Still, shopping for clothes at 11PM feels unwholesome to me.

Continuing my string of coincidences that may or may not be attributable to The Secret and brainwaves, Caleb Mayo happened to be at the show. This is coincidental because earlier in the evening, I was watching Slings and Arrows, a Canadian show about an actor who once gave an infamous performance as Hamlet. And when I was at Vassar, Caleb played Hamlet. Granted, he didn’t go insane like the character on S&A; at least, I assume not. Nonetheless, I was glad to see him at the show because he: 1) was alone like me, 2) was not dressed like a ridiculous hipster and 3) carried a bag (some might say “man purse”) like mine.

As the audience was filling in, somebody dropped their phone, and the girls across the aisle from me picked it up. This was fine by me because I had no idea who dropped it or how to return it to them, and neither did these girls. They mostly tried calling people from the phone's speed dial list. This does remind me of a story however. I was working on a movie and driving home in a 15 passenger van with a friend after we had dropped the rest of the crew off. I found a cell phone on the floor of the van and started scrolling through the contacts thinking I might be able to figure out whose it was. As usual, the contacts were listed alphabetically, and under U, there was a listing for "Unemployment," and immediately below that was "Weed." I never found out whose phone it was, but that person really needed to reevaluate some things.

Convoy performed well. They do a standard Montage (that’s right, Level 401 Improv training, right here!) that moves along really quickly because all three performers know each other very well. I think this is because they share a bed—you heard it here first! They went up against a team of two called Raffi who were doing a montage punctuated by them talking directly to the audience, interview style. The closest thing I can find on Improv Encyclopedia is Maslo’s Hierarchy of Needs, so that’s what we’ll call it. Raffi tended to do longer scenes with very big performances, and they got a great response from the audience. In the end, however, Convoy beat them by a mere 10 votes. Maybe the emperor is getting too comfortable in his new clothes…

After the show, I waited outside to say hello to the guys from Convoy, and we talked for a little while. But frankly, I always hate that kind of mingling/catching up talk, not because I don’t care what and how people are doing but because I don’t like making people repeat the same conversation they’ve already had four times that day. Also, they seem to have quite the following and everybody wants to talk to them after the show, so I felt awkward occupying them. Boy, I hope they’re not reading this… that would be awkward!

TUESDAY 2/19: DYNAMITE KABLAMMO, ZOMBIE JOE'S UNDERGROUND

2008-02-19T20:07:00.000-08:00

http://dynamtiekablammo.com/

I live in the San Fernando Valley. I know many Angelinos shun the Valley, and not too long ago, I did myself. But, by some strange twist of fate, I ended up living in Sherman Oaks. I didn’t really know anything about Sherman Oaks, except I’m pretty sure it’s where Garry Shandling lived on It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, and my friend Mo said there was a soft-core sitcom on Cinemax called Sherman Oaks. I’m not sure what a soft-core sitcom is.

To my surprise, I like Sherman Oaks a lot. Sure, if I had my druthers, I’d be living in Santa Monica or West Hollywood or Hancock Park. But if I really had my druthers I’d be living in Boston or San Francisco. Also, I’m not sure what druthers are. In any case, my apartment in Sherman Oaks is very nice, and I can walk—yes, walk, in Los Angeles— to the supermarket and any number of equally nice local businesses and restaurants. And did I mention there’s an In-N-Out a block from my house?

My only major complaint about living here is that I have to go over the hill to see comedy shows, and in case you hadn’t noticed, that’s kind of a priority for me. So I decided to seek out some comedy in the Valley, and I came across a sketch comedy show at Zombie Joe’s Underground, which is part of the North Hollywood Arts District. The show cost $12, which is pretty pricey for me, but I figured I would save money on gas, and I wanted to support something local.

After getting shut out of Harold Night at UCB the previous night, I made reservations and got directions from Google Maps. Google Maps was pretty insistent that I take the 101, which makes sense because it’s a block from my house and about two blocks from the theatre. But I decided I wanted to take surface streets and get the full local experience. This was a bad idea because, even though I studied the map, I failed to notice that in the middle of North Hollywood, Riverside Drive veers south and becomes another street. My description doesn’t do it justice; perhaps the map will elucidate, but suffice it to say this is a crazy intersection even without the big fork in the road.

The few, uninformative signs at the intersection did very little to help and, of course, I got terribly lost. I have a reputation for being bad with directions, and perhaps this is true, but I think that in this case my getting lost was excusable. I drove around for quite a while and got to see Valley Village, North Hollywood and Toluca Lake, not to mention Burbank Airport and six Starbucks. I guess you could call it the extended local experience.

When I finally made it to the NoHo Arts District, I have to say I was pretty impressed. Los Angeles is not exactly known for its cultural centers, but NoHo actually has some restaurants, galleries, theatres and a Starbucks. Unfortunately, I was already late for the show and I still needed to find parking. Don’t tell the North Hollywood Blockbuster, but I did park in their lot.

