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| Uncle Trent |
There are several ways to gauge the popularity of a comedian
at the Comedy Club.
The obvious
ones are the ticket price (more popular = more expensive; for the less famous it's sometimes free on Thursday night) and the
size of the audience (Judah Freidlander had a modest crowd on his Thursday
appearance;
Gilbert Gottfried’s
audience was sold out last Thursday night).
Additionally, the bigger the main attraction, the more
warm-up comedians there seem to be.
Judah was preceded by the host (a comedienne, which made a nice change,
who was originally from Brockport but current lives in Dubai...???) and an
additional comedian who was very funny - most of his jokes were about his
girth.
Before Gilbert took the
stage,
two comedians (including Uncle Trent, the 2013 winner of the club’s
Funniest Person in Rochester Contest)
and a host entertained us.
We had cajoled our friends Gwen and Leigh to go to this show with us, and the warm-up acts picked on them quite a bit!
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| Judah Friedlander |
It’s interesting to compare the styles of different
comedians.
Judah, who is on his "World Champion" tour, was extremely comfortable and interactive with the
audience, and very quick on his feet.
Anything the audience said they did, he did better. He informed us he was
going to run for President, and invited people to name an issue for him to state his position. His solution for homelessness: have them be 24 hour
toll collectors, since they're good at asking for change. Weed: he'd start with legalizing heroine because that would make legalizing
marijuana easier. His response to the person who asked about immigration
was that he'd deport the person after the show. I asked him if he missed
30 Rock and he said he'd never watched the show, but he’d heard it was good! Someone else then asked if he had slept with Tina Fey and without missing
a beat he replied "how do you think I got the job?"
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| Gilbert Gottfried |
Gilbert, on the other hand, didn’t converse with the audience at all, but
gave us an incredibly funny and “politically incorrect” show, and he did at
least respond to our laughter (or groans). His political incorrectness wasn't just a comment here and there, but long riffs on the Japanese (the reason he's no longer the voice of the Aflac duck...) and on midgets. And maybe that's part of the humor - a single off-color joke might be uncomfortable, but five over-the-top minutes on the same subject really is funny. When the evening was over and I was hoarse from laughing, we didn't wait in the long line for a photo with Gilbert, but Gwen did buy a book of poetry from one of the warm up comedians whose day job is as an English teacher in Buffalo. Well, they have to make a living somehow!
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