This Week in NY Clubs, Last Comic Standing Auditions, Aziz Ansari 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. In today’s column, find out about auditions for Last Comic Standing, and more! Visit Jeffrey’s website at comedymatterstv.com, where you can watch his interviews with everyone in comedy who matters!
This week, I also got to watch auditions for Last Comic Standing at Gotham Comedy Club and it was packed with talent. Jimmy Failla, an ex-cab driver who turned comedian and wrote a book called Follow That Car!: A Cabbie’s Guide to Conquering Fears, Achieving Dreams, and Finding a Public Restroom was the MC, and brought up around 20 comics who were supposed to do three minutes each. Some comics must be color blind because they definitely blew the red light, and did like six minutes. That is a major faux pas! Some of the stand-outs were Mike Recine, J.L. Cauvin who’s 6’7″ and who I met when we both did Myq Kaplan‘s podcast this past Spring, Charles McBee, Derek Gaines, Crystian Ramires, Moody McCarthy, and Daniel Tirado who just had a baby boy six months ago and was telling me how hard it is having a wife and baby and being out doing stand-up comedy every night. His wife is half Egyptian and half Japanese, which is a fascinating mix, and he’s two different things too, both of which I don’t remember, so the baby is a mixture of about sixteen ethnicities. I told him he should have brought him as a prop! And lastly the very funny Keith Alberstadt closed the first show. There was another show but I couldn’t stay. I had to jump!
There was lots of industry and agents present and I was excited for the comics who did well and have a chance to actually be on this life-changing and career-changing show.
This week I checked out The Mixtape Show, which was started 6 years ago by Anthony Anderson whose show Blackish premieres this Wednesday at 9:30 on ABC, and an LA comic named Royale Watkins, who is currently producing another Central Comedy All Stars for Soul Train Weekend on BET Centric. The special is shooting Nov. 8th in Las Vegas.
The show was amazing. It’s comedy with a hip hop DJ, and I got to see a comic I had never seen before and he blew me away. His name is Rip Michaels, and he’s got a million and one projects going on and I can see why. The man is HILARIOUS! The audience was literally screaming with laughter. He’s on Wild n’ Out with Nick Cannon, According to Him and Her on BET Centric for his 3rd season, he’s got two half hour specials, one on MTV2 called Nick Cannon Presents in October and another half hour special on Starz called Starz Presents coming up in January, plus he’s on the Hulu TV show Deadbeats which he described as being like Orange is the New Black, and he’s taping an episode of Nurse Jackie here in New York on 126th Street this coming week. Whew! And he credits getting on Hulu to his friend comic/actor/rapper Brandon T. Jackson.
Funny story – I always take pictures at the show and there’s a glass window at the back of the room where I shoot from. I always turn off my flash but what I didn’t know was that there is a red light that eminates from the camera when it’s focussing without a flash. As I was taking the pictures he thought he was getting the red light and ended his set early. The producer Kristen J. Eddy, came over and politely told me, And that’s how I met him by apologizing to him for getting him off the stage early. He said he thought he was doing good and was wondering why they were giving him the light! I felt terrible but he thought it was funny so we both had a good laugh about it!
Also on the show was Phil Hanley another really funny comic who the audience absolutely went crazy for, my buddy Wil Sylvince the Haitian comic who also always kills, and my friend Sasheer Zamata from SNL who I cast in my documentary film in 2014 called The Business of Comedy.
I also jumped over to Carolines on Broadway to catch a new kind of show produced by comic Linda Smith who also teaches the comedy classes at Carolines. The show is called Desperation Tonight with comic Pat Dixon as the host and Pat is a perfect host. Despite the fact that he shaved his head on both sides leaving only a wide strip of hair down the middle, something about the way he hosted the show reminded me of David Letterman. Maybe it was the suit and tie which is kind of rare in a comedy club. It’s Pat’s signature look. He was backed up by a band, and he played the keyboards and even sang. It was like a comedy show from the 70’s when they had music onstage like at Catch A Rising Star or even The Comic Strip when it first opened.
