Jeffrey Gurian is a writer and comedian in New York who loves to Jump Around. Follow his regular column, right here, to find out what’s happening in comedy, and who Jeffrey Gurian ran into this week in and around New York. This week, Jeffrey stopped at Gotham Comedy Juice, Carolines, New York Comedy Club, The New Standing Room, and more!
Sarah Silverman and Louis C.K. Drop in at Comedy Juice
Well, I don’t know how they do it but Comedy Juice keeps topping itself with amazing shows. I had a feeling it was going to be a special night when I got to Gotham Comedy Club and it was literally standing room only. They even put out spare chairs lining the walls and every inch of space was taken up by the lucky audience who got to see a show you’d never be able to get tickets for. James Mattern, the always funny and sharp host had just introduced Todd Barry. I always tell Todd he’s one of the only comics to make me laugh out loud. He acknowledges me with a Todd Barry-like thank you which is a barely perceptible nod and smile. So after Todd leaves James tells the audience they have a special guest and who does it turn out to be, but Sarah Silverman. The crowd went CRAZY! And Sarah looked great as always wearing the kind of sexy outfit that only Sarah could pull off and still have the audience concentrating on what she was saying and not how she was dressed. She wore short shorts with a tank top, black sheeer stockings with black knee high stockings on top of that. Her material was so sharp, and even more edgy than usual. The audience fell down laughing. Everyone. I mean on the floor! Destroyed! Completely! She came out on stage with notes but hardly referred to them, and I guess she was trying out new stuff, but it all worked and was very strong. She was surprised to see me when she came off stage and I ran over to say “Hi!”.
Just as the crowd was settling down after Sarah, James announced that they had another surprise guest who they’d also know from TV and it was Louis C.K.. I thought they’d have to call in paramedics to revive the audience. They couldn’t believe what a show they were getting. Louis too brought notes to the stage, and referred to them once in a while as he seemed to be trying out new stuff. As usual he evaluates his material right then and there as to how he feels it was working. He’s a master. While all this was going on, I was standing on the side with Jay Pharoah who said the show was like comedy wrestle mania, with one big star coming out after the next. In his humility he said he wished he didn’t have to follow Louis CK, but he needn’t have worried because the crowd loved him and the many impressions he did. He also had some very funny new material. We talked about his new Showtime special from Comedy Dynamics, which just came out called Jay Pharoah: Can I Be Me? People who do impressions, … and for some reason I’ve worked with many of them spend their lives being other people. It’s always fascinated me how they do that. Jay just wants to be himself!
Todd and Sarah are very close and Louis just produced Todd’s newest special The Crowd Work Tour , which Todd told me is now available on Netflix. After Jay’s set, Todd, Sarah and Louis all left together! And Chris James closed the show. Chris endears himself to the audience not only by being funny but because he’s Black with an English accent, but can do a “street”American Black accent as evidenced when he talks about being challenged in the hood, and how they respond to his way of speaking! He also did a cool impression of Barack as a stand-up comic. Funny dude!
Brand New Club Opens in Queens, New York
This week, I wen to the opening of a brand new club, The Standing Room, which is the old Laughing Devil club in Long Island City. As I pulled up there was a parking spot right in front of the door. I thought they had saved it for me. Very cool, and a good sign! It’s the new spot from the guys that own The Stand, Paul and Cris Italia, Dave Kimowitz and Patrick Milligan. Maybe that’s why they called it The Standing Room but once again I forgot to ask why, and I’m generally interested in those kind of things. It’s what you might call a very intimate club as all the comics I saw alluded to. It’s laid out so the stage faces a wall and most of the audience is on either side. Luis J. Gomez who was hosting joked that he got a crick in his neck from turning so much. I got there in time to see my buddy Chris Distefano do his thing. He talked about his new baby daughter Maria who’s 2 months old and half Puerto Rican and half Italian. And he said his wife is so sexual that he’s gonna have to tell his daughter she can’t hang out with her Mom! And then Judah Friedlander came in to close the show as only he can do with amazing crowd work! Judah also joked about the size of the room asking if this was the hallway they wait in to get to the real club. It was a great night, and despite the fact that they call it “The Standing Room” there were still places to sit and its all very beautiful and modern and interesting! And that was a good thing for sure!
