Tuesday night I went a one-off edition of the AltComedyLounge here in Toronto called “Comedians of YouTube”, which is just the most moronic oxymoron, isn’t it? As everyone on YouTube is a comedian, aren’t they?

Formula: Wrangle a show’s worth of Canadian YouTube sensations (well, as sensational as one can be in Canada), have them perform 5 minutes of valedictory stand-up in front of a captive audience and show one of the videos that they’re [relatively] famous for.

Naturally, the place was rammed. Full of who I assume were fans and virtual friends that flocked to see their YouTube personality of choice manifest itself in the flesh for one night only. And the crowd didn’t look like what I’d expect it to - which is to say socially-retarded RPG conventioneers who’ve disabled their mirror neurons… they looked normal-ish, for the most part. I was also stunned by the relative lack of Smartphone usage at the show - I’d say it was only slightly more than usual - given that’s how these people process thought, let alone communicate…

I’m sure some people would overanalyze the evening saying it was this new phenomenon or frontier that these people have mastered and it’s where we all need to go - more than a few comics who were there to watch went home and attempted vlogging, no doubt. I don’t think it was that at all… it was a good old-fashioned valedictory-style standup showcase. No different than when some 18-year-old open mic-er stacks the place with their friends. The appeal was that basic familiarity. Only difference is, the people on this bill can cast a wider net.

The comedy was textbook amateur. The first guy up was maybe the only one who’d been to an open-mic before, and that was the extent of his abilities. Although I don’t remember his name and didn’t investigate him further, I was told he had 29,000 subscribers or something, which, sure, is confounding to me based on what he did that night. Just very green, amateur stuff. “I stutter. This is how it relates to me getting girls. This is how it relates in me getting into fights. Here’s my obligatory amateur-white-male-comic rape joke. Goodnight!” He did fine, as the audience was captive and polite. Had it happened on a normal night at the Rivoli, it likely would have been met with silence. Fine…

The second guy up was probably accountable for most of the audience. A turban-sporting brown bro who swaggered his way to the mic and might as well have read the phone-book - it wouldn’t have mattered. Proceeded to do an auto-biographic set that included more than a couple accent impressions. He then screened a video from his channel entitled “Shit White People Say To Brown People”. Soooo, yeah. I think what I took away from watching him was that there is still a gaping, GAPING dearth of entertainment for first, second and third generation east Indians! Like, COME ON… how has no one in an executive position not clued into this shit? They are STARVING for representation of themselves and will pay to see it! Get on the fucking ball, people!

The next guy up - the last one I stayed for - didn’t have as easy of a time, finally. A fratty, meathead type who was YouTube famous for competitive eating. He came out, did some material on “how does one get into competitive eating” that clunked, soaked some foodstuffs in water and ate them in one bite, then showed a video montage of him at various eating contests underscored by metal, all met by a very tepid reaction. I’m told he later tweeted, “just killed it at The Rivoli at the Comedy Central show”. Hmm.

So that was that. The takeaway? Who gives a fuck - it is what it is. It’s a scene that I’m not on top of because I’ve busied myself with honing a live act. And it’s funny, because often times higher-up’s and people in executive positions will offer up the advice to ‘get more of a web presence’… when I’m told that, it’s like on American Idol when Paula would tell obliviously gay auditioners to ‘try Broadway instead’. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but I appreciate your boldfaced complacency… have a nice day to you, too!

It’s really bizarre, because at the end of the day - and what was evident to anyone there that was familiar with the anatomy of comedy - there’s never going to be a substitute for a skilled, live performance by people who know how to do it well… it’s always going to be a million times more effective and rewarding for everyone… yet it’s these people that exist in a vacuum that are at a premium. If you actually programmed a bill of actually competent comics for the audience that showed that night, it would have been the best night of everyone’s fucking life. Really cray-cray, y’all.

All we can do is optimistically say that there is never going to be a substitute for a live experience done right and that the pendulum will swing back around as historically, it always has.

Wrong horse to bet on? Quite possibly.

So, this is pretty amazing. Todd Glass - a brilliant, widely-respected journeyman comic - just trampled out of the closet.

This threw me for somewhat of a loop as I’ve been reasonably cut-in on who’s in the comedy closet, and had never even so much as heard his name whispered about… and given that his general demeanor and appearance is reminiscent of the father from “A Christmas Story”, I was never exactly onto his scent, as it were.

Anyway - I cannot offer enough congrats to him for doing so. It’s something that personally resonates to me as a gay man, as a comic and particularly as a gay comic.

[You:] “I get your need to obey the rule of the 3’s, but that was just redundant”.

If only it were. A gay comic is a comic that makes the choice to let their sexual orientation inform their comedy. I want to emphasize that this is a choice - when I started doing comedy, I can remember making a very cognizant choice that I was going to talk about this shit on stage, because I guess it occurred to me that “don’t ask, don’t tell” wasn’t the best policy for comedy and I was going to be ‘real’, whatever that means. I also entertained the choice of NOT doing that… or angling myself at more generalized material, to be clear…

My first few years, doing 7 minute spots in a cosmopolitan setting, it was a cakewalk - enough people in the audience had the point of reference to comprehend what I was talking about and be entirely comfortable with it. I’d even go so far to say it was an asset, if only because it set me apart from the 12 or so amorphous white dudes with interchangeable material who would have been on the same bill.