From what I could gather off Zombie Joe’s Underground’s website, the theatre considers itself very, well, underground. I will give them credit for only putting the initials Z. J. U. on the store front, but otherwise, I didn’t get the impression that I was walking into some counter-culture grotto or anything. However, I was walking in quite late, which I expected to be a problem. Instead, the man at the door very graciously showed me in and made sure I found my seat and got a program. I certainly don’t expect this kind of treatment when I’m late, but I always appreciate it.

The show was called “Are You Delicious?” and featured the four members of Dynamite Kablammo. The theatre is arranged rather awkwardly, and I had trouble seeing much of the show. The UCB has a similar space, and I think they’ve arranged their seats and stage better, but I will admit that theatres in narrow storefronts like that are difficult. Also, despite being a fairly typical blackbox theatre, the walls at Zombie Joe’s are light lavender. I guess they are counter-culture after all.

The show itself was impressive largely because of the performances. All four performers were incredibly dedicated, and the show was really well-produced, which allowed them to live up to their potential. The material didn’t make much of an impression on me, but the audience was certainly responsive. And I wouldn’t say I noticed much difference between “Are You Delicious?” and any shows I’ve seen on the other side of the hill. Okay, there was some bad mall hair.

MAINSTAGE SKETCH + SUNDAY SOCIAL, iO WEST

2008-02-17T20:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.iowest.com/

This entry could easily be called “Why I Don’t See Shows with People” or “Why I Don’t Trust iO West’s Website.” I will say up front that I did not actually see a show, but I still think this story warrants a post.

On Friday, I started feeling bad for myself. I had been in Los Angeles for two weeks and the initial ‘welcome’ stage in which I got together with all of my friends and we caught up was over. However, I was still unemployed and, thus, had a lot of free time. Further, without my girlfriend (she’s back in Connecticut) I didn’t have anybody to spend time with. I don’t blame my friends because they have boyfriends and girlfriends and jobs and regular schedules of their own. I am the interloper here, but I still wanted to hang out with somebody.

I called my friend Dean (that’s a pseudonym, but I don’t know if it’s really doing much good) and asked if he wanted to go out. He suggested seeing the Oscar nominated shorts, which sounded like a great idea, but it did cost $12. So I suggested seeing the Mainstage Sketch show at iO West, which is cheaper and fit my agenda. I looked at this page on the iO West website, which said the show was that night at 8, and we agreed to meet there just before 8, see the show then get dinner.

Dean then took a look at iO West’s calendar page, which claimed that there was in fact no Mainstage Sketch show that night. He called me back and asked what I wanted to do. Initially I felt like a dick because I thought I forgotten that I had gotten information about the show from another page and assumed I had read the schedule incorrectly. I suggested “The Social,” another show at the iO West Blackbox that began at 9. This was really a last ditch effort to see a live show that night, and I don’t think Dean was too psyched about the idea. He suggested that we get dinner first then see The Social if we had time.

We met for dinner at Hollywood and Highland, which makes me feel like a tourist in the worst way. We then walked around looking at restaurants. I was looking for something quick and cheap. Dean was not. Dean was looking at The Grill. He said, however, that he would do anything, so I suggested Baja Fresh, but Dean said he had gone there for lunch and didn’t want to go back. Like Meatloaf, Dean is apparently prone to saying that he will ‘do anything’ then putting very specific stipulations on what he will not do, which is antithetical to doing anything.

We settled on California Pizza Kitchen (this was neither cheap nor quick, really, but I was willing to go along with it), which had a 15 minute wait. We got in at 8:30 and ordered a pizza and salad. Had these arrived promptly, we probably could have made it to the show. But, alas, they did not, and we didn’t finish until after 9, by which point we certainly didn’t have time to make it all the way to theatre. I know that no live show, especially comedy shows, ever starts on time, but we had really missed our window of opportunity.

I enjoyed my meal with Dean and took comfort in some companionship after a week of seeing shows alone. Nonetheless, this cautionary tale exemplifies why seeing shows with friends can be difficult and why I tend to go alone. It also exemplifies why you should call the theatre to confirm show times. I never did find out if there was a Mainstage Sketch show that night…

THURSDAY 2/14: SIT 'N SPIN, COMEDY CENTRAL STAGE + UNCAB LAB SHOW, M BAR

2008-02-14T17:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.sitnspin.org/

http://www.myspace.com/uncabgrads

The first thing you might notice about this post is that it is dated February 14^th—Valentine’s Day. Then you might notice that I saw not one but two shows on the 14^th. While I was completely aware that it was Valentine’s Day, my girlfriend is in Connecticut, so we certainly weren’t going to be doing anything together. Further, she doesn’t really care about Valentine’s Day. I am aware of the stereotype that all women say they don’t care about Valentine’s Day or don’t want a big gift but in reality do care and do want a big gift. But this is honestly not the case with my girlfriend. If anything, she usually seems surprised when I get her something for Valentine’s Day and says, “Does this mean I have to get you something?” (the answer is yes).

So I got a pass for Valentine’s Day this year—I barely even thought about it and certainly didn’t feel bad going to see two free shows, especially two that I wanted to see.

