What’S So Funny The Jokes Keep Flying And The Laughs Keep Rolling At Local Comedy Clubs
The end of the millennium is upon us and it’s turning out to be a real bummer for morale. After all, there’s the Y2K computer gnat, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and a champagne shortage all looming there like a giant alarm clock with no snooze button.
It’s a wonder we sleep at night.
But there is one group of people — other than those loony tune cults — primed to take advantage of this dire situation: comedians.
At least that’s the way Lee McKay figures it. “In times of stress in human civilization, comics flourish,” says McKay, a Spokane comedian. “You can’t explain it, it’s just a human need. I estimate this new comedy boom should last until the year 2002 or 2003.”
Sure, Y2K and its doomsday kin are a winning Lotto ticket of joke material — but what’s this about a new comedy boom?
It seems McKay is onto something here. Sure we’re only a month into 1999, but so far it’s shaping up to be The Year of the Comic — in the Inland Northwest, at least.
McKay and associate Jon Fox are part of a handful of people slapping a funny bone upside the head of the local nightclub scene — bringing a bevy of comedy showcases to lounges around Eastern Washington and North Idaho.
Last month McKay and Fox began booking jokers and jesters into The Goodtymes Pub every Sunday evening. In February, they’ll turn the Sierra Mirage Lounge at The Days Inn into a weekend comedy club.
Last year, the husband-and-wife comedic duo of Kristi Kelly and Chris Warren brought their Brickwall Comedy Club concept to hotels and lounges from Missoula to Seaside, Ore., — and plenty of places between. They recently began hosting a Thursday comedy night at The DoubleTree Hotel in The Valley and now bring regular shows to the Willow Springs Restaurant and Lounge in Cheney. On Thursday, Templin’s Resort in Post Falls starts a monthly Brickwall Comedy Night.
Meanwhile, Don Parkins — a Spokane comedy veteran and mastermind behind Uncle D’s Comedy Underground — puts funnymen and women on stage at the Bayou Brewery and the new Lilac Lanes each Wednesday night and at Players & Spectators on Thursdays.
All say they’re trying to raise comedy to a new, more respectable level in the Inland Northwest. And certainly they’re giving us plenty to laugh at, with professional comedians arriving from places like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
“I think comedy is really making a comeback,” Kelly says.
“There just seems to be almost an innate need to laugh,” Fox says.
“Easter — now that’s a normal holiday right?” Seattle comedian Geoff Young queries from the Bayou Brewery stage. The crowd — which nearly fills the room — sits poised, waiting for the delivery. “So where the hell did all these jelly beans and chocolate come from? How does candy tie into the resurrection of Christ? What did they do, roll back the stone to the cave and go, `He’s gone! But wow, there’s a chocolate bunny in here.’ “
The audience erupts into laughter — it’s spontaneous, explosive, genuine.
“I like to say that comedians are the world’s second oldest profession — they’ve always been around,” says Fox. One pictures the dawn of time, when Grog first dropped a rock on Bog’s foot.
Bog responded with, “Grnn urgh nugh nuh!” - which loosely translates into “I don’t get no respect!” The entire clan was in stitches.
Fox is a San Francisco-based booking agent who has worked with the likes of Robin Williams and Jerry Seinfeld and owns Seattle’s full-time laugh lounge The Comedy Underground. The way he tells it, comedy was virtually ignored in the late 1970s. But come the mid-‘80s, live laughs were big business across the country. Most bigger cities had a minimum of two full-time comedy clubs. Seattle had four. Spokane had one - C.J. Timothy’s.
“During the boom, everybody who could tell a joke was a comedian,” says Young, who’s been in the biz for 16 years. Kelly says that when she started doing stand-up in 1984, comedians were treated like celebrities - limos and all.
But as the ‘80s waned and ‘90 waxed, live stand-up comedy flopped like a spotted owl joke at a Earth First! rally. “Comedy used to be in nice venues and then it started going into every little bar and tavern that would clip a light on the ceiling and stand a microphone up,” Kelly says. Cable TV had invaded homes everywhere and so had comedy - on sitcoms, on late-night talk shows and on 24-hour comedy channels. People figured, `why go out to a club and pay to laugh when I can stay at home and chuckle for free?’ “We went through an oversaturation of product,” Fox says. And so began the great weeding-out process. Clubs closed. Comedians were forced into “real jobs.” Esteem for the profession plummeted.
But those - like Young - who were in it for the long haul survived. “I’m a career comedian,” says Young. “My passion is making people laugh.”
And now, as the ‘90s draw to a close, those in the funny biz say they’re finding more reasons to smile. Although they don’t expect stand-up to return to its ‘80s heyday, they say people are again showing interest in watching comedians perform their trade in person.