As I enter the thick of my sophomore term in comedy, it’s very apparent that is just not the reality at ALL. In the world of road standup comedy, the loudest, lowest common denominator rules, and about 99.9% of the time the long & short of it is that they’re not going to have an immediate enough point of reference to relate… and they’ll lose interest, sometimes actively. In other words - these suburban fire-breathing mongoloids don’t know any gays in real life, won’t have heard of GrindR, so if you’re planning on investigating the racist nuances thereof, they’re probably going to start talking to each other, and if you’re really lucky, heckle you.

Audiences aside, from an executive standpoint, you’re largely relegated to a novelty act. And if anyone ever tries to tell you that there’s a ‘gay slot’ that they need to fill, punch them in their retarded face and tell them it’s a myth. Quite simply, there aren’t enough of us to require any sort of affirmative action.

So what can Todd look forward to now that he’s out ‘da closet on the stage? Playing yearly all-gay shows called things like “OUTLaugh”, “Laughing Out Proud” and “Gay Guffaws” alongside drag queens and lesbian monologuists (not that there’s anything wrong with either of those, FYI)… being reduced to a homosexual archetype if his fellow comics ever need it for call-back filler… having a quotient of his audience desert him, not because they’re necessarily homophobic, but because “this isn’t what [they] signed up for”… and MORE!

That said, the few times I have had to muzzle myself and play neutral, I feel like I’m trying to smuggle heroin over the border, and no matter how disastrous a road gig has gone where maybe I should have slipped a toe back in the closet, I’ve slept soundly that night.

So I commend Todd Glass for providing another shade of grey in our ongoing evolution… and for being a generally awesome comic. See you at “OUTLaugh”!

—- Aj

If every heckler sent every comic a lovely, comprehensive e-mail like this after every heckling, the world would be a better place.

Tonight is the first night of my first headlining engagement at the venerable Toronto Yuk Yuk’s club. FUN! It’s a rite of passage, of sorts, that any club comic typically works towards since the beginning of their comedy career… which, in my case, was sometime in 2005 as made SUPER OBVIOUS by the head-shot that they’re displaying there. Woof.

Here are the awesome facts about that head-shot: it was taken by my friend Mike in the moldy basement apartment he lived in for about 2 and a half months in the winter of 2005 likely after we had taken in a screening of the cinematic adaptation of “Rent”. In it, I’m sporting LAYERED black and white golf shirts and a black-eye that I accrued in a mad-cap fellatio adventure gone awry. I’m also pretty confidant that it was one of very few shots where I wasn’t giving devil horns. OHHHHH 2005…

Anyway - I’m doing this, this week. Wednesday through Sunday. Hopefully it doesn’t go terribly…

Q: What do you call a Broadway Diva that turns into a feral she-beast whenever there’s a full moooooon?

A: Patti Lupine

Not one of my best. But also, not one of my worst.

I was supposed to go and see Miss LuPone at the Richmond Hill Centre for Performing Arts this past Thursday night. I couldn’t because I had a gig entertaining mouth breathing goons of Oakville. This shit is wearing thin, let me tell ya. If I didn’t desperately needs the dozens of dollars it pays, not a single fuck would be given about it (to borrow a page from Alice Richmond, see one post below.)

I was, however, able to get tickets for a friend of mine who’s originally from there. This is the message I received later that very evening from him:

the concert was fabulous!

favorite moments were:

the two costume changes; sparkly bob macky/bar mitzvah outfit in act one & understated black pant suit in act two.

audience singing happy birthday which made her cry … then she forgot how to pronounce a word in her monologue … then part way through the following song STOPPED the number and walked off stage to blow her nose.

her expressive broadway hand and arm movements which only liza minelli and gay men still use.

thank you thank you thank you
you are a gem!
and i took my gay loving family!
my mom says i have to get you drunk at the bar as a thank you next time i see you!
xoxo
j

SEETHING WITH JEALOUSY AND REGRET to not begin to describe how I feel about this.

Me: He’s the white, gay, male, childless version of Mo’Nique’s character from ‘Precious’…

Interviewer: Really? This is what I’m hearing. But he’s always been nice to me…

Me: Yeah… I’m sure he’s perfectly pleasant to the white bitch that signs his welfare cheques… I’m sorry - what was the question?

—- An excerpt from an interview on the gay comedy scene for Xtra that I gave last night at 11:30 PM over the phone, while drunk (on primarily alcohol; secondarily power)…

—- Aj

… especially in today’s economic climate.

No. But yes. Well, especially because there’s a prospect that I’m going to need to very soon prepare yet another bullshit civilian office resume, which just makes me want to take some pills and retire to my chambers, holy fuck. The thought of that prospect makes me want to barf out of my eyes.

The thought of getting another day job to pay some bills and keep me afloat in vodka money doesn’t necessarily bum me out; it’s the fact that after 5 fucking years of laying down groundwork in this country, I’m still unable to be gainfully employed in my field… THAT’S the goat-getter in this scenario.

