Comedy’s greatness is magnified by its malleability. All you need is a comic, a mic, an amp and you’re basically in business. An audience, walls or permission are garnish. Stand-up transforms the most unlikely places, and no place is more unlikely—and more Oakland—than the black-owned sex parlor: the Feelmore Gallery.
Continue reading "Oakland Comedy Shop @ Feelmore Gallery (6/17/2015)"
Full disclosure: I won this particular edition of Wheel of Karaoke… and I had a sublime time doing so. I intended to just hang out, hearing a buzz for the show since it was launched in August 2014 (originated in the Bay by Krista Fatka and Jonah Th’Mole before landing at the Make Out …
Continue reading "Show Review: Wheel of Karaoke (5/11/2015)"It’s t-minus fifteen minutes. The audience remains translucent. 49-seats of emptiness connects two pools of light. In the lobby Wigglesworth, nicest cyberpirate, watches the door with French bulldog, Wellington, lazily laying nearby. Across the moody, barren strait, a smattering of chattery, the loudest voice belonging to Bucky Sinister. Bucky has probably heard some offensive …
Continue reading "Show Review: The Business 4 Year Anniversary (4/17/2013)"
House shows are the best shows. Every time the elegant edifice of modern comedy is torn from it’s standard, swarmy platforms — bars, clubs, theaters — and moved to naturalistic, “acoustic” settings, the best of the medium infuses with the luxury of living [rooms]. They are a temporal hybrid of contemporary DIY, boundless work ethic …
Continue reading "Show Review: Fucking Funny (1/18/2013)"