The first was “Sit ‘N Spin” at the Comedy Central Stage, which is a weird little place. It is located in the Hudson Theatre Complex, which is part of “Theatre Row” on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. Theatre Row bares a passing resemblance to “Skid Row.” Finding information about the Comedy Central Stage is not the easiest thing in the world, and getting information about “Sit ‘N Spin” is only marginally easier. Their website is just one page and not always updated as frequently as I’d like. But I’ve gotten really interested in seeing these “personal story” shows since I’ve gotten here (see 2/5: The Moth and 2/6: Show and Tell).

I don’t know what exactly draws me to these shows, although one explanation might be that I see the potential to get involved myself, get some attention, get a writing job, etc. But, to be honest, as of late, I rarely find myself as engaged with a sketch or improv show as I do with these story-telling events. And I think that the stories done at “Sit ‘N Spin” exemplify why. First, Carlos Kotkin did a story about being asked to a prom when he was 29. Then Carol Leifer (who looks great; I can’t believe she’s in her 50’s!) did a story about her mid-life crisis turning into a long-term lesbian relationship. And then Spencer Green did meta-essay that consisted entirely of one sentence that ran for several pages. A story or essay can just go so many places, whereas I feel like I haven’t seen anything really new done in a sketch or improv show in a long time.

Anyway, the show was very well-attended, mostly by some pretty mature, prosperous looking people—not exactly the UCB crowd. Parking my car on Santa Monica Boulevard (parking is a little sketchy, by the way; I’m not sure if there’s a better way to go about it), I saw a young guy getting out of an old Volvo and hoped that perhaps he was going to the same show I was so that we could be alone-buddies together. And, sure enough, he was!

After the show, I skipped going out for drinks (I don’t know if they really do that, but the website claims they do) and hurried over to M Bar for the UnCab Lab Show. Granted, it’s a short trip, and after getting lost and looking for parking again, I might have been better off walking. But, in that neighborhood, once you get five feet from a cute theatre, you’re in no man’s land. I had trouble finding M Bar because, to my surprise, it’s in a strip mall. What kind of hip bar is in a strip mall? I guess I forgot I was in Los Angeles.

When you enter M Bar, you are in what appears to be a back hallway with two bathrooms, wood paneling and some nondescript doors. Hint: take the nondescript door immediately to your left to get in. The bar itself looks like Liberace’s Roundtable, but the service was really nice. I should say, I didn’t get anything, but the wait staff didn’t bug me about not getting anything, and the food and drinks they did serve looked pretty good.

I first heard about Un-Cabaret on This American Life, and they run some great programs for aspiring comedy writers. The UnCab Lab is a school they run, and every so often the best and the brightest from their classes perform at the UnCab Lab Show. I wanted to check it out to: 1) give some support to the performers and 2) see if I want to take a class myself.

The performers at this show were doing something pretty similar to the people at “Sit ‘N Spin,” telling stories, and one girl read pages from the Kama Sutra to Barry White music. Like The Moth, however, the people at UnCab didn’t read directly from a sheaf of papers. That, and their relative inexperience, makes their pieces much looser and more rough-around-the-edges. In a way, I prefer this because—really—what’s the point of hearing somebody read an essay verbatim if you could just as easily read it yourself?

Also, the performers at the UnCab Lab tend not to be well established, famous comedians, which is nice for those of us in the same boat who get some schadenfreude from hearing stories about being unemployed and drinking yourself to sleep rather than Carol Leifer talking about going to lavish banquets and jetting off to Hawaii.

I believe that the same woman who laughed very loudly all the way through Julia Sweeney’s piece from This American Life (it’s the link above, if you were too lazy to click the first time) was front row at this performance as well. Sadly, they did not hand out programs, so I do not know for certain the name of the blonde woman who performed first, but I do know that I have a crush on her now.

TUESDAY 2/12: WHO'S AVAILABLE, WESTSIDE ECLECTIC

2008-02-12T17:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.westsideeclectic.com/Show.aspx?ContentItemID=1671380

I was pretty impressed by Westside Eclectic’s website and decided to check out their Tuesday night show, “Who’s Available.” The premise of the show is that whatever comedians just happen to be around that night can stop by and do a sketch or stand-up set or whatever. This seemed proising because Los Angeles is full of talented comedians who are working on TV shows or movies and will occasionally just drop in someplace to perform—have you heard about the time Robin Williams did Asssscat?

I arrived at the Third Street Promenade but couldn’t find the theatre for the life of me. I had the address, 1323 A, and found it on the map, but that just directed me to a Crocs store, which was closed. Finally, I realized that the A at the end of the address might be a clue and decided to try the other side of the building. Sure enough, I found an alley, and down that alley was a crowd of people.

I approached the crowd tentatively because, though I often go to shows alone, I’m still self-conscious about it. I got close enough to see that I had the right theatre and waited off to the side. I checked my email on my phone several times to give the impression I wasn’t a total loser while I watched everybody else mingle and talk. Then a bearded, bespectacled man approached me and introduced himself as Fred. “Who do you know in the show?” Fred asked.

“Oh, nobody,” I told him, “I just decided to check it out.”