It was a New Faces Show sandwiched in between established comics like Phil Hanley who is just so funny. He brings in a supposed copy of a recent phone break-up conversation between him and his ex-girlfriend, and has a female audience member come up onstage and read the part of his girlfriend. The things he has her say, praising him and his sexual prowess leave the audience howling. It’s a bit of comic genius, and I told him that after the show. It’s very rare to see someone with something so original.
Down at Gotham Comedy Club this week, I saw Heather McDonald from Chelsea Lately who was headlining and I ran into my girl Michelle Buteau, a very funny comic I know a long time, who had some very exciting news for me. She’s the new co-host with Nick Lachey of VH1’s Big Morning Buzz Live, starting today at 9am. Michelle said it’s a talk show with pop culture, weird news, sketches, kind of like a late night talk show but in the morning. Needless to say, she’s very excited about the show, and I’m excited for her! It’s Nick’s 2nd season on the show. Michelle had been a guest on the show several times, and the chemistry between her and Nick was electric so they invited her to be the co-host. Michelle told me she’s also doing the Maui Comedy Festival over Halloween weekend. They already have 31 comics booked and it’s only their first year.
The opening act was Keith Alberstadt. Most times when I see Keith he’s dressed very nicely wearing a sport jacket, always looking neat and spiffy. Keith is working on an autobiographical sitcom script called Sidelines about a sideline reporter for a college football team, which is what he used to do. I guess that’s why he considers it autobiographical! I forgot to ask him if there was a part for me!
Btw, Dr. Drew Pinsky must be a comedy fan because this was the second time in about a month that I ran into him at Gotham.
I was also down at The Comedy Cellar this week, with these filmmakers from LA who are in town shooting a movie, one of them comic Mike Young asked me if I knew a comic named Joey “Coco” Diaz. Now I’m supposed to know everyone in comedy so it isn’t easy for me to admit I don’t know someone, (LOL) but I had to admit I had never heard of Joey “Coco” Diaz. Mike said, ” you gotta see this guy, he’s hysterical.” Next night I’m going to Gotham to see Heather, and who’s on the bill for an 11:45 show, Joey “Coco” Diaz. Did Mike know?
When Joey came out on stage the audience exploded! The applause was so loud you literally couldn’t even hear his introduction by MC Ryan Reiss who knows how to project on the mic. Joey is such an interesting guy and larger than life with a really big personality. Picture Big Pussy from The Sopranos, but a Cuban version, doing crazy, raunchy comedy. Forget about XXX rated, you’d have to add a couple of more X’s. He got his start during a short prison stint in Denver, Colorado, entertaining other inmates, … talk about a tough crowd. Joey and I may be in a new feature film together and more details on that will be forthcoming!
I ran into Aziz Ansari at The Comedy Cellar. He wasn’t on the bill so I asked him if he was going up to do a set and he said he was thinking about it.
At The Comic Strip I ran into two amazing comics, and good friends of mine, Kyle Grooms and Chuck Nice. Kyle did a great job of handling some hecklers that night who came in late and were seated up front.
Chuck Nice of Radio Chick fame is producing a new comedy show in Philly on Sat. Nov. 15th for two shows, in a skyscraper, 50 stories above the city in The Vista Room at The Top Of The Tower, a gorgeous place that never had comedy before. Chuck has a lot of fans in Philly and wanted to do a show for them. He checked out a high profile comedy place but they weren’t cooperative, so he approached The Vista Room. Turned out they were fans of his and gave him a go. You can’t get a “higher” profile than 50 stories up! (LOL)
And finally, comic Frankie Hudak who I used to be a regular with on the Joey Reynold’s radio show on WOR AM radio made the news on tv this week when he came out with a parody video about Pres. Obama’s “Latte Salute.” He told me he shot it on an i-Phone 5 and was inspired when he saw the hashtag “Latte Salute” , so he ran over to his friends house and recorded the one minute parody in his friend’s driveway!
That’s it for now, but I’ll be jumping around all week, so check back next Monday for more!
Pictured below, me with Dr. Drew Pinsky, Jimmy Failla, Keith Alberstadt, Michelle Buteau, and Joey “Coco” Diaz.
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