Earl David Reed

I have not been here for awhile.

I have not been able to go to the club, watch a show and then come home and immediately share the experience. There have been requirements and distractions for weeks and I have been challenged to keep my commitment to you, to these comics, to Comedy herself. I needed a jump start, a palate cleanser.

I needed tonight’s show.

I knew far too little about Earl David Reed, but I adore Tim Almeter and Anna Phillips, both of whom would be taking the stage on this Saturday night. We got to The Club a few moments after the start and squeezed into the first booth as Tim was telling one of my favorite jokes. It’s the one about the black friend from the group home who is afraid of deer – check the September Ben Bailey review for the awesome punch line. The room was filled with people who came to laugh, and they did, with and for Tim, for his whole set.

My last few comedy encounters with Tim have all been open mics, so it was a blast to be reminded how polished he is, how easily he takes that stage and transforms from young friend to professional comedian. Later tonight, Tim will insist that he’s giving it up, that he can’t do it if he can’t start making money. The truth of that situation is that he hasn’t positioned himself to, yet. While I remain convinced that Tim is the real deal, and will do well once he dives in, he struggles with his pro and con list, and I respect his struggle.

Tim brings Anna Phillips to the stage with the introduction, “This is one of the funniest people I know,” and he is not just spouting host hyperbole. We both love this woman, for her quick, dry wit and her unassuming nature, her ability to move an audience and her genuineness. Tonight’s audience seems to agree with us; they are roaring for Anna. I marvel in her vulnerability as she talks about going home for family gatherings and hearing their reactions to her weight gain; I dig her serial killer routine (Any serial killer who wanted to cut me up would need to make a lot of trips to the car. Dexter would need a two-part episode…You all deserve to die, and when I get that gastric bypass…for now, the only cereal I’m killin’ are these Honeycombs.); I laugh out loud every time I hear her “balls to the face” bit. Anna, like Tim, tried to convince me she was taking a break a short while ago; and Anna, like Tim, should not walk away from comedy ever.

Tonight is just what I needed. Tim and Anna have me and this room full of strangers laughing loudly, ready to openly engage with the man formerly known in these parts as Brother Earl. And five minutes into the show, I realize how much he scares me and how glad I am to be in the back of the room.

 

Earl David Reed is an exciting comic, a lightning-in-a-bottle comic. He takes crowd work to a place most can never hope to go, and the room rushes along with him like second graders in a Field Day race. Starting with simple questions we’re all capable of answering – What’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do? – Earl builds his 50 minutes around the audience, and they love it. Tom loves being hung like a Tic Tac; his wife giggles knowingly when Earl says she has fresh breath. The guy who says he’s from Webster (oh, so you’re from here? Obviously. Obviously? You’re not from this room….) postures for just a second, then surrenders immediately. Travis’ future wife is thrilled to let him be the punch line (When you get a name like Travis, they gotta’ give you a truck.). Matt, the engineer, is almost bursting when Earl tells him he looks tired “from working on the railroad all the live-long day.”  A second later, he’s saying exactly what’s in my head: your wife named Dinah? Someone in the kitchen with her? I won’t say “will she blow?” The audience was howling from start to finish. I have seen very few rooms this engaged, this joyful to be part of the show.

Once I realized that what I was watching was not just the way Earl warms up a crowd, but his act itself, I had to switch processing gears. And it was a simple shift, because I recognized what was unfolding onstage. If you take a look back to July, you’ll find my first-ever review of Mike Dambra, a friend and comic whose photo makes me smile and whose act left me dazzled by its brilliance. I said this: “His written jokes…are delivered in and around audience play, which makes them appear more improvised than they really are. It’s what Robin Williams said he was doing in his stand up days: he wrote a lot of material that flowed so well with the stuff he was making up on the spot, the audience thought it was all improv. That style is a lot of work, no matter how easy Mike makes it seem.”

And here was Earl David Reed, with that similar gift, wrapping his jokes around the shoulders of whoever showed up tonight ready to play. I was at once impressed by his skill, and scared that he might eventually work his way to the back of the room. It’s a weird thing with me and, like most PTSD issues, one that I can trace back to a specific incident or two, but I absolutely hate to be engaged by a comic during his/her show. I watch differently than the average audience member. I’m listening to the jokes, but I’m also analyzing the audience response, the body language, the use of silence, the energy in the room, the wordplay, whether or not I’m laughing out loud. I once unintentionally derailed a friend’s bit because I couldn’t name a woman when she called on me. I was so busy admiring her body awareness that I couldn’t shift in real time, and the only thing I could utter was “Jesus Christ!”