“I think they realize they’ve been missing the electric energy of a live show,” says McKay.
It’s a Thursday night at The DoubleTree Hotel and Seattle comedian Peter Doolan is the “featured artist” - which means he has the difficult job of warming up the crowd for the “headlining act.”
Doolan’s delivery is rapid-fire, as though his tongue could tie a cherry stem in a knot in five seconds flat. And at first the audience responds with only tentative laughter to jokes about attention deficit disorder.
It’s the pet jokes that finally thaw them.
On dogs and cats: “Do we have dog people or cat people here? Let me hear it from the dog people. (cheering and clapping) Now the cat people. (more cheering and clapping) Did you notice that the cat people seemed a little superior, almost snotty, and the dog people are just really happy to be here?”
On snakes: “People say their snake is cuddling with them. Your snake’s not cuddling with you - your snake’s checking to see if you’re small enough to eat.”
On fish: “A three-dimensional poster with a life expectancy, that’s what fish are.”
By the time L.A. comedian Dean Austin steps on stage, the packed room is ready to laugh. And they do - tears run down their faces as sweat rolls down his.
Live comedy traverses the line between planning and improvisation. It is part-rock’n’roll and part-theater, and the good comedians are part-actor and part-philosopher. L.A. comedian Bobby Delerious says these pieces of wisdom have been passed down to him by veteran comics: “You can get away with anything if it’s funny,” and “they laugh because it’s true.”
Certainly the best comedy captures a piece of everyday life, pointing out humanity at its most absurd. It makes you think, “Chocolate bunnies to celebrate Jesus? Well now that you mention it, that is pretty silly.”
Like most comedians, Delerious travels often, taking his show to lounges, comedy clubs and hotels throughout the United States. He’s always on the watch for the unique moments in life, operating under the theory: Truth is funnier than fiction.
“Everything I talk about really happened. Everything,” Delerious says. “It might not have happened in the order I say, but it happened. The only way I can do what I do is to put myself in the position to have strange, bizarre experiences that I can go up on stage and talk about. I can’t make up (stuff) that funny. I have to experience it.”
The Montana Testicle Festival and Spokane’s Dick’s Hamburgers often make it into his performances. Good comedy also has a way of cracking open closed minds. It’s easier to accept a different point of view when the person delivering it makes you laugh in the process. It’s disarming. It’s non-threatening. Defenses crumble in the face of humor.
“When they hear it from a comedian and it’s funnny they loosen up,” Austin says. “They’re able to relate.”
During his set at the DoubleTree, he tells the audience, “It’s a trip that people have this homophobia. It’s really wrong. Treat gay people with respect.” Then he sets into a sketch about gay Africans living in the jungle - a routine designed not only to make the audience laugh, but also to dismiss the stereotype that gay men are not strong. He succeeds at both.
Delerious tells of performing in Hayden Lake - a black man in the midst of the Aryan Nation homeland. At the end of the show, the shaved-headed, camouflaged man standing in the back of the room came forward. “He said, `You were really funny.’ He shook my hand and walked out.”
And Young - who calls humor “protection against alzheimers” - sees live comedy as a therapy of sorts.
“Most people don’t leave a comedy show still bearing the same problems they walked in the door with. It’s good therapy for me and it’s good therapy for the people in the audience.”
“Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
That famous saying is easy to understand when you watch a joke crash and burn with the impact of a jumbo jet nose-diving to earth. With a concussive thud, the stillborn funny knocks the wind out of the room. You can hear it deflating on the crowd’s lips - the low whistle through their teeth, the pained moan, the insult hurled at the stage.
Every comedian has been there.
“You do four or five jokes and all of a sudden you can feel the temperature of the room change,” says Parkins, a former body guard and karate instructor often credited with keeping Spokane’s comedy scene alive. “You just put your head down and keep talking because you have a contract to be on that stage.”
“There’s so many good comics out there they make it look easy but it’s not,” Kelly says. “It’s one of the hardest things to do in the world.”
It’s open mic night at Lilac Lanes and the young man testing his humor looks like he’s about to ask a girl to the prom. He shuffles nervously from foot to foot. He squeezes the microphone as though it were a wilting bouquet.
Then he sets into a joke about how sex has changed over the years. “I can remember when I was 15. All there was to safe sex was having a padded head board,” he quips.
Groan.
Spokane comedian Nick Theisen gets a similar reaction with this impersonation: Jimmy Stewart as a Jehovah’s Witness.