“Really?” Fred said, a little amazed, “Where’d you hear about it?”

“I think I saw an ad,” I told him. Then I asked who he knew that was in the show.

“Oh, I’m the host,” he said.

“Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t bring more people,” I told him, trying to explain why I was alone, “But, you know, it’s a Tuesday night and all…”

“Yeah, ‘Comedy Death Ray’ is a big deal,” Fred said, both misreading my comment and —I suspect— trying to explain his show’s lack of an audience.

When I got into the theatre, I was a little embarrassed to see that I was the only person who had actually made a reservation. The theatre itself is pretty nice. The multi-colored matching chairs are a nice touch, especially after having seen shows at the UCB in New York, where some seats have been replaced with milk crates. I discovered quickly, however, that the attendance was even smaller than I had earlier suspected because about half of the audience got up to perform in the show.

Fred seemed a little dismayed at some technical glitches, and I got the impression the show wasn’t as well-produced as he would like. Having done some comedy shows with major technical difficulties myself, I can really sympathize with Fred. He got through it however, and several groups of young guys I took to be regulars did sketches. One guy did an amazing impression of James Blunt—at least his singing was dead on; I don’t know about his speaking because, luckily, I’ve never heard James Blunt speak.

The technical problems were adding to the show’s off-the-cuff feeling, but most of the people performing seemed like they had probably made the time to be there rather than simply being available. Then came the stand-up comedian (I won’t mention his name, but click the link, go on). He was a professional whose credits included something on the Playboy channel and probably Howard Stern too— I wasn’t really listening. I have to assume that he just happened to be available that night and decided to stop by to do a set. The difference was noticeable because this guy: 1) really knew how to work a crowd and 2) was not happy with what he considered to be a paucity of laughter.

Unfortunately, this comedian wasn’t actually as funny as the other people performing that night, and his comedy didn’t really jibe with the tone of the rest of the show. He mostly talked a lot about having sex and fat chicks, the province of Andrew Dice Clay-type stand-ups who I just don’t particularly like. The rest of the acts were genial and a bit subversive, but this guy was re-treading the same crude, misogynist ground that lost its shock value many years ago.

After that, Fred’s co-worker Precious, a sassy Black lady, did a set of her own, and Fred seemed very excited that she was there. Then he closed with a story in honor of Valentine’s Day about his father getting married. I’m not sure what exactly the point of that was. I have to assume that he genuinely was trying to tell a nice story but the entire thing felt like the set-up to a big punch line that never came. It was an odd way to end the show, just like this is an odd way to end a blog entry.

SUNDAY 2/10: ASSSSCAT, UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE

2008-02-10T17:33:00.000-08:00

http://ucbtheatre.com/schedule/showdetails.php?showid=741

I’ve only been to see Asssscat in New York City a handful of times, and that’s not a large hand either, maybe a child’s handful. It’s a huge institution there, with lines of well over 100 people wrapping around the block (which is in itself entertaining, since the UCB theatre in N.Y. is located in the middle of a housing project). When I first came to L.A., I found that a group of my friends went to see the show every week. At the time, my seedy landlord requested that I leave my apartment every Sunday evening because the owner, who was unaware the apartment was being subletted, tended to come by that time of the week. This worked out well, and I began seeing the show with them.

Though Asssscat was popular then, I don’t think it quite qualified as an institution. Now, however, it seems to have reached the same level of popularity as the New York show. I have mixed feelings about Asssscat’s popularity because, as most of the better performers at UCB will tell you, it’s not ‘good’ improv. It’s essentially great improvisers fooling around, and the result is generally entertaining, but not much better than any of the other shows at the theatre. I can’t quite say why it’s so popular; perhaps the night of the week, perhaps the fact that it is free (actually, there is a Saturday show that costs money, but it is not as popular) or perhaps the potential to see some famous people (I still hear people re-telling the story of the time Robin Williams was the guest monologist). In any case, some confluence of factors has made the show terribly popular, and I think the size of the crowd and their general enthusiasm tend to help everybody’s enjoyment.

The day of the show, I was going to see the Murakami show at MOCA with a friend. My plan was to go to the museum in the afternoon, get dinner, then get to the theatre around 6:30 to start waiting in line. However, the day in question turned out to be wonderfully warm, and I got the idea that I should go to the beach in the morning. I don’t know what made me think I’d be able to go from Sherman Oaks to Santa Monica then back to Sherman Oaks then to Hollywood to meet my friend before 1:30, but I was insistent that we not meet before then.

Of course, I didn’t get to the beach that morning, and I was still late meeting my friend in Hollywood, which was fine because he was late as well. We then took the subway downtown. Yes, Los Angeles has a subway. Granted, it doesn’t really go anywhere helpful, and the trains don’t run very frequently, but it only costs $1.25, and the ticketing is done on the honor system, so paying is sort of extra-optional. The experience was nice and reminiscent of some of my favorite cities; though I could have done without the couple behind us making out for the whole trip. When we got to the museum, we learned there was an hour-long line because it was the last day of the show.