I shared that with Earl between shows, that I enjoyed and admired his skill but was so grateful not to have been a part of it. He pointed out to me that he wasn’t asking for real engagement or deep thought; he was asking simple questions that anyone could answer, and then just riffing on whatever he’s given. He’s not making fun of his audience, he’s playing alongside them, sharing his toys. I see that, but it doesn’t alleviate my anxiety, and I’m grateful I was on the back wall. But I’m equally grateful I got to see Earl in action. He is truly talented, and a joy to watch.

I realize that I related to Earl on two other important levels. The first is his joke joke material: Time out was what my mother used to take when she needed a rest from beatin’ the shit out of us. Remarrying someone you previously divorced is like drinking sour milk, then putting it back in the refrigerator for the next day. These Civil War re-enactors asked if I wanted to hang out with them. I know my history, too. I told ‘em to call me when they get to the Motown years.

The second is the fact that he now lives about 20 minutes from my childhood, and for the first time in years, someone recognized the name of my hometown and didn’t smirk, giggle or roll their eyes. Anyone who knows Dillsburg and doesn’t immediately start in with the pickle jokes is a potential friend for life. I will make it a point to learn more about Earl David Reed, and so should you. You can follow him on twitter at @earldavidreed, check out his website, www.imearldavidreed.com, and pick up a dvd or a tshirt. Earl gives at least half of the proceeds to breast cancer awareness projects, so you can help others while helping yourself to some serious funny.

10/11/12 Rich Vos, Jimmy LeChase, Tim Almeter and Dario Josef

T S Eliot once wrote, “Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.” If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was channeling an evening, far in the future, when Rich Vos was nervously pacing the back of a dark room, awaiting show time. Like a metal spring coiled to its limit and about to unwind, he was both ready to start releasing and nervous about the process. Nine months earlier, when Vos last came to The Comedy Club, his angst read more like anger to me; I felt a very different kind of energy when I met him briefly before that show. His crowd work seemed a little pushy, a little punishing. I wasn’t sure, once the set was over, whether or not I had enjoyed it.

This time, however, was an altogether different experience.

 

But let’s not start there. Let me give credit to Dario by saying he was an excellent MC, and the perfect guide on the side for this particular show; he primed the audience for Jimmy LeChase. The first/last time I told you about Jimmy, he was working his joke-joke material, funny but more standard-format riffs on weddings. Tonight was a very different show, albeit one I thoroughly enjoyed. Jimmy took us on a stroll through the city, introducing us to the denizens of Crazy Town in a casually-paced storyteller style. From the homeless guy who rebuked our agreed-upon social contract by begging up (You don’t have 43 cents? How about a dollar?) to the delightful assortment of humanity hanging out at the sketchy local gas station at 11:13 at night, when his PB & J jones got the better of him, it was an interesting tour. We met the mumbly guy in the corner complaining about the price of beer, the old woman in her pjs just holding a loaf of bread as the Alzheimer glaze spread across her face, the dude repeatedly scratching the same non-winning lottery tickets and being disappointed that none of them had magically turned into winners and, my personal favorite, the neglected girl with the handful of candy (that’s diabetes just waiting to happen!).

For his peers who tend to operate in a more traditional set-up/punch style, Jimmy can be hard to evaluate. They were listening for those laughter bursts that kinda’ follow one another like firework booms on the Fourth, and Jimmy received a few of them. Mostly, and maybe more appropriate to his style, the audience gave him a quieter but constant chuckle, a steady stream of laughs that showed they, too, knew that late-night stroll.

Tim Almeter's promise to self-immolate at the end of his set was newly spawned. He hadn’t planned a flaming finale. He asked Vos if there was anything he did or didn’t want him to do during the spot. Rich replied, “I don’t give a fuck if you set yourself on fire.” Tim shared the retort with the audience and promised, “So I’m gonna’ close with that.”  Alas, no alarms were sounded. Tim delivered a great set, and even gave Vos something to play with in return.

 

“I had cancer. Waaah! I’m following a cancer comic; I feel like I’m doing a fuckin’ fundraiser. Hey, I had a hernia 3 years ago, you don’t hear me bitchin’.”

I think if that exchange had happened last time I saw Vos, I might not have seen the wink behind it, I might have been tempted to interpret it as a bitch-slap to the young pup for taking a shot. But that’s not what was happening at all. Besides, 26 years sober can carry the same skewed weight as being a cancer comic. It can be lobbed casually into a crowd and played for sympathy. Or, in the hands of someone as skilled as Rich Vos, it can be mined for hard truths and used to produce instant laughter.

