Nicole Bass Tries Stand Up, Colin Kane Handles Hecklers Plus News From Aaron Berg, Jon Fish and More
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 covered the scene at Dangerfield’s, Gotham, the Stand, and more.
I always run into somebody fun at Comedy Juice, and this week was no exception. Andrew Schulz was there and I almost didn’t recognize him without his ever-present baseball cap and plaid flannel shirt. He looked like just some regular clean-cut guy. And he hung out with Ronny Chieng from The Daily Show all night. Andrew said he was really psyched about headlining Gotham in October! Ronny Chieng was the headliner. He claimed that before he came here he was not aware of the American view of Asian stereotypes. He spent ten years in Australia and another ten years in Malaysia, where Asian people are known to be great drivers and not particularly good in math. He’s currently traveling around the country headlining weekend shows in comedy clubs. And Jon Fish dropped by to run his set that he’ll be doing for his debut performance on Colbert which he’ll be taping this coming Thursday the 15th to air the next day. He said his last major TV spot was Letterman which was in the exact same studio. Good luck Jon. I’m sure the reaction on Colbert will be just as strong as it was at Gotham. Jon Rudnitsky seems to be working out his being let go from SNL on stage, using it to get many laughs, like the video he did on Facebook with Colin Jost, in which he announces them as both being on SNL and says “Just a couple of guys hanging out who are on SNL, right Colin? Looking over at Colin. And Colin seems at a loss for words, like he can’t bear to tell him! It’s funny!
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Dan LaMorte was back from his 3 week Young Guns tour with his pals Chike Robinson and Usama Siddique, which has to be a hard name to go to the airport with, and is probably one of the reasons they drove to each city! Dan told me he picked those guys because he wanted three different styles on his shows. It was the first tour for all of them. They hit 15 cities in 13 states. Very often they stayed with friends or friends of friends, but sometimes those friends of friends were too weird even for Dan, so he wound up taking a hotel. He said the shows were well attended due to a grassroots effort to get people out, and an awful lot of work went into it. He said they started out with a sold out theater show in Leesburg, Virginia, and that set the bar really high. Never one to sit back and rest on his 21 year old laurels, Dan will be off to Singapore in March to perform in the Magner’s International Comedy Festival, a festival that does shows in Vietnam, The Philippines, Bangkok, and Hong Kong. He said the cool thing was that they contacted him and are paying all his expenses for the two weeks he’ll be away. He said he’s been busy brushing up on his knowledge of Singapore so he can write some new jokes about it.
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I ran into Sarah Tollemache at The Stand on the same night her fiance Joe List was opening for Louis CK at MSG. I asked why she wasn’t there and she told me because she had spots! That’s how dedicated she is. Also because she had joined them for the Eastern European leg of their tour that took them through Prague, the Czech Republic, and Budapest. I asked about the accommodations and she said the hotels were fabulous. She also thought that Joe was gonna be on one more of Louis’ shows at MSG.
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A lot of comedians did dental references this week, including Matt Richards who accidentally hit his teeth with the mic while hosting a show at New York Comedy Club, and went on to tell a story about having a toothache, but not wanting to go to NYU Dental School cause he didn’t wanna be anyone’s homework. That resonated with me because I used to teach there. Then he went on to sing a song in an Indian accent. Really well I might add. I asked him afterwards how come he can do so many accents so well. He said he’d been imitating accents since he was a kid. He used to imitate his teachers in school and was always in trouble for doing it.