We decided to get some boba smoothies before waiting in line, which required us to first get cash from an A.T.M. The boba place was experiencing some back-up and we waited a good 15 minutes for our smoothies. Just as mine was having the vacuum-pack top sealed on, the machine broke, and we had to watch them trying to fix it and put a new top on my smoothie—so close yet so far away. Once we got our smoothies, we got in line, waited an hour and saw the show, which was populated by even more hipsters than a UCB show.

Unfortunately, the long line and smoothie debacle set us back, and by the time we got to Hollywood, we barely had time to get to the show. This meant that we had to grab some food on the way, and I ended up with sushi from Fresh and Easy, which I only enjoyed because it came with collapsible chopsticks. We arrived at the show at 6:45, and luckily my friends John and Lillian had gotten there much earlier and saved a spot in line because by the time we arrived, it was around the block. Apparently the crowd had gotten much bigger since the last time I went a year earlier.

When the show started, I noticed that Ian Roberts looked different, so much so that I did not know it was him until Matt Walsh introduced him. Afterwards, my friends said they had all noticed it too, and it had happened rather suddenly a few months earlier. What is strange is that I certainly wouldn’t expect him to address this with the audience, but he and the show have such a following that I really did want to know what was going on.

Sean Conroy performed, and while he is very talented, looking at him does at times make me uncomfortable. I think it has something to do with his hair, which is kind of thinning. I was also a bit uncomfortable at that show because my friend from the museum had accompanied me, and he does not know John and Lillian, whom I met at the theatre. So I had to split my time between talking to the parties, which is always awkward.

The show was hampered a bit by a group of four guys with ridiculous facial hair sitting near the front row who kept talking to the people on stage. I understand that the show is supposed to be fun and interactive for everybody, but that always sets me on edge. The improvisers are usually pretty good at playing it off without saying anything like, “Hey, jackass, shut up! I’m the one on stage.” But often this only encourages the disruptive audience members, and I wonder how the performers feel about it. I know that I’d be pretty upset about the whole thing, but then I’m pretty anal and don’t always know how to deal with people encroaching on social boundaries like that.

SATURDAY 2/9: SKETCH CRAM, UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE

2008-02-09T16:31:00.000-08:00

http://ucbtheatre.com/schedule/showdetails.php?showid=1383

After having failed in my previous attempts to branch out from shows at UCB, I decided to return like an ex-boyfriend who had thought he could do better. And, if anything, my folly only made me appreciate the UCB more. Granted, they do have big crowds at some shows and annoying audience members, but they also have multiple shows every night of the week, and tickets are usually only $5 or $8. The only other theatre that compares is iO West, but most of their shows cost $10, and it’s located on Hollywood Boulevard. Since most people I know in Los Angeles gravitate almost exclusively towards UCB, I have to assume it is one of the more successful comedy theatres in L.A. And I wonder why other venues don’t follow their lead and start offering more shows for less money.

Anyway, I decided to see “Sketch Cram” because it is a sketch show with scripts, which is a draw for me. “Sketch Cram” is written and rehearsed entirely in one day and presented for the first and only time at midnight. I am a little annoyed that people in the L.A. comedy scene are so adverse to writing and prone to improv that they have to improvise their sketch-writing. Nonetheless, my interest was piqued.

I arrived after 11:30, and when I got to the theatre, the audience from an earlier show was still coming out. I stood next to some people who seemed to be waiting, and to my surprise, a line formed rapidly behind me. The crowd for this show seemed to be a lot of regulars, people who take classes and/or perform at the theatre, which meant that the conversation in line was all about rehearsal groups and Cagematch. I was the first person into the theatre and actually lied about having a reservation because I was afraid that I might not get in without one.

Of course, the show started late—and I mean late by live comedy show standards. I suppose that the performers were still getting their acts together backstage. When they did start, the show was on the level of any other sketch show really. It was comparable to something that people had actually taken days or even weeks to write. It was rough around the edges, and not every sketch was a winner, but all of them had entertaining premises that took off pretty quickly. My favorite was about Juno being interrogated by police investigating Paulie Bleeker’s murder. Perhaps I’m just part of the Juno backlash, but I loved seeing somebody yell, “Nobody talks like that!” then punching the fake Juno.

FRIDAY, 2/8: FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE, ACME COMEDY THEATRE (intended)

2008-02-08T16:18:00.000-08:00

http://acmecomedy.com/

Having grown a bit tired of seeing shows at the UCB, I decided to explore some other options and remembered having driven past the Acme Comedy Theatre on LaBrea. I checked their website and found that they have sketch shows on both Fridays and Saturdays. Further, I found that somebody from my college sketch troupe was part of the cast there, so I figured I might get a chance to run into him. Tickets are $10, which is on the high end of what I’m willing to spend (unemployed, remember?), but I still decided it was worth going.

Then, just as I was on my way out the door, I got a call from my uncle. I wanted to talk to him because I thought that he might invite me to his ski cabin in Tahoe for Presidents’ Day weekend. But instead, he seemed mostly to want to chat, about absolutely nothing, which impeded my departure. I did, however, take the opportunity to double check the Acme website for information about the show, and that is where I found out that it has a one-drink minimum. I decided that $10 for a ticket plus more for a drink and potentially parking (that’s a busy neighborhood) was just too rich for my blood. Granted, it is not as expensive as a Groundlings’ show or even a show at Largo, which comes with a $16 food minimum. But I do need to be sensible, and, after all, I can find a lot of great shows that are cheap or free.

