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Random Videos
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I did a show a little while back at a place just south of Boston called Vinnie Testas. Quantity over quality is their slogan, or it should be. When you drive up there’s a couple of valets who I wouldn’t trust to walk my dog, much less park my car. And that’s saying a lot considering that I don’t even have a dog. The first person you get to meet inside the building is a maitre d’ named Vinnie. He informed me that, yo, the comedy show is in da ballroom behind me, as he grabbed his nuts. The house special was more than likely fried ravioli. The portions were fantastically enormous. One of the comics ordered spaghetti that was served in a bowl large enough to bathe a small chinaman. The meatball was the size of Rubin Stoddard’s head.
The crowd was all in the 14-16 year-old range. They were so tiny in their Abercrombie shirts and backwards baseball caps. Indeed, I was performing in front of the future Preppy Killers of America.
One of the comics who went before me said things like “Parents don’t understand! Are you with me kids?!” He was like Bob Saget without the laughs.
At one point the host approached a girl in the crowd to ask a question. A very random squealing came from her mouth, not unlike a ferret in heat. Her name was Sam, short for Samantha, and she would soon play a much bigger part in what would amount to be one of the most bizarre comedy shows I’ve ever been a part of.
I took the stage anticipating a willing crowd, as there were a lot of Jews in the house, and it’s a known fact that my people really do like me. The mic was on a tiny clip like you’d see on a talk show guest. I decided to clip it to the straw on my ice-coffee. After a few minutes, one of the counselors in the back put her hand in the air. I stopped in the middle of my Nutter Butter joke so that she could ask her question. She was curious as to why the mic was clipped to my coffee’s straw. I told her it was so I could sip my drink in between jokes. What a silly question.
I then opened the floor to the rest of the room to see if anyone else had a question for me. Sam raised her little hand. Samantha was mildly retarded. Not “I like pudding” retarded, but more of a soft helmet wearing retarded. She said:
“What strange holidays do you celebrate?”
I had to have her clarify the question, as I thought she was asking me what Chinese holidays I celebrate. She then went on for several minutes about how her old school celebrated National Duck Day. It’s apparently quite a complex holiday that involves making rubber ducks and bringing them to school. I mentioned that I’d like to see a similar holiday, but with midgets. You would bring them to school and dress them up in cute pirate outfits and such. She then blurted out that there was a song. Oh, praise the lord. Of course there was a song. I gestured for her to come to the stage. She joined me on the stage and took the coffee cup mic from my hand. She then proceeded to sing the Rubber Ducky song from Sesame Street. It was pure comedy magic. I finished my Nutter Butter joke then went on to complete my set.
It was made even more fun seeing how much enjoyment Sam got out of the evening. She wasn’t being laughed at, as everyone in the crowd knew her. It was, however, incredibly surreal and I hope my future children are just like her so that I can take them to shows with me for the crowd to laugh at them singing songs in their funny voices.
I did a show recently at the Black Comedy Explosion in Randolph, MA. About a half-hour south of Boston, Randolph is the last place you’d expect to see such a show. I fully expect that there were 200 white people at a comedy show in the middle of Boston whispering to each other how they can’t believe that there were no function halls available in Randolph and that they hoped their cars were safe. There are 2 rooms in the VFW where the show took place. There’s the large room where the show was, and there’s a separate bar, with a kitchen in between the 2 rooms. The other bar had about 6 people with 4 at the bar drinking whiskey and watching Ron White and the 7 Midgets. The other 2 were drunken line dancing to a Randy Travis jingle. The room where the show was had about 191 black people, 6 Latinos, and 4 skanky white girls all whored out in an all out effort to find their next baby’s daddy. Walking from one room to the other was like walking through some sort of ethnic bizarro-world black hole. If you smooshed both rooms together you’d wind up with the black cowboy judge from Nashville Star.
Before the show they ask you what song you’d like the DJ to play on your way to the stage. I wasn’t at all prepared for all this. I asked if they could play Cindi Lauper’s She Bop, and not the radio version. I wanted the b-side Wyclef remix with Kanye West rapping on it.
The pre-show def poetry jam poems and original music sung by a d-grade Jodeci wannabe brought the crowd to a dull mumble.
The comic before me lost control of the crowd and they started getting really loud and chatty. When the host, Jonathon Gates, came back up, he spent several minutes going at it with one particularly boisterous lady. She wouldn’t shut up, so he sent over a very large man to kick her out. She still wouldn’t leave, so he agreed to speak with her when he left the stage, which coincidentally was going to be when I was on the stage. Perfect.
