Work was usual, but afterwards Josh, Matt, Steven and myself all went over to the Ice House in Pasadena after work to see Carlos (from 3rd i) do some standup. See, he's making a movie where he plays a really shy guy who has been told by his shrink that performing stand-up comedy is a good way to get over his shyness. Anyway, he was doing standup under his character's name, and in character, so it was pretty interesting, but I'll get to that in a sec. Basically we all met up there (Josh got there a little after us, but in time for all the comedy), and got a seat way in the back corner, cause we figured if we were in front the hack comics would base their whole routine on asking us crap like "where are you from" blah blah blah. Oh, by the way, this was I guess like the amateur section, the Annex, part of the Ice House, so we got in for free, but we had to buy two drinks ($4.25 for one small coke 
); so the people doing stand-up were assumed to generally be pretty new to it (it was Carlos' second time on stage, from what I understand). Naturally the whole event was hosted by some guy who apparently hosts a local cable channel comedy show ("Laughter Hours", I believe it was called), and lemme tell you, this guy was awful. But he was horribly unaware of how bad he was, so he kept going and going, predictably interacting with virtually everyone who was seated in the front row. For my money, the funniest part of his act was the disgusted look on this girl's face as the guy was trying to hit on her, but I dunno, maybe I don't know comedy. We sat through 4 comics, including Carlos.
The first comic was a girl who made a big deal (and based most of her act) around the fact that she was 100% Mexican, was a teacher, and that her name was StefanČ, not Stephanie. The next guy based a lot of his act around the fact that he's Jewish, single, slightly overweight, and owns a cell phone. I found him to be a little funnier than StefanČ, but he was kinda performing it too much I guess. My favorite comedians don't look so much like they're acting onstage. I guess I'd say I like comedians, not people acting like comedians, if that makes any sense. Anyway, after these guys came Carlos, and even though I'm probably biased, he seemed to be clearly the funniest guy of the night. While he had an "act", it made more sense because he was playing a character for his movie, but actually his act played very well. He was acting very uncomfortable and I could tell that at first the crowd wasn't sure if he was serious or not, which made it that much funnier. Soon they clued into the fact that he was not really that shy, but some of his jokes were absolutely priceless (he had a Mr. T impersonation which had everyone absolutely howling). The only bad thing about his act was that it wasn't very long, and considering how much better he was than everyone else, we definitely would have wanted him to stay onstage a bit longer. We were gonna cut out of there after Carlos, but since the drinks were so expensive we decided to stay for one more comic and finish them. This was a mistake. The last guy we saw was not horribly unfunny, but his voice was like nails on a chalkboard. He was clearly doing some kind of "radio voice" but it sounded like Don Knotts trying to be some kind of slick disc jockey or something. Most of his act was devoted to reading the warning labels that go with drugs like Viagra and Propecia and joking how anal leakage doesn't sound appealing to him. Great stuff, lemme tell you 
We drank our drinks quickly and walked out during his set. Anyway, that was our night. So the moral of the story is... fuck I dunno. Good job though, Carlos 
Comments (3)
Do I have to remind you (again, ha!) that tomorrow is Terrible Friday?
Posted by Koganuts | November 13, 2003 11:37 PM
Posted on November 13, 2003 23:37
No, no reminder necessary this time. I was on top of it this week
Posted by Yams | November 14, 2003 12:32 AM
Posted on November 14, 2003 00:32
what the ...? I had told Carlos that I would have liked to come next time he was "performing"... and not only he didn't tell me but neither did you!?! That's it! That partition is going up first thing monday morning!!!
Posted by iendive | November 15, 2003 10:14 PM
Posted on November 15, 2003 22:14