WEDNESDAY 2/6: SHOW AND TELL, UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE

2008-02-06T16:08:00.000-08:00

http://showandtellshow.com/

I had been sick most of the day Wednesday and thus was not sure that I wanted to see a show that night. After sleeping for several hours, I still felt crappy, so I called Mo, a good friend from college, for some distraction. I didn’t really have any purpose in calling her other than to pass some time and perhaps receive some sympathy. She asked about Los Angeles and made a joke about getting in touch with Justin Long and possibly getting a job from him. Justin Long and I both attended Vassar College, and while he was there, he belonged to a comedy troupe called Laughingstock, which later become No Offense, which I was a member of. I met him once after a show; we hung out for a little while, and since it has been a running joke that I am friends with Justin Long.

After failing to receive much sympathy from Mo, I proceeded to mope around the apartment until around 6:30 when my strength suddenly came back. Feeling better, I decided to see “Show and Tell”, an essay-reading show at the UCB that I had been looking forward to.

On the way to the show, I was thinking about Mo and what to get her for her birthday because even though her birthday was months away, I wanted to think of something good. Mo is a bit neurotic about her birthday and thinks that everybody ignores it. As a result, I’ve always made a big deal out of getting her a really great joke gift—something inexpensive and inconsequential that pertains to an inside joke or is otherwise humorous. This is a nice tradition, but I’ve been doing it for a while now, and thinking of a new gift every year can get a little tricky.

I should take a moment here to explain that in college, Mo and I spent several months watching reruns of the show Ghostwriter together. If you aren’t familiar with Ghostwriter, I’ll explain; he’s a ghost, and he writes to us—Ghostwriter. Anyway, we had both watched the show as kids and then found that it was being rerun weeknights on The N. In particular, we were waiting to see an episode in which two teenage characters kiss. For an educational kids’ show on PBS, this had been a really seminal moment for the series, and we both remembered it well. When the kiss episode was finally rerun, it did seem a lot tamer than we had remembered, and none of Mo’s roommate’s could understand why we had been talking about it all week.

Returning to the night of the show: I arrived early and decided to kill some time in the used bookstore down the street from the UCB. And what did I come across while I was browsing but a pristine Ghostwriter VHS for 88¢! I was reminded of my attempts the previous day to control my own destiny using The Secret and couldn’t help but wonder if my brainwaves were perhaps doing more than I had given them credit for.

I got into the theatre for the show and was surprised by several things: 1) How crowded it was, 2) How many of the people there knew each other and 3) How many fairly successful people were there. When attending shows at the UCB, you often find that other audience members are themselves aspiring comedians and performers. They discuss what improv classes they are taking, critique the shows they’ve seen recently and handicap different performers at the theatre. While I cannot claim to be much different from these people, the whole thing can get a bit grating. At “Show and Tell”, however, most of the people in the audience seemed to be discussing legitimate work in the entertainment industry.

I was feeling self-conscious about being: 1) alone, 2) unemployed and 3) unsuccessful when who should walk in but… (wait for it)… Justin Long. I was now fairly certain that my brainwaves had to be doing something right, and a moment later, one of the people he was with asked me if I could move down a seat so that they could sit next to me. Though I was slightly embarrassed to admit I had in fact come alone, I thought this was obviously the universe just bringing me that much closer to Justin Long.

The show itself was very good. Jane Edith Wilson, Alan Olifson and Liz Warner all read and were very entertaining. Josh Radnor also performed, which again lent the whole event some credibility. The main difference between this and The Moth event the night before was that people telling stories at The Moth do not use any notes. The performers at “Show and Tell” were essentially reading directly off sheets of paper. While this does make their stories feel more polished and clever overall, it does negate some of the intimacy and spontaneity that stories at The Moth have.

After the show, I was just waiting for my brainwaves to introduce me to Justin Long, but it didn’t happen. Were I less shy or, perhaps, just a bigger jerk, I could have introduced myself, but really what would I have said? “We met once seven years ago, and while you don’t remember me, I remember you because you’re famous”? I didn’t really see it going anywhere, and I guess The Secret didn’t either.

When I returned home that night, my friend Jesse had forwarded a promotional email from The Moth. I’ve never spoken to Jesse about The Moth and hadn’t even seen him since September of last year. However, his ex-girlfriend is the person who told me I’m a great raconteur. The universe moves in mysterious ways…

TUESDAY 2/5: THE MOTH STORYSLAM, TANGIER

2008-02-05T15:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.themoth.org/storyslams

The Moth is a wonderful idea and does a lot of wonderful stuff as an organization. You may have heard them on This American Life. What I like in particular is their focus on storytelling in an intimate setting. I have been told before that I have lots of interesting stories and on one occasion was called a “raconteur.” None of this is true; my personal history is in fact pretty tepid and milquetoast. But really everybody has interesting stories to tell, and often the telling can be just as interesting as the story.

