Last month we ran a contest for The Comedian Who Matters. One of the prizes was to perform in my late show at the legendary comedy club The Comic Strip, where I host on Sunday and Monday nights.
The outside of the legendary comedy club The Comic Strip open since 1976!
Most comics’ goal is to pass at The Strip, which was the launching pad for legends like Jerry Seinfeld, Larry Miller, George Wallace, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Ray Romano and on and on and on!
Jeffrey Gurian from Comedy Matters TV, Jerry Seinfeld, and Richie Tienken, owner and founder of The Comic Strip!
I am also doing the book on the 35 year history of the club, which will be out this year, and have already interviewed about 30 of the biggest stars to emerge from that club.
For this contest, I got many great submissions, some international as well, from as far away as India, (that’s how far people would come to perform at The Comic Strip!), and it was really hard to pick the finalists, but I did it with the help of my staff including my producer Sean Mannion, and comic Corinne Fisher who is amazing.
There were six finalists. To make it as fair as possible, I left it up to the public to decide the winner. Whoever got the most votes was the winner and that turned out to be Brett Eidman, (www.bretteidman.com) from upstate New York.
Jeffrey Gurian and Brett Eidman at The Friars Club at a party for Jeffrey's book "Filthy, Funny, and Totally Offensive."
I happen to know Brett for a while and they couldn’t have picked a more talented, nicer guy than him. Brett is an award winning comedian/writer/actor who is best known for his song parody of “Shaft, Barack Theme” which was played on thousands of radio stations and CNN.
Comedy bits from his CD, “What’s So F#@k’n Funny?” released on the Uproar Entertainment label, are played regularly on Sirius XM radio. A graduate of The Second City,in Chicago, Brett has been seen and heard on several TV and Radio Shows including “Saturday Night Live”, “Law & Order”, and “CollegeHumor”.
Brett’s one man show “One Angry Man” just completed a sold out run in NYC, and deserves to be touring nationally!
Jeffrey Gurian from Comedy Matters TV with Brett Eidman at his sold out show "One Angry Man!"
He’s fantastic at doing character work, and is currently taking meetings with major agents and managers!
So tomorrow night, Monday 2/20/12, is the night when Brett gets to perform at The Strip.
The Strip is located at 1568 Second Avenue in Manhattan between 81st and 82nd Streets. (212) 861-9386 You can arrive at 10:30 and not have to pay a cover charge if you mention Brett Eidman or Jeffrey Gurian. Brett will hit the stage first after I do my opening.
I hope you’ll all come out and support him! This is big!
Al Martin’s Broadway Comedy always has a good line-up. On any given night you can expect to see names like Mike Vecchione, Kurt Metzger, Nate Bargatze, Ted Alexandro, and several others who are on their way to becoming household names. And every once in a while a major star pops in to do a surprise set. Such was the case when David Spade popped in to prepare for his Letterman spot.
David Spade onstage at Broadway Comedy Club preparing for his Letterman spot!
The audience is always thrilled when that happens, and David is always a crowd pleaser. He was on Letterman plugging his appearance this weekend at the Venetian Showroom in Las Vegas.
David Spade and Jeffrey Gurian of Comedy Matters TV at a comedy event in Manhattan!
Also at Broadway were two nights of auditions for this years Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal which will be the 30th anniversary. It’s the biggest comedy festival in the world, and everyone who’s anyone in comedy shows up. They even let ME come! (LOL) This year’s lineup should be spectacular!
The night I dropped by I got to see a really talented guy named Brian Scott McFadden. Brian is so talented! He does great characters, voices and can imitate so many accents! Whether he’s doing some nut on the subway going off about his canteloupe, or a brain-damaged boxing coach who repeats every other word he says, his characters are spot-on!
This night he talked about not drinking because he comes from a long line of Irish alcoholics being in Ireland. So when he went to Ireland, and told a bartender he didn’t drink, the guy became incensed! He yelled, ” What do you mean you don’t drink? How would you like it if I had sex with you in front of your grandparents?” To which Brian answered, ” Why is that even an option?”