But when Delerious steps on stage he immediately turns the audience in his favor by announcing, “I just became a Rastafarian. And the Rastafarian religion says the way you get to heaven is you smoke weed and meditate.”
“I’m converted!” a man shouts from the back of the room.
You never can tell how it’s going to be, Kelly says. A pleasant looking group of yuppies can turn into an ugly group of rabid hecklers. On the other hand, “We’ve walked into a room and we’ve though `this is going to suck’ and it’s really rocked.”
And that’s why Parkins insists that stand-up comedy is not just about standing there and telling a few one liners.
“When a comedian steps on stage he’s taking a blank stage, a chair and a microphone - the room can be full of happy people or drunk bikers - and that comedian has to step on that stage without a guitar or music, without anything to save his butt - and he has to perform a show.
“Comedy is an art form.”
Get a laugh The Bayou Brewery 1003 E. Trent Ave. The Bayou hosts comedy every Wednesday starting at 8:30 p.m. Cover charge is $5. This week catch Seattle comedians Rod Long and Howie Keirsten. On Feb. 10 Eric Haines and Morgan Preston present their “Rock and Roll Comedy Circus of Death.” The show includes machete juggling, unicycle riding, guitar playing … oh yeah, and some jokes too.
Days Inn 4212 W. Sunset Blvd. Located near the Spokane Airport, the Days Inn will begin hosting comedy every Friday and Saturday night. Country-western comedian Lonesome Dave Conrades brings his cowpoke humor and song parodies to the hotel’s Sierra Mirage Lounge Feb. 12, 13 and 14. Admission is $7.50. The show starts at 8:30 p.m. with a second performance Saturday at 10:30 p.m.
DoubleTree Hotel 1100 N. Sullivan Rd. Get yer giggles at this classy room each Thursday starting at 8:30 p.m. This Thursday, Caldwell, Idaho, performer Leif Skyving headlines the night and Los Angeles comedian Bobby Delerious is the featured performer.
Gabby’s Irish House & Grill 514 W. Sprague This downtown lounge will begin hosting comedy on a monthly basis starting in February. Spokane funnymen Don Parkins and Jim Green perform at 7 p.m. Feb. 24.
Lilac Lanes Bowling Center Nevada and Magnesium Wednesday night is comedy night in the Lilac Lanes lounge and the show starts here at 8 p.m. with an open microphone. Think your buddy’s a funny guy? Hand him the microphone and see how he holds up under the spotlight. Professional comedians take over as the evening progresses. Hailing from Redmond, Ore., Chris Curtis entertains the crowd this Wednesday. Cover charge is $2.
Goodtymes Pub 9111 E. Montgomery The comedians turn out at Goodtymes each Sunday night. The jokes start rolling at 8:45 p.m. Seattle comedian Kermit Apio headlines this Sunday’s show.
The Met 901 W. Sprague Los Angeles comedian Bobby Delerious performs at The Met Sunday at noon. This show - free and open to the public - will be taped and sent to HBO for programming consideration. With topics that range from marijuana use to sex, Delerious’s comedy style is all about pushing the limits. He hopes the cable giant will help him land his own late-night show. Donations will be accepted Sunday and given to the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center. And, “Everybody will be out in time for the Superbowl,” Delerious promises.
Ramada Inn Spokane International Airport The funny stuff stops here on a semi-regular basis. On Valentines Day see L.A. comic Larry Omaha perform along with Keith Woodring from Portland. Admission is $5. The show starts at 8 p.m.
Players & Spectators 12828 E. Sprague With a spacious room and large stage set aside to host performances of all kinds, Players & Spectators brings comedians to the club on almost a weekly basis. Comedy shows usually run Thursday evenings starting at 8:30. Admission is $2. On Feb. 11 Spokane comedian Nick Theisen performs followed by Seattle hypnotist Robert Mack.
Steve’s Sports Dugout Post Falls, 1910 E. Seltice Way This bar features comedy acts on a semi-regular basis. Those who miss hypnotist Robert Mack at Players & Spectators can catch him here on Feb. 13. He will both amaze and entertain. Show starts at 8:30 p.m.
Templin’s Resort Post Falls, 414 E. First Ave. The Templin’s hotel lounge hosts its first Brickwall Comedy night Thursday and will feature the funny stuff once a month from here on out - and perhaps more often as the summer draws near. This Thursday catch the Spokane husband and wife duo of Kristi Kelly and Chris Warren. The show starts at 8 p.m. Admission is $5.
The Willow Springs Restaurant and Lounge Cheney, 809 First St. Comedians perform at this establishment once a month. Portland jokesmith Auggie Smith makes an appearance Feb. 10. Steve Speck opens the show at 8 p.m. Admission is $5.