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A Colin Kane show can only be described as an experience. He was headlining Gotham for the weekend, and the room was full on the night I came. Colin takes XXX rated humor and adds a few more “X’s” to it. It’s not a first date show…or maybe it should be. Anyway he always manages to outdo himself with outrageous jokes, but keeps reminding the audience that he’s really a nice guy, and not like that in his real life. He explains that it’s only a stage persona. But he doesn’t suffer hecklers kindly as one girl found out. She must have had too much to drink and kept yelling out remarks. After the second time he left the stage and walked over to her table, still with the mic in his hand and berated her to her face telling her she had one more chance and then he was throwing her out. He asked the security to let her stay, but told them to bring her a drink and that “the pills were in his jacket!” He told her he wanted to make it clear that he didn’t care about her. He took time out to explain to the audience that this was how he made a living, and that he was trying to work out some new stuff and that she was messing with his concentration. And at the end of the show, before he displayed his merch, he took the time to berate that girl again, and said it’s people like her that ruin comedy, and make it hard for performers to do what they do. Then he held up a variety of T-shirts and some of the girls yelled out “Model them!” His audience loves him and I think his good looks help him get away with saying some of the crazy things he says! I’m always glad in retrospect that I come alone!
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Nicole Bass from the Howard Stern Show is a very big woman. She’s listed as the largest female bodybuilder at 6’2” and 240 pounds, and is often the brunt of Stern’s jokes doubting her gender identity. She has a great sense of humor about herself, and made her comedy debut on a Ron Herron show at Dangerfield’s one night. She got laughs despite the fact that she started out her set by saying that she didn’t really know what to say, and hadn’t really prepared any jokes. That’s the hardest way to hit the stage, especially when she realized openly that she’d be up there for ten minutes. She came early, wearing a short tight dress, and socialized with all the comedians waiting to go on, and was very accommodating to all those wanting photos. After the show I asked Ron how he got Nicole Bass to come on the show and he said he met her though High Pitch Erik, another one of what has come to be known as Howard Stern’s Wack-Pack. He said Erik often comes to hang out at comedy shows. She was lucky that for her debut performance she got to perform to a packed room. And owner Tony Bevacqua was there to see it!
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Who says social media isn’t important? Kevin Hart used his millions of followers to secure a deal with Tommy John underwear after founder Tom Patterson saw him on Instagram in his Tommy Johns. Kevin wound up investing in the privately held company and is now a partner.
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Comic Lance Rizzo from Cult Comedy Pictures co-produced a comedy benefit with comic Mike Sgroi for mental health called “You Laugh, You Rock”, in a show featuring Sean Donnelly, who does a podcast with Dan St. Germain called “My Dumb Friends”, Ryan Hoffman and Nick Ruggia from Temple Horses, Paul Schissler and Harris Stanton, who came with his mom, Carmilla Stanton who was visiting from South Carolina. It was held at The Duplex on Christopher Street. The Temple Horses guys showed a funny video featuring several comics about mental health, and Paul, Sean and Harris did stand-up. Lance also previewed his TV pilot “Unsuccessful Failures” which doubles as a short film and is being entered into several festivals. I play a very unusual psychiatrist in a wild scene opposite comedian Eric Lyden. It was the first time I saw the whole thing, and I surprised myself by liking my performance. They even featured my extremely rare spoon plants.
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I ended my comedy week hanging out with Aaron Berg outside The Stand waiting for him to close the late show and going over plans for his upcoming wedding next weekend to comedian Christine Meehan. It’s going to be in Central Park, with an after-party at The Stand. Officiating at the nuptials will be comic Yamaneika Saunders who recently became an ordained minister. He’s going to be wearing a Calvin Klein tux, and has no idea what the bride’s dress will be like as he isn’t allowed to see it. All he knows is that she has a veil. Hopefully not the kind where only the eyes peek out! And he says instead of her throwing a garter he’s going to throw out a used condom to his boys. I’m attending, but I hope I don’t catch it! His documentary about the night he did 25 shows in one night is coming along great. He likes the first cut, however they shot everyone, but him. Now they just have to shoot him speaking and some auto-biographical stuff and it’ll be ready to go! And this Monday he gets to audition for the new Death Wish movie starring Bruce Willis, playing a porn shop owner named “Fats.” If he gets it that would make a nice wedding present! Good luck Aaron!
And that’s all for me. I’m OUT!!!
Jeffrey Gurian is a comedian, writer and all around bon vivant in New York City. Subscribe to his YouTube channel, Comedy Matters TV. Photos below Jeffrey Gurian with Dan LaMorte and Ronny Chieng.
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