I was speaking with my mother last night, as one does when one needs some subjective assurance, and she brought up a valid-although-not-reassuring point… “how many people do [I] know that ARE making somewhat of a living doing this”… the answer is 0.0 - no one that I’d consider from my ‘class’ of comedy, anyhow… i.e. people that started approximate to when I did… we all need to hack it at something to pay the bills…

She then brought up the suggestion that I might want to go back to school and asked how I felt about that… I said that going back to school was an option… just as suicide is an option… because quite empirically, it is. I’m not likening the two. I’m just sayin’.

At any rate, it’s little mood/circumstance-dips like this that I so envy people like Nick ‘Gruber’ - Calvin Klein’s former-amateur-gay-porn-star-TURNED-model-that-he’s-bankrolled-plastic-surgery-to-mold-him-in-his-own-image boyfriend. Oh, how in times like these I loftily dream of being a kept man, having a bottomless money pit of a patron to fuel my artistic endeavors in exchange for bouncing up and down on him bi-weekly.

Plus, I’d get thrown opulent birthday parties with perfectly DUMBFOUNDING guests lists like this bitch had recently…

Yes… that is Nick, his suga-dad-day CK with Donna fucking Karan and Ingrid Sischy next to him. JOKES! Other pics are viewable at Michael Musto’s column here. Daphne Guiness: also there. Alec Baldwin: also also there. Anna Wintour: THERE. CRAZY. And my God, they are all very aware that they are being photographed at Calvin’s piece’s birthday party and are none-too-happy about it. How exactly DOES one coax Anna Wintour out of her bat cave to a birthday party for their houseboy? I mean, that is some fucking pull.

Anyballs - the whole thing makes me LOLZ a lot.

So maybe I wouldn’t want to enter into a contract with an older gay gentlemen whereby I have to undergo plastic surgery to replicate a younger him… but there is something to this ‘kept’ thing. I think Camille Grammar has had the perfect life…

She started out dancing to hot late-80’s/early-90’s beatz on Club MTV (a show that I was THOROUGHLY obsessed with when I was a sexy gay kid), married super-rich to TV’s Frasier and is living out her Lunesta-popping 40’s in style as the Real Housewife du jour. The world is her oyster. Mazel Tov to you, Camille.

But mainly, I just wish I was on Club MTV for SUPER OBVIOUS REASONS.

—- Aj

*Credit to Heidi Brander, as most things are.

So oh brother, I have to go to Oakville tonight to do one of these wretched co-feature shows to an audience of 20 people. People from Oakville, who, I’m fairly certain range from indifferent to unfavorably about the act of laughing. I actually believe that.

A fistfull of laughing-impaired people are bad enough for 2 minutes, let alone 40 minutes. And it’s almost de rigeur at this point that it’ll be the case. Every one of these one-nighters have gone the exact same way: we get there at the half-hour call time, and there are two mousy girls sitting with each other feasting on the pub-fare pigswill of their liking, and it looks like “YES! The show is canceled! Give me my money and see you never, fuckers!”

Then, at 10-to, another batch of people trundle in… “Still good… still good… we need 15 or else no show!”… THEN, some bizarre threesome of people with mullets scuttle in - often it’s two guys and a girl, rarer two girls and a guy - whom I’ll always look at from the back of the room before I go on, look at the other comic I’m with, and mime shooting myself in the head, but then when I’m on stage, talk to, and they’re always super nice and good-humoured… I’ll never stop judging them, though… anyway, so now it’ll be 7:59 and there are 13 people there and it’s like “SHIT! Two more people and we have to do the show!”… and we hold the doors for 5 minutes, and at that stroke of 8:05, a party of 6 come in and we are unambiguously over 15 paying audience members and fuck-me-in-the-face, we have to do a show…

And because I don’t drive, I always go on first and effectively host for 40 minutes.

Tonight, because it’s still early in the year, I’ll absolutely ask various people what their New Years’ resolutions are… and invariably, some douche-whore will say “to see funnier comics”… and inevitably, I’ll respond by saying “that’s funny, because one of my New Year’s resolutions is to stop playing shows for mouth-breathing goons, so I guess neither of our 2011’s are going too swimmingly right now, huh fuckface?” Then I’ll swallow the vommit in my mouth and tell a solid 20 minutes worth of dick jokes and get the fuck offstage…

I’ll probably wile away the time while the other dude is on by going on Grindr… The Yuk Yuk’s is right up the road from Sheridan College, which nests countless bored Musical Theatre dudes, and should be a welcome change of scenery from the same fucking faces I keep seeing from my Riverdale location, who, I am sorry to say, are faaaaar from boner-inducing…

Anyway - tonight’s poised by at least 80% THE WORST… may the power of Elayne Boosler be with me…

—- Aj

PS - I’m extraordinarily disappointed, because upon closer inspection of this photo, La Boosler is indeed wearing a top. I thought she was topless. On the plus side, the box that’s obscuring her bosom says “Toronto” on it, and that’s where I live.