Broken Comedy at Bar Matchless Attracts Big Names
I hit New York Comedy Club cause they always have a fun scene going on, even outside the club. There’s always a bunch of fun, hot comics hanging outside. I got to see Nimesh Patel, who proves once again that Indian people can be funny, and claims that the greatest accomplishment of Indian people was convincing young white women that Yoga was a real thing. I got to talk to him after his set and he told me about his long-standing Monday night show out in Brooklyn at Bar Matchless that he calls Broken Comedy. It got started by Mike Denny and then he joined and then Michael Che came aboard but with Michael’s schedule at SNL he only comes by when he can, which is like a couple of times a month. They’ve had lots of big names drop by like Chris Rock, Leslie Jones, Jay Pharoah, Aziz Ansari, Judah Friedlander, Hannibal Buress, I plan to head out there soon to check it out for myself!
Derek Gaines Shooting Season 2 of Broke Ass Game Show
Popped over to The Stand and ran into Yannis Pappas hanging out outside with Paul Virzi admiring each others kicks! They each got new sneakers and seemed very proud to show them off in the photo. And then I saw my boy Derek Gaines, who was psyched about doing his second season of his MTV hit Broke Ass Game Show where they give away money to strangers on the street making them do crazy shit! The network had ordered 16 episodes originally but they just got the order for a 17th for Christmas. They’ve been shooting for six weeks already and Derek says he’s gratified by all the young Black and Hispanic kids who know him and watch the show. He also said that Harlem and Times Square were his two most difficult places to shoot because of people acting up and interrupting the shoot. Guys walking on camera asking to be made famous. He said it was “like my Vietnam!” He said it’s very hard filming in an uncontrollled environment and in one case his security who he called Big Al and Big Derrick were threatened with being stabbed! They were drawing blue and pink circles and someone thought they were drawing gang colors and the rival gang was pissed. And then he said that on the Upper East Side people were actually offended that he tried to give them money. They’d throw it on the floor and say “ I don’t need your money!” The show pays anywhere from $5-$300 per prank. They shoot four days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
And Danny Palmer told me that the Fat Baby guys he works with have a new project as well, and that Dustin Ybarra did an episode of Danny’s web series appropriately called “Danny!!
I stopped by The Stand again long enough to see Big Jay Oakerson absolutely crushing the room with his crowd work. He lucked out with a bachelorette party who were wearing dick necklaces and that’s all he needed to see. Plus his amazing work with an Asian chick who didn’t know how to answer his question, “What kind of Asian are you?” She said “Small!” It was hilarious and the girl I was with actually laughed so hard she lost her balance which is hard to do when you’re sitting at a table. He asked the bachelorette party where they were headed next and they said they didn’t know, but I ran into them again on my next stop at Gotham.
Bert Kreisher Goes Shirtless at Gotham
I went to Gotham see Bert Kreisher who was headlining for the weekend. As I walked in the first show was still letting out and the first thing I saw was about six big heavy guys all with their shirts off, barechested, taking pictures together. I had never seen that before at Gotham or anywhere else. I thought maybe they were an alternative act or something, because they were drawing quite a crowd. I looked over and saw owner Chris Mazzilli standing there, so I knew the night would be something special, because if Chris is there on a weekend, it’s something special. I laughingly asked him if this was his idea, cause Chris is such a classy guy, and he just laughed and told me it was for Bert, and they were just audience members who were in solidarity with Bert working shirtless. We also talked about Just for Laughs in Montreal and he told me that Sebastian Maniscalco who he handles has sold more than 30,000 tickets in the New York area in the last few months. He’s a BEAST on stage, and getting bigger by the moment.
Ophira Eisenbrg opened for Bert, and tried to explain away her pregnant belly as a beer gut. It’s her first child and she said it was weird being a health risk and an inspiration at the same time. Bert came out and took off his T-shirt right away. He worked his entire one hour set with no shirt. I had not seen his act before only heard about it, but Chris had told me he’s the ultimate storyteller. He was. One of Bert’s stories about him as “The Machine” in Russia probably takes 15 minutes or so. Maybe more! It’s a very unique and interesting act, and Bert is a crazy guy in the best sense of the word. In the way every guy aspires to be “crazy”! He was once voted the biggest party animal in the country which led to his celebrity, and led National Lampoon to create the film Van Wilder which was based on Bert’s life. Towards the end of his set he invited everyone in the audience to meet him at a gay bar. He said if homesexuality had been pitched to him differently he might have even tried it! He closed with his wrestling a grizzly bear story from his days doing the TV show Hurt Bert on FX where he’d do things that were likely to get him hurt.
