Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Sarasota Laughs
Sunday
June 13, 2004
Scott Massey called me on Thursday evening asking if I wanted to go down to Sarasota on Saturday night to see Murv Seymour from Channel 10 perform his stand-up act. I never worked with Murv (he was hired there after my tenure at WTSP had ended), but it sounded like fun to me. I'm always interested in seeing stand-up comedy in person.
When it comes to doing stand-up, I admire everyone who has the guts to give it a shot. It can't be easy. You're trying to make people laugh, which may seem easy sitting on the couch watching TV with buddies on a Friday night, but doing it in front of an audience of strangers with scripted material is tough. Real tough.
The drive down to Sarasota from Scott's place in St. Pete took about an hour. One of the funniest moments at a red light that I can remember happened on the way there. Scott and I were in Sarasota en route to the club when we got behind a van at a stop light. Always perceptive, I noticed first that the van was adorned with several stickers. One thing that jumped out at me was the sticker for SarasotaScullers.org, which had originally read SarasotaScullers.com but the .com had been changed by hand to a .org. Both are functioning (but different) websites about youth rowing in Sarasota. I wonder if there was an error on the stickers, or if someone printed the stickers before securing the URL (never do that), or what. But it made us laugh. Then I noticed a "Key West, Exit 0" sticker on the right side, and of course any Key West comments must include a reference to the "Key West butt-tickler" moustache. And then I noticed the personalized Florida plate on the van that read "BAC MAN". I made a crude joke to Scott about that in conjunction with the Key West sticker ("I guess Backdoor Man wouldn't fit on the plate.") Scott replied: "I didn't need to see that!" Good times. So that had us laughing before we even made it to the comedy club.
The venue for the show was McCurdy's Comedy Theatre, a rather spacious comedy club (by comedy club standards) in a strip mall somewhere in Sarasota (Scott drove, and I really didn't pay attention to the directions.) Scott and I arrived about 10 minutes early. Murv put us on the list as his guests, so Scott and I made it in for free (plus, thanks to Scott going to the front and inquiring, we bypassed the line.) VIP up in there, big pimpin' style.
I didn't know what to expect from Murv... but he was very funny. Later on he told me that he has one hour and 20 minutes of material, but in this case he was forced to truncate it to more like 25-30 minutes. Which is too bad, because he has a whole spiel about his work in TV news. That I would've really enjoyed hearing. But he had good material with what he presented (his bit about having a recording available for sale on 8-Track made me crack up hard.)
|  | | Dave Attell (left) and Tom Rhodes (right) both received national exposure from their work on Comedy Central. |
The headliner was a guy named Tom Rhodes. I don't follow the world of comics all that closely... but damn, that guy is a riot. His comedy was slicing, sharp, and brilliant. I think it went over the heads of the audience in a Dennis Miller kind of way. Not to compare Rhodes to Miller (their deliveries and styles are different), but where Miller loses audiences with obscure word choices and lesser-known historical references, lesser educated audiences are prone to miss Rhodes' underlying social commentary and spot-on references to the way people tend to deal with taboos and what not. There were times in the act where Scott and I were laughing like crazy while the rest of the audience sounded like transplants from the crowd from the Undertaker vs. Undertaker match at SummerSlam '94 ("a stunned silence.") There's so much pop culture drivel that far surpasses superior work in terms of sales and ratings... that's, in a nutshell, how I saw last night's show.
Now it's not to say that Rhodes was misunderstood the whole time -- his bit about how his dad wouldn't let them turn on the air conditioning until it hit 100 degrees was damned funny to everyone. But point being, if you want comedy that will make you laugh you ass off *and* will actually have depth beyond the norm, check him out.
After the show Scott introduced me to Murv, and I ended up meeting Tom Rhodes (as Murv let him borrow his car to get back to the hotel or something like that.) It was interesting chatting with Tom about Amsterdam, as he lives there (he hosted a late night talk show there and now is working for the network that aired that show in doing a show where he gets to travel.) As someone who likes traveling, I can appreciate good road stories. But even some of his road comedy (like when he was talking about Thailand) went over the heads of the audience (and/or offended them -- one guy shouted out "That's not funny!" when Rhodes made a joke about the underage Bangkok prostitutes.)
Scott, Murv and I ended up at this place called Fred's, which was a really nice nightclub. It reminded me of Hyde Park without the pretentiousness. Lots of hot women dressed up nice, good music that wasn't unbearably loud, and a classy look and vibe. I met this girl named Carrie from Canada who told me some long story about how she ended up down in Sarasota expecting to have a job here, only to find that things had fallen through when she got here. For my first time out in Sarasota, I was impressed with what I saw.
Onto a few other matters... TBS has been playing up the debut of the off-HBO run of Sex & The City big-time. My Mom even mentioned it when she was down here last weekend. But with WTBS being a terrestrial broadcast station, they are going to have to censor it like crazy. And the whole thing about Sex & The City is that the show pushed every sexual taboo it could and had all sorts of juicy content that the puritans in DC would never let fly on broadcast television. Now if TBS could show them unedited... then we'd be talking. Hell, I'd tune in for those early season shows when the girls would get topless without care and before the big egos set in. But I guess I'm asking too much on that.
Tonight the Pistons have a chance to go up 3-1 on the Lakers. Do you know how huge this is? A win tonight and Detroit has a chance to wrap it up at home on Tuesday night. A loss and it's a best 2-of-3, with the final two in Los Angeles. And, wow, do I not want to see the Lazy L.A. Lakers featuring Karl Malone sleepwalk to a championship. And as much as I love the Mavericks vs. Kings up and down, 1980s style of basketball, I've come around on the Detroit defense and enjoying watching that brand of ball. They just want it more at this point. Here's hoping it continues tonight.
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are playing better baseball as of late... but I've discovered that what Murv told Scott and I last night about the D-Rays being one game above .500 is incorrect. Tampa Bay is 26-34 and in last place in the AL East. But, hey, there's always hope for D-Rays fans, eh? Whatever. I'm a Yankees fan and always will be. I don't have any vitriol for the Rays (I save that for the Red Sox, and a little for the Orioles), but it is fun to make fun of their struggles (their tagline of "Heart And Hustle" from the 2002 season is oft-used in conversations regarding them, especially when it's not on the positive side.) Besides, they traded away my favorite player (pitcher Joe Kennedy) in the off-season, so screw-em. Go Yanks!
I haven't been following baseball much at all (save for the Yankees), but in looking up that Devil Rays info I discovered that the St. Louis Cardinals are in first place in the NL Central. That's nice, though the team is inexplicably 13-15 at home and 23-12 on the road. Go figure, eh?
Finally, if you haven't already, check out Bill Simmons' O.J. Simpson article on ESPN's Page 2. It's a great read for those of you who remember the events of 1994-1995 (and, more frighteningly to me, for those of you who don't...)
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