Standemups at The Fake Gallery Tonight!

Because of the outstanding lineup, this is what we comics refer to as a “mega show.” If you’ve been wanting to come out to a show lately, in all seriousness this one is it.

THE FAKE GALLERY - 8:30PM - FREE
4319 Melrose Ave, LA, CA

Featuring:
David Feldman
Bil Dwyer
Laura Kightlinger
Kyle Kinane
Matt Champagne
Ron Babcock
Mike Schmidt
Rob Delaney
Duncan Trussell
Karl Hess

Hosted by Eddie Pepitone and Frank Conniff!!

So the other night after a show this drunk sorostitute...

stumbled up to us and said, “Ummmmmm so I’m like going to give you guys some adviceeeeee and I think you should take it cusssss it will make you betterrrrrrr.”

She honed in one of the comics, who was very funny that night.

“Sooooo the first thing you like have to do is vary like how you talk.”

Hilarious. What’s better is that the comic she was telling this to took out a pen and paper and pretended to write everything she said down. It took a good three or four minutes before she realized this, but that didn’t stop her. I told her that since she was so cool about giving us notes on our comedy that afterwards I was going to give her notes on her advice-giving. She looked at me for a sec and then slurred into a speech about “being all like monotone and stuff.”

I wanted to stick around and see what she was going to say about me, but the novelty quickly lost its luster and I left. Jeez that girl wanted to make me suck start a shotgun.

STANDUPCOMEDY

I met a kid at a show last night who said he had been doing standup for seven months. He asked if I had any advice or recommendations for him. Adorable. I told him, “Just keep doing it.” I’m only at year six so I don’t know shit about shit, except that what separates the people who are successful at this from the people who are not is that the people who are not successful stopped. Maybe it was insecurity or bitterness or maybe it just wasn’t fun anymore. Whatever it was they said, “Fuck this” and stopped. So my advice is always, “Just keep doing it.”

Unfortunately standup is a fickle bitch who likes to fuck with your head and a lot of times all you want to do is stop. There’s a lot of failure and humbling of your ego. It’s also a weird art form to begin with. Friends and family always say, “I can’t believe you do standup, I could never do that.” I get that. It’s intimidating to go up in front of a group of people you don’t know and basically say, “Hey shutup and listen to my hilarious observations about transportation.” But people will also say, “You do standup comedy? We love standup comedy!” They’ll then look at their significant other who will nod in agreement that they do indeed love standup comedy. While I appreciate their enthusiasm, it does make me think there are people out there who hate standup comedy. Point is standup is a crazy bitch, but crazy bitches are also a lot of fun.

Growing up, I would watch hours of Short Attention Span Theater and 2 Drink Minimum on Comedy Central. I loved it, but I never thought, “I could do that.” Although I did think, “I want to do that.” I was the youngest of five so I craved attention and usually got it through being funny. Junior year of high school, I did the next best thing. I signed up for the high school play. At first it seemed perfect. “I get to perform and be the center of attention… but I don’t have to be myself?!” I sat down in the drama room after school waiting for me to get high school famous. After ten minutes and a number of impromptu renditions of songs from Rent, I realized I had made a horrible horrible choice. I loved the idea of theater. I just couldn’t stand the people who were in theater. Yes I know you have a good voice, that doesn’t mean I want to hear it all the fucking time. I know how to juggle but I didn’t do that when I walked to Biology. I have similar issues with the band Phish.

I hated being a quitter, so I stuck with it. You want credits? Fuck you, here’s my credits. I was a bottle dancer in Fiddler on the Roof. I still remember my routine and have been known to bust it out at a party when drunk. I was also in Beauty and the Beast where I played… shrubbery. It wasn’t the Disney version of Beautiy and the Beast, it was the public domain version where the entire choir was assorted shrubbery. I was planted next to this kid named Rishi. During the final dress rehearsal, I asked him what night his parents were coming and he said, “Are you kidding me? I didn’t even tell them about it. I’m a fucking shrub man.”

In college I dabbled in short form improv which is basically theater for kids who can’t sing well. I was in this mish mosh group composed of high schoolers and middle-aged moms. There were a lot of scenes about supermarkets and all the caa-razy things that could happen in them.

Finally I moved to Arizona, started a comedy magazine with my friend Ryan and I slowly worked up the courage to give standup a try. There’s no way I would have ever started doing standup by myself and I think I could say the same for Ryan. Our first show was at Arizona State on one of their standup nights. We weren’t students there, but they needed acts. I was so fucking nervous. I went out and did some bit where I was in a job interview and the setups were the questions the guys would ask and the punchlines were… barf. It was horrible and awkward and the sound of silence from the audience was deafening. I was sweating like crazy, my heart felt like it was trying to break out of my chest and I always had to pee.

I walked off stage and thought, “Yeah this is what i want to do.”

People love to romanticize standup. There’s a ton of standup documentaries that are great and everyone who watches them will think, “I gotta see more standup.” But then they go and realize more often that not, “This is bad.” And that’s the truth. There’s more bad comics out there than good. But the longer you do it, the better you get and hopefully, the more fun it gets. So yeah, just keep doing it.