In his dressing room before the show he was sitting with Ira Glass, host and producer of This American Life, who I had just seen moderating the Judd Apatow interview at the 92nd Street Y. And as a true story teller Bert regaled us with his favorite Ron Bennington story because he knew I was a regular on Ron’s show. It involved Ron stopping an interview with a young film star that Bert said was one of the best interviews he’s ever heard! After the show I asked him what the deal was with working with no shirt. He said he’s been doing it for about two years. He said he sweats a lot and didn’t want the audience to think he was nervous, he just sweats a lot cause he’s fat, so one night he took off his shirt and the audience thought it was funny. Then he found himself talking to an occupational therapist who was treating one of his daughters, and she encouraged him to leave his shirt off. She said if it was working for him no reason to change it. So now it’s off all the time!
Comedy Hits the Long Beach Island Film Festival
Comedians show up any place any time for almost any show biz reason at all. I went out to the Long Beach International Film Festival to support independent film which is so important to comics and the industry at large, and I ran into Bill Plymtpon the uber-animationist who had a film in the festival. His newest is called The Deep End. Another of his new ones The Loneliest Stoplight features Patton Oswalt as the voice of the stoplight! I guessed that it was about a tiny town with one stoplight and Bill told me I was right. He did the premiere at the San Diego Comic Con recently and just sold 100 of his films to iTunes in a really big deal. Bill does about two shorts a year and even does feature films as well. He said he’s in a very big film festival and wasn’t allowed to say the name yet but that it’s coming up in September, so we can all guess what it is!
Rob Magnotti was there hanging out in the VIP tent with his brother, and he told me he’s producing his own comedy special, as yet untitled, which will be available on his website robmagnotti.com and he’s psyched that Mall Cop 2 is now available on DVD. He was in a gambling scene with Kevin James. And Joey Kola was there too. Joey’s in an upcoming film called Gender Bender which he said has nothing at all to do with Caitlyn Jenner. It will be shot entirely on Long Island, and he’s one of the co-writers of the film. Joey did the warm-up for America’s Got Talent for a long time and is getting ready for the new season of Rachel Ray, starting up again in September, where he also warms up the crowd. He’s also doing more road dates than ever in his 34 years of entertaining people, and his wife who was there with him seemed pleased as he told me he’s on the road for 300 dates a year! That’s one way to keep a marriage going long term!
Blind item – Shocking! I went to an 11 P.M. showing of what is supposed to be one of the hottest comedies around and I was literally alone in the theatre. I had never experienced anything like that before. No one but me, and this is a movie getting tons of press. I won’t say which one it is because the star is a friend of mine and I don’t want to put that out there, but I was really shocked! Completely alone. An audience of one. So I made believe I was very rich and had rented out the theatre so I could watch it all alone, undisturbed! And I did!
Fore at the Double Wide
There are so many bar shows and alternative venues in town it’s hard to cover them all, but I try. I think it’s important to give recognition to the stars of tomorrow who work really hard to create good entertainment while working on building an act. This week I jumped over to a place on 12th Street called Double Wide to see a show called Fore, as in golf I guess. When you yell out “Fore” everybody gets out of the way or ducks, which is a good metaphor for a comedy show, but I could just be making the whole thing up. I actually forgot to ask them why they call it “Fore.” It’s produced by not one but four guys, Tyler Richardson, Erik Monical, Jesse Baltes, and Dwight Simmons, four really cool dudes. And it’s in a room where you go in through the bar, and cross into a room that has a huge window onto the street, which should be cool for drawing in an audience. Maybe that’s why it’s called Double Wide? I tried out the mic, which is my way of saying I did a spot, (LOL)
And on that note I’m OUT!!! I got stuff to do!
Jeffrey Gurian is a comedian, writer and all around bon vivant in New York City. Subscribe to his YouTube channel. Below, photos, Jeffrey with a shirtless Bert Kreisher, Jeffrey with Derek Gaines, Jeffrey on the Beach with Joey Kola, Jeffrey with Rob Magnotti
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