Apparently the DJ left his Cindi Lauper records at home, so I took the stage to some random cut that I certainly didn’t approve. I also wasn’t aware that I was supposed to signal to the DJ to cut the music, so it continued to play for a minute or so while I stood onstage twiddling with the microphone and looking pretty. He eventually cut the music and I went into my set.
I had a really strong set even with Jonathon chatting with the unruly woman in the crowd for half of my set. The crowd went crazy for my kung fu porno bit and looked a little confused at my Jew based material.
After the show I had an older woman spend 10 minutes holding my hand telling me what an amazing experience she had and that we made her think of her mother who died of cancer and used to smile all the time. That made me feel almost as good as having another crowd member tell the female comic that she was almost as funny as the white guy.
I had a show recently at the Roadhouse Café in nowhereville Maine. I love how they added Café as if it made the place more elegant. As a general rule, if your establishment has cattle skulls on the wall, the Roadhouse is more than sufficient if it turns out that someone in the area has already used the Shithole. You could really apply the premise to anything, such as Roscoe’s Bistro, Tyrone on the Green, and The Dead Possum Tearoom (which, by the way, has the most delightful Earl Grey this side of the Bronx River).
Did I mention the cattle skulls on the wall? The last time I done seen that I was watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Behind some Plexiglas in an alcove above the kitchen was a display of severed heads reminiscent of Madame Tussauds Redneck Wax Museum. The best part of the morbid display was the John Deer and Hess hats sitting atop the heads and the 2 plastic ducks randomly placed in the display. All I know is if my room service was delivered by someone wearing a mask made of human skin then I would most certainly be complaining to the manager.
The next thing that caught my eye was a very confused jukebox. This particular jukebox had a video screen to inform you of all the musical possibilities at your crusty little fingertips. They showed a picture of Brooks and Dunn, then LL Cool J, then Jewel, then the local karaoke star/bar whore, then Clay Aiken. Someone really needs to sit down with the jukebox and have a little talk with it. They need to point out the guy sitting alone at the bar wearing an I’m With Stupid hat who is watching NASCAR and let the jukebox know that if it plays LL Cool J, the aforementioned feller will break open your screen with a broken Bud Light bottle and then pee moonshine all over your precious little jukebox innards.
I soon took the stage to the worst butchering of my name humanly possible. Afterwards the host actually asked me for clarification of my name. He said, ” is it Jerry Gersten or is it Jerry Gerstein?” I had no idea how to answer that question. For those readers lured to my blog by some freaky google search on Jeff Gillooly’s penis or JewSoap, my name is actually Jesse Gersten.
The stage was sitting next to a giant rack of pots & pans with Christmas lights blinking in the background. Hanging from the barn-style ceiling were cardboard stars and on the ceiling were advertisements from local businesses such as Adam’s Bakery and Ye Olde Bait Shoppe.
Other items of interest around the room included random pink flamingos, a knee high clock sitting in a corner of the room, some frog-moth thingy hanging from a string, a giant porcelain mermaid with shells covering her privates, a MooseTrail sign, and lots and lots of hub caps and license plates.
There was also a large collection of the most bizarre books you could imagine. This will have to wait for a future post, as I cannot do justice to a carrot in an Elvis outfit within the confines of this post.
Oh, and the bear. How can I forget the bear? There was half of a large angry brown bear protruding from the wall just west of the redneck wax museum. This bear was in full growling mode with all of its razor sharp teeth just waiting to bite into some tasty tourist torso. Like most bears, this bear was carrying a ukulele and had a tiny little sheriff hat perched atop his grizzly head. And as if this were not enough, this bear had 3 Hawaiian lay wrapped around his stocky neck. It was as if with just the ukulele and the sheriff hat the bear wasn’t quite festive enough. What put it over the top was the “Hawaiian shit” that Bobbie Jo had purchased just days earlier at the dollar store.
About 6 or 7 years ago, I was doing a show up in
I did about 25 minutes and had an amazing set. The crowd was awesome that night. Lamont had a Long Island Iced Tea which caused him to be a bit boisterous as he wasn’t the biggest drinker at the time. My 3 favorite people to see drunk are Lamont, Nipsey Russell, and Mini Me. Lamont looks like he should be in Outkast, or any rap group from the deep south by the way he’s well fed in both the tummy and in the afro. People up in
As we got more and more lost driving all around
So the trooper headed over to my window and said in a voice that sounded like a black comic impersonating a white guy “Er, you guys were doing 32 in a 25. Where are you headed?” I told him that we were comics and we just did a show at
“Alright, you’re a comic? Tell me a joke.”
YES!!