His observations on what women want, and how trying to figure that out leaves men reacting like a cat following a laser pointer is brilliant, and I don’t use that word lightly! I tried to write some of it down, but it just goes so fast. One tiny example of the juxtapostions of what women want – “They want a strong willed decisive man, who sticks to his guns, yet who’s flexible, open-minded and can admit when he’s wrong.” All I can tell you is that throughout the bit he gets several applause breaks from the audience.
Brian Scott McFadden in the middle of explaining to the men in the audience exactly what women want!
Closing the show was Ricky Velez, who’s very funny, but wore his pants so low, I thought they were about to fall off. I tried to capture it in a photo, but I’m not sure you can tell. They would have been right for a man about 4’10″.
Comic Ricky Velez killing it onstage at Broadway Comedy!
The same Ricky Velez in a rare "pants shot", wearing pants for a man 4'10"! (LOL)
And coming up on March 1st, The Big Brown Comedy Hour, featuring NYC’s top Arab, Indian, Iranian, Pakistani and other very funny “brown” people!
The show is hosted by The Daily Show’s “Brown” correspondent Aasif Mandvi and features comedians Dean Obeidallah (Comedy Central’s “Axis of Evil”/“The Muslims Are Coming” upcoming documentary), Vidur Kapur (Fox’s “On the Lot”/Logo), Maysoon Zaid (On air Contributor to Current TV’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”), Hari Kondabolu (Comedy Central, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live), Mo Na (NY Arab-American Comedy Festival), Nader Uthman, (NY Arab-American Comedy Festival), Narinder Singh, Sameer Naseem, Fariaz Rabbani (NY Comedy Festival) and more, all coming together in a Jewish owned club! Comedy brings everyone together to laugh at themselves!
Broadway Comedy has a great fun menu as well as fun comics. Personally I love laughing while eating Nathan’s hotdogs and fries. They also have White Castle burgers, nachos, hot wings, Junior’s famous cheesecake, and even a double high chocolate cake for two. Fortunately the shows are so good, you laugh off the calories!
Jeffrey Gurian on National Lampoon Radio Interview Show With Brian McCarthy
By jeffrey | February 13, 2012
I ran into Brian McCarthy from National Lampoon Radio’s Interview Show recently at a party, and he reminded me of when we first met back in the 90′s.
He was kind of new in town, and said he used to see me at many parties and events with spectacular women, and always wondered who I was, but was too nervous to come over and say hello! (LOL)
Then one day he realized we had a mutual friend named Chris Walsch. Chris and I had a comedy sketch troupe that disbanded before we got to do any performances, but we were always hysterical laughing, and I wish I knew what ever happened to him. Brian asked Chris who I was and he told him to the best of his ability! (LOL)
Thankfully the ensuing years have given Brian more courage because the evening I mentioned above, he did come over to say hello, and we had so much fun reminiscing that he invited me to be a guest on his interview show. He and producer Marty Dundics do this really fun show, and I was a guest for about an hour.
Brian McCarthy, the host of National Lampoon Interview Show, showing that he has nothing in his hands, but still does magic with Jeffrey Gurian of Comedy Matters TV!
Brian McCarthy, host of National Lampoon Interview Show and Jeffrey Gurian of Comedy Matters TV, pointing each other out to the police, when asked "Who did it???"
You can check it out in the video below! We really had lots of fun!
I had a real treat last night. My friends from The Syndicate, and Laugh Button, Matt Kleinschmidt, Chris Elles, and Tracey Zucatti invited me to their client Robert Kelly’s podcast called “You Know What Dude?” at Gotham Comedy Club. I had even a better time than I expected.
"You Know What Dude" Poster at Gotham Comedy Club!
I first met Robert when he was doing HBO’s Tourgasm with Dane Cook, Gary Gulman, and Jay Davis, and thought he was very funny from the gitgo.
Jay Davis, Jeffrey Gurian from Comedy Matters TV, and Robert Kelly back in 2006!
