Yamaneika Saunders Officiates Aaron Berg’s Big Comedy Wedding, Gotham Comedy Live Plus 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 New York Comedy Club, Gotham, the Stand, the Knitting Factory and more.
Out in Brooklyn, I saw a show I had been hearing about for the longest time, Comedy Night at the Knitting Factory. It’s every Sunday night at 9, and it’s the show that Hannibal Buress started, and spent five years doing before he turned it over to Kenny DeForest, Clark Jones and Will Miles. When I got there– which took forever because the city’s like on lockdown due to the explosion and the U.N. being in town = it looked like a party going on in the street. The street was packed with young people who had been at the first part of the show, and were waiting for the second part. It’s a really fun show with performers who write for late night shows and even some of the SNL cast was there. What I thought was very cool was that at times all three hosts were on stage together. Sometimes just two of them.
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Speaking of street parties with comedians, I was privileged to attend the wedding of Aaron Berg and Christine Meehan over the weekend on the historic Bow Bridge in Central Park overlooking the lake. I got there early and was able to schmooze with the groom for a moment , and meet his parents who came in from Canada for the event. It was truly beautiful and Yamaneika Saunders officiated. She was recently ordained as a minister and it was her very first wedding. She laughingly shared that fact with the crowd when she corrected herself on some procedural thing she did. It was a beautiful ceremony, with a violin player, both sets of parents and siblings, two tiny, adorable flower girls, and I was lucky enough to have had a spot right in front of where they got married so I was able to hear the beautiful wedding vows they each wrote to say to each other. It was very touching, and they were both so moved by reading their vows out loud.
Yamaneika not only officiated, she also doubled as security to get rid of moron civilians that actually tried to cross the bridge during the ceremony. They had the nerve to walk right through, but those few that made it had to endure the wrath of Yammie, who yelled at them right in their faces, “ Can’t you see we’re having a wedding here? Get out!” And they did. Finally she had the invitees crowd around the couple so uninvited pedestrians couldn’t get through.
Needless to say the crowd was comedian heavy, and I’ll try and name some of them knowing full well that I’m bound to leave some out. It was Ricky Velez and his girlfriend, John Moses with his wife and 2 year old daughter, Giulio Gallarotti, Alex Pavone, Pete Lee and Emily Tarver, Buddy Flip, my friend Gina Savage who I was with the night before and never mentioned that she was going to Aaron’s wedding, Geno Bisconte, Dave Smith, Richie Redding, Jason Salmon, Brendan Sagalow, Monroe Martin, Christine Marie Evans, and Ari Shaffir in a beautiful purple velvet suit and matching purple ruffled shirt that would have made Prince jealous. I know I was. He told me he had it custom made in Hong Kong when he was there about a year and a half ago, and he said that once they have your measurements they can just make stuff up for you and send it to you without you having to go in, cause that’s a long trip to make just for fittings and alterations.
After the ceremony, Aaron and Christine went off to take photos and everyone else did their thing until 7 P.M. when the reception happened at The Stand, which is Aaron’s home club. And when I pulled up there, it was also a street party. Comics and family alike were all hanging out outside and inside where the tables were set so beautifully and hors d’oeuvres were passed around. I got to chat with Patrick Milligan founder of Cringe Humor and partner in The Stand. Getting Patrick alone is not an easy thing to do because he’s always on the go. But I got to hear how it all started.
Patrick was the founder of Cringe Humor and had always worked alone, but one day around 2005 he happened to hear Cris Italia on the air on another podcast. He liked what he heard and Cris became the CEO of Cringe Humor Radio. Before finding their current space, The Stand was almost in the old Laugh Factory space on West 42nd Street. But when that deal failed to materialize, Patrick and Cris called in Paul Italia and Dave Kimowitz who had both been in real estate, and they went looking for a space of their own and funding to make it happen. Patrick is in charge of marketing and booking the club, and the other partners share the responsibilities of managing talent, making TV deals, and running the club, although Patrick said that after the first year, the club basically runs itself. It’s a smooth operation, and it’s also the only club that can boast a celebrity chef like Seth Levine as the Executive Chef, and the food is amazing. I’ll find out more this coming Tuesday when they celebrate their fourth anniversary with a big party at the club. I will definitely be there to tell you what goes down!
