|
|
|
EJ Takes a Stand By Keith Lubeley My friend Evan Jacobs is fumbling with his mini-recorder as we leave Climaxx (formerly Boots and Saddle), a nondescript gay bar on Christopher Street with an open-mic on Wednesdays. I'm eager to discuss what I’ve seen but Evan insists on reviewing a recording of his performance. “This is important,” he says apologetically. “It’ll only take five minutes.” As we walk up Seventh Avenue, I can hear the muffled din of drunken chatter through his earbuds. The evening had started several hours earlier when I met Evan at The Duplex, an old piano bar, also on Christopher Street. The open-mic at The Duplex is a much more regulated affair than it is at Climaxx where you basically just walk in and do your thing. At The Duplex, you sign up earlier in the day by calling the bartender and hostess, Poppi Kramer, who is herself a stand-up comic. You are allotted five minutes and your “stage” is a scant two feet by two at the narrow corner of the trapezoidal bar, bounded by tables and chairs and an old upright piano covered in a stained rainbow flag. Poppi introduces you and then you’re on your own, competing with the alcoholic conversation of gay men and women, transients and inebriates, locals and tourists, but mostly other comics like yourself, who are variously chatting, ordering drinks, letting their cell phones ring, or ignoring you as you try to make them laugh. Auden famously said that the one thing the people you love have in common is that they make you laugh. It’s not that there’s an absence of love at an open-mic; it’s just that love is sort of beside the point. The experience of an open-mic is a little too clinical to be purely delightful. The aspiring comics often seem less interested in laughter as an expression of joy than in their own ability to elicit it. Most of their material is new and untested, written earlier in the day, perhaps, and scribbled on index cards and crumpled sheets of paper they carry with them to the stage. (One woman had written her jokes in her Blackberry which she scrolled through during her set.) Like engineers testing a new jet, they want to see if the thing will fly. They don’t care if you love it, they just want to know if it works. This creates a curious dynamic for those of us used to seeing our comedy performed on television by well-known professionals buoyed by their celebrity. To say it’s uncomfortable is at once too harsh and too forgiving. Some of these folks are genuinely funny and talented. And some are so dreadful you feel you are watching them literally drown before your eyes. It’s actually quite breathtaking and sometimes even poignant. A guy from the Bronx called Fudge Fernandez took the stage at Climaxx, wearing a Mets jersey and a beret. He was affable, but his delivery was poor and his jokes lame. After several bombs, he scanned the crowd, at a loss for words, shook his head and said, “Comedy is hard, man.” Indeed. It’s a thought that runs through my mind every time I cross Times Square on my way from work to the bank and find myself accosted by aggressive twenty-somethings asking me if I like stand-up comedy. “Hey, buddy, you like stand-up comedy?” they say with forced amiability. And I, more embarrassed for them than annoyed, mutter “no thanks” and ignore them. This is called barking, apparently. Evan told me all about it. You stand on the street and corner people, hoping to entice them to an evening at Caroline’s or some well-known laugh spot. If you come to the club that night with enough “bringers,” you’re granted a few minutes on a big stage. Bigger, at least, than the infinitesimal space at The Duplex. When I asked Evan why he doesn’t bark, he looked puzzled for a moment and then turned to his friend and fellow comic Joe Powers and asked, “Hey, Joe, why don’t we bark?” “Because it’s humiliating,” Joe said frankly. “Yeah,” Evan responded, looking around the bar absently. “And it doesn’t work,” Joe added. “Who’s gonna say yes? I wouldn’t. Would you?” I said no, I wouldn’t either. “You see?” he said. |
Other Miscellany
Acting |
Evan Jacobs (file photo) |
To preempt this hostility, many comics attempt to beat the audience to the punch by enumerating their deficiencies and turning them into jokes. Self-deprecation is a characteristic common to all stand-up, but at an open-mic the humor is unusually merciless. It is remarkable, for instance, how many performers begin their sets with some variation of “Yep, I’m single,” or “So, I live alone.” A short Filipina comic, after mentioning she lives on her own, said that she “love[s] cockroaches” because “they validate my existence.” Talking about sex is also prevalent, of course, as are bits on poverty and lack of stability. “I love temping,” a chubby comic named Mitch said. “Because I don’t want to be tied down to a health plan.” The night we were at the Duplex, it turned out there was a crowd of students from a