The job-hungry, enterprising part of me saw the Moth’s StorySLAMs, which are open to anybody to tell a story, as a great opportunity. Perhaps I could make a name for myself telling stories at these events, I thought, and maybe I’ll be the next Spalding Gray or David Sedaris. I, it turns out, am not the only person who ever had that idea.

Before leaving the east coast, I had attended a Moth StorySLAM in Manhattan with the intention of telling a story. I showed up an hour before the show, and there was already a line. It was packed, and I found out that 20 or 30 people put their name in a hat for a chance to get up and tell their stories. Scared out of my mind, I did not bother to put my name in. Some of the stories were really amazing, including one by a man who told the story of losing his hand in an accident. Most of the amazing stories were clearly written in response to the evening’s theme, “Scars.” Some stories were not amazing, and at least one or two were done by aspiring writers/comedians who wanted some stage time but didn’t have much to say.

Knowing that the Moth does SLAMs in L.A. as well, I remembered my story and actually took some time to practice and rework it on the drive from New Jersey to California (I should mention, you can’t use notes at a StorySLAM, so you have to know the story pretty well). Luckily, there was a SLAM scheduled for the first week I was here, and my story worked pretty well with the evening’s theme, “Love Hurts.”

I should take some time here to explain my relationship with The Secret. When I got to Los Angeles, I felt suddenly overwhelmed and desperate—I had spent thousands of dollars to move across the country to look for work in the television industry while there was a writers’ strike. My roommate has a copy of The Secret, and I watched the first 10 minutes or so, thinking for some reason this might help. The whole thing is a preposterous bastardization of cognitive science that melds The Power of Positive Thinking and The DaVinci Code. Nonetheless, one man in the video did talk about the idea that if you constantly think about things that can go wrong, things will go wrong. And I realized that I had spent the whole day thinking about things that could go wrong.

I turned off the video after that because my cousin had explained the basic tenants to me anyway; you think about something happening, and that sends some brain waves into the universe, and the brain waves make that thing happen. So I decided to give it a shot and started by thinking about the StorySLAM that evening. The StorySLAM has three groups of judges who score each story and choose a winner, and I spent the whole day telling myself that I was going to win.

After my experience with the long line at the SLAM in Manhattan, I left myself plenty of time to get to this one. What I did not account for, however, was Los Angeles traffic. Google Maps had instructed me to take three different freeways to get there, and each one had more traffic than the last. I was ready to give up but decided that I had The Secret on my side. It didn’t matter when I got to the SLAM, I was still going to win because I’d sent out the brain waves. I arrived at the address I had written down (I didn’t write down the name of the bar, I don’t know why) and went inside. At the bar, a huge group of people was watching the Super Tuesday primary returns and to the side was a private room I thought might be the SLAM. An employee approached me, “You here for the Obama party or Speed Dating?” I told him neither, and he said I could just hang out if I wanted.

I left, thinking I must have gotten the wrong place because I was certain a StorySLAM would attract a conspicuous number of people. So I walked up and down the block to see if any other bars or restaurants looked like the right place. Again, I was ready to give up but decided that I would find the place because I had The Secret working for me. I went back in, asked about the Moth and was directed to a room in the back. I was surprised by how few people were there, maybe 50, and looked around for a place to sit. Everybody was at a table with friends, so I stood there awkwardly until Kerry, the producer, asked me if I needed a seat. Kerry procured a chair for me and asked if I’d been before. I told her I’d been in New York but had just gotten to Los Angeles, hoping this would explain my lack of a companion.

The stories started, and let’s just say there was no guy who had lost his hand. Some storytellers were regulars who were just going along for the ride, but many were aspiring writers and comedians trying up to their profile. I realize, of course, that this is exactly what I was doing. But the difference is their stories weren’t any good. I know that this is the wrong attitude to bring to this event, which is supposed to be about sharing stories and not about the competition. But as long as we were all using it for self-serving purposes, I wanted to win. And, as it went along, I was pretty sure I was going to.

Most people who told stories missed some of the basic pieces of storytelling: emotional investment, a beginning, middle and end, etc. Because all of these stories are true, personal stories that can be difficult I know. Real life events don’t have beginnings, middles and ends. But still, if you are trying to tell a story, you need to find some. Seth Morris, who is a fairly successful regular at UCB, got up and told a story. His did have the essentials and was funny, but by that point, I was so certain I would win that I failed to recognize this and could only think, “I’m going to beat Seth Morris!”

When I got up to tell my story, I was a little startled by all the laughter from the audience. I expected it; it’s a funny story. But I was so used to rehearsing it without pausing that I had to adjust and hope that the laughter didn’t make me go over the five minute time limit. Still, people were laughing—a lot. They really enjoyed it. I felt great. Everything was working out exactly like I had planned. The Secret was working.

I sat down proudly and started mulling over whether I wanted a CD or a T-shirt as a prize. When the scores came out, I was well ahead of anybody who had gone before me. I just needed to get through the last two people speaking. The final woman who came up was on crutches and told a story about an affair she was having. It was a good story, but I wasn’t worried because I had The Secret.