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This week, Joe Gerics held his third annual Free Stand Up Festival, at New York Comedy Club, and I swear every single comic had a beard. I asked Joe what made him start a festival, which is a HUGE undertaking, especially since it’s in three boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens and runs for seven days. He said it’s very hard to get stage time and really hard to get festival time, and the best way he knew to get both was to start his own festival. So now thanks to Joe and his co-producer Andrew Bayroff, we have another festival where comics can show their talent, and Joe can get as much stage time as he wants. After the show, Joe told me he had gone to school with Nick Kroll and John Mulaney at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where Mike Birbiglia ran the improv group. How’s that for honored alumni?
Gotham Comedy Live is outdoing itself in getting interesting hosts for the show. They’ve already taped with David Hasselhoff, then Pamela Anderson, and William Shatner to name just a few, and this week was Judy Tenuta who’s just as cute and bubbly as ever. She came out in a typical Judy Tenuta outfit complete with a bright green boa and her little pink accordion, and did a little opening number called Party In Your Pants. Her material was spot on and the crowd was so happy to see her. She was there with her agent Roger Paul who told me that she’s working on an upcoming film project, and Judy told me she’s got a book coming out next year called The World Accordion To Judy.
Collage created using TurboCollage software from www.TurboCollage.com
Now that Gotham Comedy Live is taping their shows, they do two a week. I was back again later in the week to catch Paula Poundstone and she was great. Greg Stone was on the show and he looked so familiar to me, but not from the comedy scene. After the show, at the after-party when we tried to figure out how we knew each other, he told me that he was the guy who used to work at The Apple Store who helped me learn how to edit on Final Cut Pro and told me he wanted to be in comedy. Well he sure is now. He’s really funny, and a great writer as well. Paula and I reminisced about Montreal’s Just for Laughs Festival which was the last time I saw her back around 2008, with Larry Miller, Paul Provenza and George Wallace, the year I started my book “Make ‘Em Laugh” while I was up there by interviewing those three guys. She said that was the year that “George Wallace went out on stage and schooled us all about how to host a show.” Like Judy, Paula too has a new book coming out next year in May called “The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search For Human Happiness”, which already has reviews online from Dick Cavett, Lily Tomlin, and Carl Reiner.
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I always seem to walk into New York Comedy Club when they’re having a Roast Battle. It feels like they have one every night, but it’s really every two weeks. I just happen to show up every time and owner Emilio Savone notices. The night I went, the judges were Aaron Berg, Rell Battle, the co-originator of Roast Battle with Brian Moses, and Mehran Khaghani. By the time I rolled in, the judges were disgusted with the first two roast battles, and were actually apologizing to the audience, because not everyone can roast, and I won’t say who those roasters were, but the main event was about to start between Wendi Starling and Christian Finnegan. They both went in hard on each other, with very well crafted jokes, and the audience and judges went wild, with the judges saying, “Now that’s how to roast battle.” It was really very close with the judges giving it to Christian, who honed in on Wendi’s admitted past as a sex worker.
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It was also Fashion Week this week and I bring comedy with me wherever I go. I also bring my new book Laughing Legends with me wherever I go, and I got interviewed a few times during Fashion Week shows and parties and got to promote my book to the fashion crowd. I wound up meeting Alisara, a model with a strong interest in improv and comedy and hopefully we will do some funny YouTube videos together.
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I was back at Gotham later in the week to catch Bryan Callen, star of TV and film who was one of the original cast members of MADtv when it started in 1995. He also just finished a two season arc playing a character on USA’s “In Plain Sight.” Bryan’s act is very physical, with lots of character work as you might expect from his MADtv background. He’s also a martial artist and has a hit podcast called The Fighter and The Kid which he co-hosts with retired MMA fighter Brian Schaub.
When I go to Gotham I always park on West 23rd Street between 6th and 7th Avenue, exactly where the explosion took place this week. And because I went to see Bryan on Friday night, I didn’t go back on Saturday which is exactly when the explosion took place. As it happened, I had a gig out in New Jersey for a show produced by Legendary Entertainment’s Greg Kritikos, or as he calls himself Greg “The Greek.”
And with that, … 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 Judy Tenuta and Alisara.
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