“You Know What Dude” is not the kind of podcast you’d share with your parents, but then again why are you sharing any podcasts with your parents at all???
Not only did they have mics set up at a table for the podcast, they had a standing mic on the stage of Gotham’s Vintage Lounge, so people could also get up and do some stand-up first which I think is a great idea, mixing the two. Let people hear some jokes first and then the comic joins the panel.
(L-R) Robert Kelly flipping the bird, Bonnie McFarlane, Jeffrey Gurian of Comedy Matters TV, and Joe DeRosa at Robert Kelly's podcast!
The room was packed to over-capacity, (just an exaggeration in case the fire department is reading this blog post! LOL), and I wound up sitting next to Conan Smith from Denis Leary’s Apostle Entertainment, who works with both Robert Kelly and Joe DeRosa. The two of us were laughing our asses off!
Funny guy Joe DeRosa, who I happen to like very much for his distinctive delivery and sharp material opened the show and talked a lot about the age-old conundrum of whether a straight guy like himself, would rather have sex with a gorgeous female transexual who still had her male organs down below, or a female transexual, who became a bald, muscular tattooed male, but still had his female organs intact down below.
Joe DeRosa doing what he does best, ... making people laugh!
I think the gorgeous female transexual was named Billy Jaye and DeRosa proclaimed that he “would happily skip into a fire to blow Billy Jaye.” That kind of solved that problem, at least for Joe, if not for the rest of the audience! (LOL)
Bonnie McFarlane is not only a funny comic but a very empowered woman. She always winds up in “pissing” contests, (not literally! LOL) with male comics who feel the need to try and “reign her in” comedically in some way. ( No pun attached to the fact that her daughter’s name is Reina. mostly cause I couldn’t think of a joke!)
Bonnie McFarlane giving it back to Robert Kelly and Joe DeRosa who are definitely enjoying it!
To Bonnie’s credit she is NEVER intimidated, but instead goes on the attack and not only holds her own, but often comes out on top, which is exactly where I picture her when she’s with her husband Rich Vos! (LOL)
You gotta be a strong powerful woman to be married to Vos! And you gotta be able to take it when it’s dished out, as it often is when she co-judges The Lottery Show at The Comic Strip.
So when the guys accused Bonnie of self-sabotage, she struck back at Kelly by saying,” Bald people love to rape. It’s the same hormone that makes your hair fall out!” She followed that up with, ” If I was getting raped by a bald guy, I’d try a lot harder to get away, than if I was getting raped by a guy with hair!” You gotta be very hip to pull of a line like that, and she totally did!
What made the show even funnier was when Bob DiBuono came out and did Rich Vos! ( Not “did” him in the Biblical sense! Vos was in Florida, supposedly performing! LOL ) He did the best impression of Rich Vos that I ever heard. I closed my eyes and could actually picture Vos in the room. Everyone said he got more laughs than Vos gets doing his own material.
In the photo below, you can actually see a facial resemblance to Vos. When a good impressionist does his best work, he actually appears like the person he’s imitating. I think it has to do with how the speech muscles have to work in order to imitate a voice perfectly, and those muscles probably have something to do with a person’s appearance.
Bob DiBuono wearing a Rich Vos facial expression! (LOL)
That may explain this photo below when Vos tries his best to smile for a photo! (LOL)
Bonnie McFarlane with her husband Rich Vos who's doing the best he can to smile! Either that or he's doing his impression of a man with Bell's Palsy! (LOL)
The topper on this show was when Robert noticed Wil Sylvince in the room and invited him to join the panel. I was hoping I’d get to hear Wil imitate his Haitian uncle, and anyone who’s ever heard him knows what I mean, ” Why you, why you, why you say dat to me?” (LOLOL)
Wil Sylvince having a laugh while doing Robert Kelly's podcast "You Know What Dude?"
When I co-produced Kevin Hart back in 2010 at Westbury, in a sold out 2800 seat fundraiser for Haiti, along with Tony Rock, Wil was the MC, and the show was phenomenal!