comedy class in attendance. Addressing them, a young female comic from the Midwest said wryly, “I think the first thing you need to learn is to drink more. Because all comics are alcoholics.” The comedian-heavy crowd laughed over their beers and a few hooted approvingly. Around nine o’clock, I followed Evan across Seventh Avenue to Climaxx where the open-mic had yet to start. There were about 15 to 20 people inside, mostly regulars who were crowded around the bar, perhaps only vaguely aware that they would soon be subjected to a performance. I hurried to the restroom and while I was using the urinal I noticed that the door had a large window in it. Evan stood outside the door and pointed at me. “Hey, check it out,” he said to someone. The guy pissing in the urinal next to me smiled. “Anybody can look through,” he said. “I love it,” he added. The bar’s walls were blond wood and bare, with a few signs advertising “Live Go-Go Boys!” Next to the small stage, there was a bunch of wilted balloons that read “Congratulations!” A little after nine, Jen, the open-mic’s host, a comic in her mid-thirties who was visibly drunk, took the stage and mused, “We all have a dream. I’m living mine right now: standing in a room full of men.” To which some wag at the bar—I’ll call him the Alpha Queen—shouted, “But we’re all gay!” A thin young comic named Matt Sky began his routine by telling everyone, “I’m from Minnesota. Anybody else here from Minnesota?” The Alpha Queen said: “Weren’t The Golden Girls from Minnesota?” In response, another barfly, across the room blurted, “They lived in Miami!” To which the Alpha Queen responded, “Yes, but wasn’t Rose from Minnesota?” A third patron chimed in conclusively, “She was.” Matt, having followed this debate helplessly, finally piped up and said, “I guess I’ll finish that joke now. If you want to jump in, feel free.” The open-mic at Climaxx is later than the one at The Duplex and the crowd is drunker, smaller, and gayer. Their ability to dominate a set must be harrowing for some of the performers, but to an audience member it’s pretty amusing. Later in his routine, Matt began a joke by observing, “I was at Denny’s the other night.” “You were not!” bleated the Alpha Queen. Matt sheepishly responded, “Okay you’re right.” He began again: “I was at Denny’s a couple of years ago . . . “ “That’s more like it,” the Alpha Queen said approvingly. When Joe Powers took the stage, he barely performed any of his prepared routine, instead getting drawn into a colloquy with a silly fellow in a leather jacket who was sitting by a payphone next to the stage. “Were you just using that phone?” Joe asked. “I was,” giggled the man. “I’m sorry,” Joe said. “But are you, like, from another time or something? I had assumed that this [the payphone] was, like, a piece of wall-art or something—a museum piece. Do you have a cell-phone?” “I do,” the man said. “So why were you using a payphone?” “The drag queen that got fired last night called,” the man said giddily. “You’re serious?” “Yes, I’m serious,” said the man, giggling. “He wanted to know where his poster was. I didn’t know. I told him it was downstairs.” “So you lied to him?” Joe said. The man was giggling uncontrollably now. “Yes, I did,” he said. “I told him to come by on Saturday.” During Joe’s set, Evan had been outside on his cell-phone arguing with his girlfriend. I could see him through the window, pacing back and forth on Christopher Street. “I was annoying her today at work,” he told me later. “The whole thing is bullshit.” When Evan was introduced, the Alpha Queen shouted, “Can we call him EJ?” Evan didn’t respond to this, but began his routine: “So, I shaved my junk,” he said. “Let’s see it!” cried the Alpha Queen. Evan continued: “Now, most people shave their junk because they think it makes their dick look bigger,” he said, pretty much directly addressing the Alpha Queen now. “I do it because it makes my asshole look smaller.” The Alpha Queen erupted in hysterical laughter. It was the most unfettered laugh he had indulged in all night. “Now that was a motherfuckin’ joke,” he said, approaching the stage. “I’m gonna use that tomorrow,” he said, and shook Evan’s hand. We left the bar shortly thereafter to the sound of a middle-aged woman accompanying herself on the guitar and leading the whole bar in a chorus: “Goin’ to hell, / Goin’ to hell / With a hangover to-niiight!” Later, on the uptown Three train, I tell Evan I thought his set was good, but he is dismissive, attributing his success to the largely homosexual crowd who, he contends, was “undressing me with their eyes.” Nevertheless, and despite his tiff with his girlfriend, he is in good spirits when we part ways at 96th Street. I tell him I’ll see him later, and I surely will. He is one of my easiest friends to keep in touch with. If I ever want to see him, I always know a few bars where I can find him on Wednesday nights.
|
