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Hi folks and welcome to another edition of The Gratitude List. This would’ve been out last Monday, but my schedule has become exponentially busier as my wedding gets closer and closer.1 But since I have finally caught up on all the sleep and emails and writing I missed in the lead-up to and execution of my bachelor party, it’s time to drop a newsletter. Better late than never!2
I saw a lot of cool stuff these past few weeks: a couple of friends’ Hollywood Fringe Shows, the return of Los Digits to the LA Roast Battle ring, the gloriously frothy teen soap The O.C. by way of Daisygreen’s “background noise while I work” preference while she designs menus and signage for the big day. My new material workshop show F*ck Around ‘N Find Out returned without a hitch and I got to spend a lot of time with my buddy Zahid while he visited Los Angeles. I even caught a stray in a DM he got from a lady who was unhappy with her experience at his “& Friends” show at the Lyric Hyperion a couple weeks back! And I got to finally check seeing Penn & Teller live off my bucket list, a dream I’ve had since I was a wee child magician.
But there were a few truly remarkable things I got to put my eyeballs on these past few weeks, and I’d like to tell you about them now.
THINGS I’M GLAD I’VE SEEN
JULIA MASLI: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
The first time I see Julia Masli's show, it's a Monday night. I’m here with Daisygreen because occasionally she likes to see some weird clown shows, and this was specifically one I had told her about last summer when it was taking Edinburgh by storm.
The basic premise: our heroine, an almost otherworldly being with a sense of constant awe and eyes that look like they are about to burst into either tears of joy or tears of terror, tries to solve the audience’s problems. She does this with a sense of curiosity and care, even as she’s labeling people as symbols of evil or smashing people’s seats into splinters. That first night, all the problems are heady. We start at "I doubt myself too much" and stay pretty existential from there. Fears about money, success, and one’s place in the world all come up, and the absurd solutions manage to bring a sneaky level of beauty to the proceedings. We all laugh shockingly hard when she asks a guy in the front row what he thinks the meaning of life is, and after a little stammering, he responds “just hanging out.”
I am enraptured by this performance and immediately decide I need to see how the sausage is made. The beauty of seeing a show that’s never the same twice more than once is in being able to really get comedy nerd analytical with it, to discover the similarities and differences in the underlying code of the show.3
I scroll through my friends the next day to try and determine who would go see a clown show with me at midnight on a Friday. And I find that person in Billy, the host of The Riff Raff. I text him, and he takes me up on my offer. Friday can’t come soon enough.
Here's another concrete pleasure: getting to know someone better through comedy. Billy and I had mostly known each other at the surface, but now, as we stand in line, we find out our history, our goals, our wants, our plans, our dreams. I had a feeling we would be kindred spirits, but it’s certainly nice to get more confirmation as we stand in line, wondering how to market weird comedy shows like the ones we host to the people we know would love them.
This night, we watch a bunch of people with pretty actionable problems. A lady is tired, so Julia brings out a cot for her to sleep on, an eye mask, and a 4-hour meditation CD for her to listen to. A guy's neck is sore, so Julia enlists the entire row behind him to massage his neck until it feels better. One audience member who just got laid off of work is enlisted to do the important task of logging problems and solutions in Excel, going to Wikihow for answers as necessary.
We get into the heady stuff later on, of course – after the safe space has been established – with people wondering about how to be serene, and how to build a safe environment, and how to be pure of heart. The best moment of the entire night comes when a woman who claims to be pretty pure of heart is asked to leave by Julia, who dances with her all the way to the exit sign. “This show is for people with problems, you are free!” she says to this lady, lifting the curtain to reveal an open door to the back alley, “Go out into the world!” She does, but comes back in a few minutes later, trying to hide from Julia’s intense gaze. The dance plays out again, then one more time after that, when Julia drops the hammer: “you are a symbol for the futility of mankind. Go!” We erupt in laughter. We can’t help ourselves. We drive back to Hollywood that night gushing over what we just saw, wondering aloud who will be dedicated enough to join Julia at 3 AM to burn the socks she’s been gathering over the course of 5 shows at the LA River.4 Trust me, if you get a chance to see “ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” take it.