So was “You Know What Dude?”, and at the end people lined up to have their “You Know What Dude” posters signed by the cast, and Kelly wrote, ” Dear Jeffrey, Thanks for all you do for comedy!”, DeRosa wrote ” Jeffrey you rule”, and what Bonnie wrote is just between her and I! (LOLOL)
I can’t wait to see it again, and maybe one day be a guest on it like I was on National Lampoon Radio last week, which should be airing today!
Chris Mazzilli and Gotham are always supporting one charity or another. Now comic/actress Alyse Kenny is taking it up a notch by producing a once a month show there, the last Monday of every month called “Alyse Kenny Presents…It’s a Charity Thing!”
Funny ladies Rachel Feinstein (L) and Alyse Kenny at Alyse's charity show at Gotham!
Each month will benefit a different charity. On the night I went down, the show was to benefit Rosie O’Donnell’s charity, Rosie’s Theater Kids.
It was a great line-up, with fun raffle prizes available to the audience, like VIP tickets to “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon”, “The View” and “The Dr. Oz Show”!
The show was hosted by Jimmy Failla, Host of Off The Meter Radio, and I always give extra credit to anyone hosting. Now that I’m doing it on a regular basis, I see how much harder it is than just getting up to do a set, so I give Jimmy props for keeping the show moving smoothly.
Jimmy Failla holding it down onstage at Gotham as the host of the show!
The show also featured comedians Rachel Feinstein, who never fails to make me laugh out loud, Nick Cobb, Matt Baetz, and Greer Barnes! And Alyse got up and did a set as well. She and the audience were thrilled when Jim Gaffigan dropped in unexpectedly and did a killer set, mostly on McDonalds.
Jim Gaffigan who dropped by to do a guest spot on Alyse Kenny's show at Gotham!
Jim tends to use food and things relating to food as his subject. He’ll always be known for his “hot-pocket” material. This night he went into McDonald’s and their fries, specifically the loose “bonus fry” we’re always so happy to find hiding at the bottom of the bag.
He said we wouldn’t know when breakfast ended if it wasn’t for McDonalds, and he also said that eating fast food gives you a momentary pleasure, followed by intense guilt, followed by Cancer.
Jim Gaffigan killing it onstage at Gotham!
Jim just had his fourth child, so he said he’s trying to be healthy. He takes vitamins, … and puts them in a drawer!
Nick Cobb said ” you know you’re broke when you know exactly how much money you have.” He also wondered about the sexual activity known as “69″! Being 6’4″, he said it’s a short man’s game, and wondered why anyone would want to do it in the first place. He wondered, ( and I’m paraphrasing) … “Who’s that short on time, to take the two most pleasurable things in the world, and combine them? It makes more sense to do each one separately! And he’s right!
Nick Cobb, who claims to be too tall for "69", onstage at Alyse Kenny's charity show at Gotham!
Alyse Kenny is fairly new on the comedy scene, and is an actor on ABC’s “What Would You Do?” She is co-writing and starring in the television pilot, “Pryor Knowledge” with Richard Pryor Jr., who just happens to be an old friend of mine, and who I sponsored for membership in The Friars Club. I actually took a photo of him in front of the photo of his Dad, Richard Pryor Sr. that graces one of the upstairs rooms.
Richard Pryor Jr., Jeffrey Gurian of Comedy Matters TV, and Rain Pryor at the premiere of Paul Provenza's The Green Room in NYC!
Alyse also just appeared in Eli Shapiro’s indie flick, “Ike Interviews God.” Her clean, fun brand of comedy showcases her skewed view of growing up the daughter of a shrink and cardiologist, her inter-faith marriage and many jobs working in television including as an Emmy Award-winning producer.
Alyse Kenny onstage performing at her charity show at Gotham!
She’s a go-getter and I’m excited about her, and even more excited that I will be performing on her next show on Monday Feb. 27th, which will benefit a charity called The Cure Is Now. You can read about them at www.thecureisnow.org
Come on out and support!
You can read more about Alyse on her website at www.alysekenny.com
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