The topics bounce between casual commonalities and culture clashes: the costs of driving on the New Jersey turnpike (I went four exits, spent $8. You drive the whole length of the turnpike, at the end they take your car); the pointlessness of the Occupy movement (They have no demands. They weren’t protesting, they were camping.); the difficulties of gay interracial dating (Dad, I’m gay. Now sit down.); the void of service on planes (They took away pretzels? I didn’t care when they took the blankets – there was more DNA on them than under Gacey’s porch.); the bond between racism and anti-Semitism in America (We should combine forces. With our brains and money, and your strength and speed, no one could fuck with us.).

Vos is sharp, his random and extensive callbacks are phenomenal and his quickie lines are a thing of beauty. “’Know what I forgot to did?’ ‘Conjugate a verb? Pay for what’s in your hand? Stop having kids?’” “You look like a Roman nickel. You should be guarding a wall on Game of Thrones.” “Smoking three cigarettes a day is pointless. It’s like going to rape a girl, tearing off her clothes and then fingering her. You’re going to jail, you may as well fuck her.” “You look like an epileptic Marine cut your hair.” “’Do you have turkey burgers?’ ‘We used to.’ ‘Let me sit down, we’ll reminisce about the good ol’ days.’” If you had no understanding of tone or affect, if you couldn’t read body language, you could probably get really pissed off by Rich Vos.

And that’s the saving grace, that’s the best part. Between chewing madly on his Nicorette gum and that pre-show pacing, you can tell Rich’s creativity is fueled by anxiety, not anger; he generally wants to make you laugh, not piss you off. Every now and again, he’ll turn away or drop his head and laugh at himself, at the ridiculousness that just spilled from his lips, and the audience exhales with him, confident once more that he is, indeed, there for the joke. His material about his divorce, remarriage and three daughters is that balanced blend of pathos and punch line. His conversation with his 4-year old (It’s a house? No, it isn’t. It’s just scribble. That’s what you do, you’re a scribbler. Well, answer me this. Would you live in it?) is that thing that looks like reality, but is actually trompe l’oiel: deceiving to the eye or, in this case, the ear.

After the show Thursday night, Mark introduced me to Rich and asked if he’d chat with me a little, told him about the blog. Graciously, and at the expense of some downtime spent savoring one of those turkey burgers, he agreed. He started, though, with a question I’ve heard a number of times over the past year. “No offense, but what makes a person qualified to be a comedy critic?” He seemed genuinely curious, and I wasn’t offended at all. I told him of my passion for the art, my lifelong love affair with comedy; I mentioned that I’ve logged plenty of hours on stages over the years while acting, educating, motivating; I told him he could read the first entry in this blog if he was really interested; and I reassured him that I don’t think of this as critique. Reviewing what I see and sharing how I perceive it, I am trying to support the craft, educate an audience and do my small part to keep live comedy thriving. It was an acceptable answer. He was cool hearing my passion, and spent some time talking about the scene, about his upcoming projects (I can’t wait to see “Women Aren’t Funny”, a documentary he’s produced with wife Bonnie McFarlane), about the fact that he still gets so nervous before a show. He gave me a copy of “Still Empty Inside,” his third CD which you should pick up on iTunes – you will not be disappointed. And for some of my friends at earlier stages in your comedy career, take a look at his website (www.richvos.com). This man has it together on so many levels.

His anxiety isn't just his handmaiden; it's his bitch.

9/20/12 Dan Viola, Tim Almeter and Dewey Lovett

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.

9/13/12 Ben Bailey, Tim Almeter and Dario Josef

I hadn’t yet rounded the final bend in the road that kept me from seeing The Comedy Club, but I worried. Summer was almost over, and things were starting to pick back up. Would this be the night? Would Ben Bailey, the comic, be a huge draw? Would Ben Bailey, host of tv’s “Cash Cab,” bring in a crowd?  I had my answer soon enough when I found myself parked on the far side of the pizza parlor next door. The lot was full, the tables were full; Ben Bailey was the man. A weekend of good shows and entertaining audience interactions solidified that impression.

 

I made a decision a few weeks ago not to talk about the MCs unless they were new to the role, new to the club, just to avoid becoming redundant. I’m deviating from that because I need to talk about Dario. I have seen Dario perform on six nights out of seven this week, and he is on fire. I’ve watched him take real risks, blending new jokes in with some tried and true material, and it’s paying off. The time he’s spending doing improv has made his crowd work quicker, less mainstream. His stage presence is more natural; his eyes are no longer on his feet. The transformation is a pleasure to watch and I find myself laughing every time.