RACHEL TROY: BABY
Rachel & I are both Idiots. Fledgling Idiots – I think we’ve both been taking classes at Idiot workshop for somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5-2 years – but Idiots nonetheless. And Idiots gotta stick together.
I had the privilege of watching her begin to develop what would eventually become the winner of Top Of Fringe at Hollywood Fringe Festival months ago in class. It was simple: Rachel talked like a baby, kept making eye contact with people and saying “up!” until someone picked her up, wailing if she didn’t get what she wanted. Getting to see how that kernel of an idea – simple, physical, and confrontational, a true clowning trifecta – grew into a fully fleshed-out show about communication, therapy, generational trauma, and, of course, being a baby. This show, like most clown shows, is tough to describe, and now that the festival is over you might not get a chance to see it for a while, but I encourage you to go check out this one-baby show if it ever comes crawling out of the woodwork again. (I have a feeling it will.)
THE BEST LAS VEGAS STRIP CLUB BARKER I HAVE EVER SEEN
It’s a sweltering Friday afternoon, a hot-and-breezy 106 degrees, but somehow the strip club barkers on the pedestrian walkways on the Las Vegas Strip don’t seem fazed by the heat at all. They are wearing 3-piece suits, not even attempting to find shade, and haranguing every group of more than two guys who walk by them with offers of titties in their face and ass all over the place.5
But as we walk towards the Walgreens on the corner of Harmon and Las Vegas Boulevard, one short, stocky bald guy who looks like Kingpin if he got put in a vice looks directly at my best man and me.
“Gentlemen, strip club?” Standard start. We continue to approach without interacting. Then he drops the hammer. “FINGERBLASTING tonight!”
We walk right past him, look at each other, then explode in laughter. Was it the ludicrous, only cool for virgins offer of fingerblasting that did it? Or was it the way he enthusiasically enunciated every syllable in the damn word: “FIN-grr-blass-ting?” I know that I look like a contestant on an adult spelling bee but that doesn’t mean you need to give me words like I’m about to ask you for their country of origin.
So thank you, random strip club barker, for giving us a moment that deterred us from taking you up on your offer, but ensured that we will never forget you.
A BRIEF DISPATCH FROM RECOVERYLAND
Someone in a meeting shares about how they didn’t quit drinking and using because they didn’t want “the feeling” to go away. I identify at breakneck speed; not wanting “the feeling” to go away is what fueled my entire identity before I sobered up. What feeling, you ask? For me, it was the feeling of being validated and liked. It still is sometimes. That’s what makes this art form, specifically, an emotional clusterfuck. The incredible highs of succeeding on stage used to be tempered by alcohol or drugs. Same with the lows of bombing. Now, I’ve got nothing to take me higher or force me lower – I just have to ride out whatever comes naturally.
The alcoholic in me still doesn’t want “the feeling” to go away, but I find the better I get at letting life do its thing, the more likely I am to actually be able to handle my feelings better. The more I recognize that I’ll forever exist in this realm of peaks and valleys – and that I can't avoid the valleys – then life becomes so much more manageable.
It's like going on a hike, but making sure you have everything you need in your backpack without being overburdened or underprepared. It's about being the right amount of ready for the outside world. It’s about not avoiding the trail altogether just because you heard from some other hikers that it had some pretty gnarly sections. I signed up to take the hike. The least I can do is see it through.
WHAT ABOUT ME?
You can find me:
most Tuesdays at the Comedy Store hosting the Roast Battle pre-show
in LA - full show calendar is here
doing WRONG! in Los Angeles at The Comedy Store on 7/22, get tickets here
Until next time, friends. Thanks for reading, I’m glad you’re here.
Just shy of two weeks away!
Fun fact: this sentence originally said “I am currently knocking things off my to-do list before I head to Burbank and catch a flight to my bachelor party, this felt like a fitting way to cap off the afternoon.” But then, life happened!
This is something I learned to appreciate working at the Comedy Store, where I got to witness great crowd work comics do their thing night after night. The decision tree of their sets brings the combination of spontaneity and writing that I try to bring to my own performances. So, naturally, this highfalutin’ brand of artsy crowd work really tickled my fancy.
Too tough to explain this one.
One strip club barker’s minute-long rhyming soliloquy prompted one of our crew, once out of earshot, to say “I’m telling my kid that was Dr. Seuss.”