Comedy Stray Notes
• About a year ago, I spent a day at Broadway Comedy Club for a taping of an Amazon series called, “Comics Watching Comics” created and produced by Kevin Gootee. It was an interesting experience; essentially a really big show with 44 selected comics that would be judged by a panel at an unknown time later that year about our performances. I walked out thinking I did well and kind of forgot about it. Last Thursday, they released my Season (Season 8). I was the second half of episode 7. As my part started to play, I got very nervous. Right off the bat, the judges didn’t like me. Somehow, the hosts changed their tune and I advanced to the finals. There was no further action on my part; no final round or anything. They just discussed who won in the final episode. I won't reveal who it was to not spoil the episode. But that person rocked it hard. Either way, check out the show if you haven’t, it’s a fun watch.
• The sketch I shot a couple weeks ago with Peter Wong and Anna E. Paone is complete. It’s 1:40 and I like it (it’s the first sketch I’ve ever done that was based on just a Tweet I wrote). If you want to check it out and see Grand Central in all its glory, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAutaKt9p7M.
• Friday night, it poured. However, Barak Ziv still had a show to put on. It was in the back room of an Astoria sports bar called Katch and was huge. Somehow, he and his co-producer Eric Miller pulled it off. All the cards were stacked against them but it was the little show that could. The mic went in and out, the comics projected and were even funnier. It started pouring and we could hear the rain. It felt like the place might collapse. It didn’t. It just made everything better. Every show is its own thing and this one was a miracle. Really an adventure and I’m glad I was part of it.
• This is really dumb but I am a huge fan of SNL and made a spreadsheet of every host they’ve had over the past ten years to see if one could accurately predict the host for coming weeks. My conclusion is you sort of can depending on the week. There have definitely been trends (first episode host is always coming off a hot summer movie, the Christmas episode is usually an SNL alum are two of the easy ones) but a lot of it is random. Lorne Michaels, I will figure you out someday.
• Hosted my weekly show with Tristan Smith at V-Spot last week. Unwisely, I started with material instead of crowd work and got off on the wrong foot. All the laughs felt polite and obligatory more than real. However, about five minutes in, I acknowledged I was sweating big time onstage and the tension was broken. An audience member gave me a napkin and I took it. Got a good laugh. Then, I didn’t know where I could go from there. Did a little crowd work with two separate groups of people that came to the show from the UK independently. Then a couple that moved from Las Vegas to New York that day and spent their first night at the show. Things got better and the crowd loosened up. The rest of the show, the comics did much better than me. Special thanks to Jack Finnegan and Eliot Thompson for once again magically barking in a large crowd. These guys don't get enough credit. They have great sets every week and make the shows better than they have any right to be.
Finally, I wanted to write one last thing.
On a very sad note, the comedy community suffered a great loss this past week with the passing of Raghav Mehta. I did not know Raghav well at all which I regret. We did actually have one small, negative run-in that was entirely my fault and I would like to self indulgently tell this story.
About two months ago, I pointed out that he and I had parallel thought for one of our jokes that had similar structure over Facebook messenger. He showed me he wrote his bit in 2014. I wrote mine in 2018. I felt like a jerk for doing this petty act then (I have done this to a few people and I feel bad about it every time) and I feel like a jerk now for having done it too even though we ended this minor confrontation on a polite note. He deserved better from me and I am sorry. I have vowed to stop reaching out to people about parallel thought too and just live with it. Most importantly, I am sorry that this was my only major interaction with such a great person and it was about comedy and not being friends.
However, that’s really small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. What matters is celebrating the life of a funny, smart and politically-minded person who mattered so much to so many people. His visitation was very moving. The comedy community truly loves one another and it showed that day. Raghav, you are missed by me (and I am sorry we weren’t better friends) and all of your peers.
To echo others, Rest in Power.