Apparently, however, the judges didn’t know about The Secret. When they gave their scores, they willfully flaunted my brainwaves and gave this woman high scores, very high scores, as high as mine, in some cases higher. Kerry and the host took a quick look at the scores and said they were pretty positive that the last storyteller’s were just slightly higher than mine, then ended the show.

She collected her prize, and I did get to talk to the host, some of the other storytellers and Kerry. Some people complimented me, which was great, and I realize how great it was for my first time, but I still didn’t win. At least I did beat Seth Morris.

MONDAY 2/4: HAROLD NIGHT, UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE

2008-02-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

http://ucbtheatre.com/schedule/showdetails.php?showid=886

I had been in Los Angeles for 2 ½ days. Each night since I arrived, my roommate asked me if I was going out. I’ll admit I’m a bit of a homebody, but this seemed like an undue amount of attention regarding my social plans. Determined to show my roommate that I do leave the house, I decided to attend Harold Night at the Upright Citizens Brigade. Harold Night is a cornerstone of their schedule; I had been before and knew what to expect, so this was a safe way to ease into the scene.

If you don’t know the Upright Citizens Brigade (heretofore known as “UCB,” to use appropriate parlance), it is a comedy theatre on Franklin Avenue in Los Feliz. In the past few years, it seems to have become the real destination for comedy in Los Angeles, which has done nothing to help the already limited parking in the neighborhood. It is located on a block with a lot of cool shops and restaurants and thus attracts a lot of hipsters. Generally, I don’t like hanging out around hipsters because their very ethos is so exclusionary that I instantly and intractably feel ridiculously inadequate and uncool in their presence. UCB is also across the street from the Scientology Celebrity Center, which is always fun to look at while you’re waiting in line for a show.

Having yet to assemble the desk in my bedroom, I was doing work at the kitchen table that night when my roommate’s girlfriend and her entire family arrived. They were there to toke before going to the movies, and I suddenly felt ridiculously uncomfortable typing away on my laptop at the kitchen table. Luckily, it was time for me to get going, when they began their fierce interrogation (“What are you doing tonight, man?”), I could legitimately say I had plans.

I live in Sherman Oaks, and Google Maps had told me to take the 101 South to the theatre. I thought this was perfect because the entrance to the 101 is two blocks from my apartment. Having just returned to Los Angeles for the first time in six months, however, I was unaware that in Sherman Oaks, the 101 does not run north and south but east and west. So when I got to the freeway entrance two blocks from my house, I didn’t see a sign for the 101 South. I quickly tried to figure out which direction I wanted and settled on east.

After about 10 minutes of sitting in traffic on the 101 East, I decided that I must be going in the wrong direction (I wasn’t by the way) and got off at the next exit. I got back on and started heading west, but after several miles I reconsidered and decided this was definitely not the right direction. I got off at the next exit, but this time, I could not find another on-ramp heading east and ended up on Ventura Boulevard. By now, it was time for the show to start, and while I know that no shows ever start on time, I decided that I would never be able to get back on the freeway, drive to the theatre and find parking in time for the show. Knowing very little about the geography of the San Fernando Valley, I stayed on Ventura, which I was pretty certain led to my apartment. Luckily, I had gotten that much right, and when I had arrived, my roommate’s girlfriend and her family had gone, so I didn’t need to worry about them thinking that I had faked having plans to impress them. And I was able to watch In Treatment on the couch in the living room.

INTRODUCTION

2008-02-03T15:14:00.000-08:00

I recently moved to Los Angeles to find work as a television writer. I cringe even writing that (because everybody in LA is a so-called ‘writer’ or ‘actor’ or ‘actor who also writers’ and is working on a script or a pilot or a short, none of which will ever amount to anything), but it is the truth.

Part of my plan upon arriving was to become part of “the scene,” that group of young (and middle-aged) people who regularly perform and produce live stage shows. Obviously, this plan is largely self-serving; I want to be a part of the scene so that I can eventually do a show myself, get some attention and perhaps even get my agent to return my emails. It’s a means to an end (that end being a job), but a byproduct of this effort is that I am now attending as many live shows in Los Angeles as I can.

I mostly focus on shows with scripts or writing involved, such as sketch shows and monologue shows, but I see whatever seems interesting. I also tend towards cheap—or free – shows because I am, as yet, still unemployed. And I tend to see these shows alone because that is just easier, and in the past I’ve had trouble inviting friends to shows they didn’t like. But I will detail the circumstances of my attendance of each show individually.

In writing about these shows, I intend to let people know about the vibrant scene that does, in fact, exist in Los Angeles. I do not mean to offend anybody involved in the shows because I admire the effort each and every one of them have made. That being said, I will try to share my opinions and experiences as honestly as possible. I hope that you enjoy and perhaps will even join me at a show sometime—I’m the guy with nobody to sit next to.

-- Special thanks to John, a blogger extraordinaire, for explaining how to backdate posts, which I really should have been able to figure out on my own.