C O M E D Y

Got yanked into this sketch comedy show.

Went to rehearsal last night.

My goodness this thing is not funny.

So bad that the players were saying backstage "Try a funny accent!"

The antidote to all poorly written material: Try a funny accent!

At one point the writer was lecturing this korean dude. I bring up his ethnicity because he was playing Sammy Davis, Jr. IN HELL (oh, just say IN HELL at the end of the anything! it's so funny! it's so early 90s!). Anyway, sammy's hellish punishment is to be made asian, so, as the writer explained point blank to the korean dude: "he can't dance. cuz asian's can't dance."

yow.

I heard it with my own two flappy ears.

I was in a sketch about homeless people (homeless peeps = hilarity). The director told me I need to play it "VERY homeless." Notch up my homlessness a bit.

They had a sketch where they pull Lucille Ball out of hell. Okay. Then they don't do anything with her. She does the "step-by-step" vaudeville number that only an ardent viewer of her show would know she did. It's freakin' weird.

The poor kids in this show are shouting their lines with ENERGY!! ENERGY will make up for the lack of humor! Character voices!!! Funny walks!! Floppy red shoes!!!


The kids were also struggling with the writer's age. As an older person, I resent the youth-always credo out here, but I must tell you: all the references were OUTDATED. Rat Pack. Lucille Ball. I wouldn't want to be 20-something and in this show where I'm trying to do comedy about my grandparents generation.

Apparently, they know the ship is sinking. Cast members are dropping out, when they realize that not only is the material not ha-ha, but the writer doesn't want any of it changed.

I had to play a pyschic in a sketch that goes all the way around the bend for the joke that someone wants to contact someome from the after-life, just to say "hey." And the sketch, up to this point, has nothing of interest in it.

Putting a funny accent on a sketch that has no point, no mirth, is like adding sugar to a meal gone awry. I've put in a call to my comedy doctor, a pal who collaborates with me, by saying our password phrase "Let's talk comedy." Maybe we can find an angle to make it worthwhile.

My two Hollywood Death Cab buddies got me into this. They are a nifty couple, I like them lots, and they understand this thing is hugely flawed. Oh well. I'm trying to look at as a descent into the land of unfunny for the purpose of finding something funny. Not to mention, I'm almost living the dream: you find yourself on stage in a show you never rehearsed for. I'll have just one more rehearsal before we do this thing. I'll keep you aprised of the results.

high ate us

hiatus. so we've been told. the extra boards I go to on the net proclaim a dry season. there is no craft services to give you apples, raisins or cheetos. just parched mouths and bleached white cow skulls adorning your employment landscape. it's been long enuff that my gay lover no longer thinks it's funny when I say "I'm unemployed and drunk!"

"Pay for my bar bill, I'm on the dole!"

"Baby needs some baubles."

I have a slew of friends who are unemployed right now. I hope I'm not a microcosm for the country, cuz if so, the bill will be coming due shortly.

I call the Extra Union hotline each day, and it's the same thing:

NATIONWIDE SEARCH FOR TOBY MCGUIRE LOOK-A-LIKE

Okay already. Find the dude and be done with it. Then, they need someone who owns a poodle, and people who can ice skate. I'm gay, and I still hate ice skating. That was always my card I could play when the straight guys were sniffing at the peripheries of my gaydom, "Fucking ice skating is the gayest!" I could sell it because I believed it. However, don't ever ask me about Olivia Newtwon John. Xanadu you!

They also have been looking for the young folks, 18 to play teenagers. That leaves me out.

So, I contemplate office jobs, which are in ENTERTAINMENT!!! but still office jobs.

Today, however, I got to do what I do. I got to go down and be a Barker. Apparently the Barker's are all partying on an exclusive island off the coast of Borneo, so I was called in to Hollywood Death Cab. My second time flying the Barker flag high. Man, you sit at home, you wonder if you're ever gonna be worth the business of show: and one shift sets you free.

In my accounting years, when I would interview for a job, a part of my person always screamed: I WOULDN'T HIRE ME IF I WAS YOU!! Really, I wouldn't. I'm a nice enuff fellow, but I always felt lacking in certain things (like attention to detail. who knew?), and was more a happy floppy clown, then a real part of the process. So, when doing Hollywood Death Cab, I just play the clown, and I don't have to worry about putting the decimal point in the wrong place.

Today's shift was glorious. Got to bond with the masses, work the crowd, and show my supervisors, "yes, I can entertain these people." My peers were watching me, so you can't deny it, and I even had a customer come up and give me a hug. Just because he liked me. It left me, the Barker, speechless. Supervisors were out monitoring today, they've had complaints from Hollywood Boulevard storefront operators that we've been too aggressive, etc. So, it was nice to show off, and actually have them not able to deny I'm good. Too bad, so sad: they people laff, I'm funny. The people buy tickets to go in the Hollywood Death Cab, I win. You lose. Dirk the dwarf walked by a couple of times, and tried to grimace at me.

"You said we're Hollywood Death Cart, not CAB," sez Dirk.

I'm so over his game, and said "Funny, you should notice that one thing, meanwhile missing the group of 10 I just got to do the tour, and the kid actually hugging me, and the whole crowd I made laugh."

"I saw that Josh, I expect that from --"

"Yes, and I expect you to focus on the negative."

And with that, I clicked my heels and walked away. Yup, it's on. I don't really care, I can't take someone who misses the point: I MADE PEOPLE LAFF, ERGO I MADE THE COMPANY MONEY today. he has this thing where he dismisses laffter as something cheap and tawdry, like mime. meanwhile, in the land of the living, comedy is one of the single most powerful economic currents in hollywood. I tire of working for this freak and being under his topsy-turvy defintion of reality. But today, he was shut out, cuz I got kudos all around from all my various supervisors, and my peers saw it too.

I walked home after the day with $200-plus in commissions. That means I put about 175 people on the Hollywood Death Cab at $75 a pop. Suck on that Dirk.