I somehow missed last month’s Doug Benson Interruption at Largo, so I was intent on attending this go-round. I hadn’t been to Largo since the last Paul F. Tompkins Show before Paul packed up and left us all for the big city. Show was listed as $20 so I thought it would be in the big room and I didn’t make a reservation. It was in the Little Room, a nice, intimate venue that’s a good showcase for the Interruption’s casual vibe. I am glad I got there early because the room would pretty much fill up chairwise (a woman I didn’t know got seated next to me, so in a way it was like being back at the old Largo as you wait for the show to start while not looking at someone 18 inches from you). I recommend making a reservation if you go next month.
Show was listed to start at 9 and about 9:05 Belle & Sebastian’s “I’m a Cuckoo” ended and when nothing came on after it the room quieted down expectantly. It was a really good crowd, and was probably more of a Largo crowd (thirtysomethings with $20 bills in their pockets) than a UCB audience (stupid beards). Some ’60s-sounding ska song that Largo probably has every copy of came on and Doug walked up to the mike to applause and a muffled intro from Largo’s general manager. Doug said that he would like to do that again – I thought because you couldn’t hear his name – but he said it was because “they” probably couldn’t get clearance for the music, and he would explain that in a minute. So he left and walked back up to even louder applause.
It turns out, Doug and Graham Elwood were accompanied by a video crew that was taping their two-city tour (Doug got mock defensive over it being a two-city tour) for what sounds like a special or DVD. Because of that, I’m going to keep the rundowns of Doug and Graham’s sets to a minimum so as not to spoil what should be a great program that I’m sure will be a big draw for ASTers. Doug, later in the show during Graham’s set, explained that the taped product – I really wish I knew what to call it – would intercut between them having their adventures and the two recounting them on stage.
I also should explain to those who have never been to an Interruption, the format works as follows: Doug puts together a lineup of funny people who come up to do their acts, and Doug asks questions and makes comments as they perform. Instead of being a stop-and-go affair, it’s more like a conversation between two (or more) funny people, and the talk can stray far away from the original premise to different topics. That’s why in recounting this it’s very hard to remember actual punchlines, because there often aren’t any. It’s always a great show, and always very funny with the digressions and the jumping from topic to topic making it simultaneously casual and excitingly spontaneous.
If there was one overall topic binding the evening together, it was Twittering. This first came up in Doug’s set after he said that he loved word play and that fans of his Twittering would know that. One of his Twitter fans was there, a man whose Twitter handle is Camp Rosenberg. Camp (Doug thought Camp wouldn’t be such a bad name for a person) was one of the other main topics of the night.
Like I said, I am going to pretty much skip Doug’s set, except for:
He threw out some title ideas for the taped tour, two that had to do with “Rolling,” and “The High Road.” The response to the latter had Doug saying he thinks that’s going to be the name.
Doug took a seat on a piano bench, appropriately next to the piano, and brought up Steve Agee. Some highlights of his set were:
He brought up a reference Doug made to “Wolverine,” and said he used to have a roommate that was really into comic books and played an X-Men videogame on the Xbox 360 a lot. Steve said he’s OK with comic book nerd culture but his roommate was so into it he couldn’t pass up needling him. In the X-Men game, different X-Men characters are unlocked as you clear different levels, so Steve would repeatedly ask if Popeye had been unlocked yet. This would always get a rise out of his roommate.
And speaking of comic books, Steve said he had gone to the local library to get away from the distractions of his home (TV, porn) and write. While at the library, he ran into a trio of oddballs, each of which he cell-phone photographed and Twittered about. One of them I just can’t recall, but of the two others, one was a man who apparently went there to sleep, and snore loudly, and the other one was a guy who sat down with a Buffy comic book with a disturbingly large grin on his face. He also was photographed and Twittered on. Steve then said he was surprised to get a response of “Who is reading a cool comic book and who is an ass?” (Doug at this point asked Steve if that was Diablo Cody, and that didn’t appear to be a joke. Steve said it wasn’t Diablo Cody.)
I want to stop here and give Steve and the other comics props for never once saying “tweet” or “tweeting.”