 

Tim Almeter, like Dario, is also a local comic on the rise. Finishing third in this year’s Funniest Person in Rochester Contest, Tim takes the stage with an attitude of fearlessness. He assumes the audience will find him funny, and they do. He jumps right in to material that can be polarizing: talking about our differences. First up is the Indian woman on the train platform whose son said he wasn’t going to be a doctor, like some white person, to which she replied, “Shh. They’re right there.” Then on to a story about his coworker’s fear (Deer are afraid of white people. Black people are afraid of deer. White people are afraid of black people.) and the discovery of an anti-Semitic golf cart (Who’s on the golf course good-time hatin’ Jews?). Tim talks about things both common (speaking to your cat, wrinkling your girlfriend’s underwear) and curious (being “regal” at the bar) at a speed that occasionally requires you to play the joke back in your brain to make sure you caught it. Both these guys can be found easily on Facebook, or seen live at various open mics and Laugh Riot productions. It is well worth your time to seek them out.

 

Ben Bailey began by acknowledging the potential confusion that might result for people who had only ever seen him on “Cash Cab.”  He apologized for having hair, pointed out that tv isn’t real. “Know what else isn’t real? I’m not a cab driver.” He did a long riff on the guy down the road selling dirt and then proceeded to show us he’d done his homework on Rochester, noting that he was downtown earlier (just me, no one else. Tumbleweed, tumbleweed, government worker, one lone guy making Xerox copies) and checked out the Genesee (thought he’d found a beer river).

 

Ben’s show is packed with jokes. His rhythm seems to be premise, punch, punch, tag, tag, tag. He tries to see how far he can go without the joke weakening. Instead of that taffy-pull feeling where the humor gets stretched thinner the longer it goes, Ben’s jokes feel like they’re an incredibly long rope, endlessly uncoiling, until he gets bored and moves on to the next premise. He talks about things: traffic light countdowns, taking people to prison in the Oscar Mayer wiener mobile. He talks about places: the reaction of people in NYC when they see him in the cab (You’re going to be playing the Hudson River Challenge!), “I was down South, don’t go if you don’t have to.” He talks about people and how we talk: “Do what now?” It’s always Now now, stop specifying.” “I don’t understand all y’all. I thought y’all was already plural.” His bits on good ass toast and ordering multiple Guinesses were hilarious, as was the friend wanting to borrow a scissor to cut his pant into short. He also has a great bit about to-do lists: I woke up and looked at my to-do list. It said “all that stuff” on it. I thought I better get up. I got all that stuff to do and I don’t know what any of it is.

 

For myself and the other comedians who watched the shows with me, the most interesting parts of Ben Bailey’s weekend were his crowd interactions. On Thursday, there was the mini-fan club down front who brought him a Cash Cab drawing, “This is cute. Do you have jobs? If I were a gay man, this would be so important to me. You recruited a colleague? I thought you said collie.” And the drunk girl: “Don’t pretend you’re mad. You have such a crush on me. You’re like a little girl who pushes the boy off the swing because she likes him.” Friday was intense, as there was mounting conflict with a drunk guy who tried to be funny but just grew more annoying. Ben’s already fast pace picked up, his anger became apparent as he went back and forth with this guy. He reminded everyone that timing is part of the job, that he doesn’t just get up on stage and say random stuff, there’s work and an art to it. The audience was with him, and Mark had to go warn the guy that he was going to be escorted out if he didn’t stop immediately. Ben continued and, for a moment, I wasn’t sure he was as annoyed as he appeared to be. He smile/smirked a little as he tried to bring us back. Saturday had a mini-match with an audience member, as well.

 

I liked watching these near-collisions. No one truly seemed like they were gunning to screw up the show or mess with Ben Bailey – at 6’6’, he’s really not the kind of guy most people would test for the hell of it. The girls seemed a little star struck and the guys just seemed to have had too much to drink and no way to turn themselves off. Watching Ben stop one step short of losing it made the already fun show just a bit more enjoyable. In the final moments, I heard this: “If we’ve learned anything here tonight, it’s that you can’t learn anything at a comedy show.” Great line, but I don’t agree. I learn things at comedy shows all the time. This weekend, I learned how much I enjoy watching hecklers and comics collide just a little. I learned that Ben Bailey can get people into a comedy club. And I learned that I really enjoy premise, punch, punch, tag, tag, tag.