With a pretty full room for a Thursday night, Steve Burr
MCing and Tim Almeter doing a spot, I was looking forward to seeing my friend
Dan Viola headline.
We all know I sometimes have a hard time reviewing my
friends, comics whom I know on a deeper level, comics with whom I’ve shared
more than a show, and Dan is one of those people. We share that Tiny Glover
connection, which never leaves my heart and has led me to some of the coolest
people in my current sphere of influence. It’s an obvious bias with me that, if
I like you as a person, I generally enjoy you more as a comic. If you’re an
asshole, you better have damn good material – and, fortunately, many of you do!
Dan is not an asshole; he’s a family man, a clean comic and someone I’ve
enjoyed seeing come back to the stage.
Before I get to Dan, however, let me say that Tim Almeter is
quickly becoming someone I’ll be writing about too often; in a world where so
many variables have to come together to make a great show, Tim is X, the
variable we’re always looking for. For a relative newcomer, he has a wealth of
material that seems to hit more than miss. His fast delivery is an extension of
his fast thinking, so he can change gears when a particular joke doesn’t seem
to be connecting. He CAN change gears – he doesn’t always choose to. Trusting
your own voice is an ongoing battle for any artist. I’ve said before that I
admire Tim’s fearlessness; the stubbornness will prove to be an asset in a
career that depends so much on opinion. That, and the fact that he cracks
people up.
I also wanted to talk about Dewey Lovett, even though she
did her guest sets on Saturday night. Apparently, I missed the most incredible
show of the weekend, the Saturday early show, which all the comics agreed was
amazing. I was a little surprised to hear that when I saw not one, but two
bachelorette parties exiting the room. The second show was a little more laugh
resistant. While sometimes the right move may be to ignore the crowd altogether
and deliver your set as planned, Dewey used her improv experience to move
through her bits and push the audience to react. In this, her petite frame and
youthful voice were assets. No one could take offense when Dewey was sharing
her glow bracelets with the heartbroken recently-single chick, or when she was
questioning the short attention span men have while at the urinal. Her
designated slut routine (He pulled me real close and said, “My pancakes come
with sausage.” I was really thinking about breakfast, though, and said “I’m
really more of a bacon girl.”) is a thing of beauty. I look forward to bringing
you future tales of Dewey as she spends more time on The Comedy Club stage.
Now, on to Dan Viola.
Much of Dan’s material is centered on his family life,
shared with a wife and seven children, and his experiences spending fifteen
years as a public school teacher. His first big piece is about wishing he were
bilingual, so he could have been more romantic on his wedding night. He runs
through some lovely lines in the lilting sounds of Italian and French, then
hits us with the “harsh, cacophonous and intimidating” sounds of German. His
Deutschland Barney is a crowd-pleaser, and I admire anyone using the word
cacophonous properly these days. Tonight there happened to be a girl from Germany in the
audience, which was discovered only after Dan had goose-stepped his way across
the stage. Everyone enjoyed the awkwardness as Dan and the girl exchanged a few
sentences. He then quipped, “I asked, what’s for lunch? She said, I want to
take over your country. So you’re a spy - I saw Captain America .”
He moves on to talk about his younger brother going back to
college (Dual major in gynecology and jedi master – he’s going to be an ob/gyn
kenobi) and does his bit about Acronym Based Content 101, or ABC1 for
short. It’s the first of several fast-paced, dense jokes that require the
listener to pay sharp attention, and it’s a style I really enjoy. Later, he’ll
do bits about bathroom stall correction notes at Harvard and a
fire-and-brimstone preacher teaching Biochemistry (Hallelujah, can I get an
amino?) in the same speed-demon delivery. They all kill me.
Continuing on with jokes for local folks all about life in
Hilton (at Prom time, all the good overalls are at the cleaner’s), a rant about
today’s kids (even if you have smart kids, they have dumb friends) and their
inability to get even the simplest order (black coffee! How do you screw that
up?) right at Tim Horton’s, and he and his wife’s inability to get even the
simplest concept (birth control! How do you screw that up?) right at home. He
wraps up the show with his now-classic examination of Winnie-the-Pooh as seen
through our current medication-fueled analysis (Owl is dyslexic and delusional.
Eyeore? Depressed.) and earns a generous round of applause from the audience.
I try to imagine what
it must be like to be a student of Dan Viola’s; on this, and most nights he
performs locally, I can get first-hand anecdotes from former students and team
members as they stand in line, eager to shake his hand and share a memory or
two. If you’re a fan of clean comedy, seek out one of Dan’s shows. He does a lot
of fundraisers, so odds are you can enjoy a night of live comedy and help a
great cause at the same time.
Next week, Bobby Slayton.
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