Doug said it was like the David Lynch library. This prompted them both to talk about Lynch. Doug brought up Lynch’s great comic that the director started at the LA Reader, The Angriest Dog in the World. Steve talked about driving past Sunset Tower Records and seeing Lynch out front with a cow. They thought it must have been a promotion for “Inland Empire,” and Doug thought the promotion made about as much sense as the film.
Steve also suggested a title for Doug and Graham’s tour recording, “My Way Is the High Way,” and said they should make the word “High” out of smoke.
Up next was Moshe Kasher, who started off talking about his new haircut, the Gitler, which stands for gay Hitler. (It’s kind of hard to describe, and after looking at photos of him online today, I would say it looks longer on the top and shorter on the sides than usual, with the long top brushed to the side.) The bit was really more about asking someone to cut his hair like Hitler’s. Doug said it would be helpful to be at a barbershop because you could take a little black comb, cover it a bit with your hand and place it over your lip like a Hitler ’stache. “Remember this guy?”
The Hitler talk prompted Moshe to ask Camp Rosenberg if his name were some kind of Holocaust joke, and followed up by noting that camps play big parts in the lives of Jews (that drew a bit of a groan from the crowd, but I think he was going for a two-fer that also referenced the East Coast practice of Jewish kids going to camp for summer).
Doug and he went back and forth, and Moshe referenced “Downfall” and asked Doug if he had seen it. Doug hadn’t, but he had seen “Valkyrie,” and that sparked talk of Tom Cruise. Moshe said that after being the biggest movie star in the world, he can’t imagine what could ever satisfy Cruise, and thinks the actor won’t be happy until his religion is renamed Tom Cruise’s Scientology.
Moshe had a lot of good spots just reacting to the crowd, and had a really nice moment when one of his remarks was punctuated by a well-timed loud but brief siren blasting by outside. (Doug thought it must have been the world’s fastest ambulance.)
Moshe also asked Doug point blank if he gets pussy (Moshe being intentionally vulgar) offered to him the same way he gets offered weed. And Doug told a story that will hopefully be in his tape-movie-show-tour-travelogue. Sorry.
Rob Huebel came out next and actually drew the large stool on stage over and sat down right next to Doug. Doug was surprised and thought that it was rare for two people to be sitting like that on stage and not have guitars and not be doing folk songs. Rob said he wanted it to be like they were both sitting on an airplane. Doug was much lower than Rob so he said it was like they were on an airplane with uneven seats. Rob responded it was like that time they were on that airplane with a sidecar.
This set would be really hard to capture accurately because it was a part of the show where the two of them covered a lot of ground talking about different topics. It was all very funny and included:
Rob, whose dad was a pilot, had never had sex on a plane but had masturbated on a plane. He thinks that was partly due to that when he was younger there were porn mags at airport stores.
Rob has been to (at least two) autograph conventions. One where the guy who played Jason in “Friday the 13th” crushed a young fan’s heart by insisting on getting paid 20 bucks. At another, Rob met Rip Taylor, who gave him a moustache-shaped piece of white chocolate on a stick and also posed for a photo in which he turned on his supergay face right before the picture was taken.
Rob said that he and Paul Scheer have been going to shitty movies and Twittering about them while they are playing (he said they sit way in back to not disturb anybody). This somehow got to some executives at Paramount who asked the two to come and Twitter during a screening of the new “Star Trek.” Rob and Paul said that “Star Trek” looked good and the point wasn’t to Twitter during good movies. So instead they were offered a chance to host a screening of the movie. At the screening, Rob and Paul did a sketch with Rob as a Paramount executive and Paul was a rude angry guy in the audience. Despite all the clues that the two were doing a sketch, including Paul being miked, some people thought that it was real and were freaked out by the rude guy in the crowd. Rob said that after the screening, people came up to congratulate him and Paramount, and to apologize for that crazy guy in the audience.
Graham came out next and I will stick to my mum’s the word policy except to say:
All of the technical equipment remained upright through Graham’s set.
Graham and Doug talked about two gruff characters they ran into on separate occasions on their trip, and Graham pointed out that despite their aggressive rudeness, both agreed to sign waivers, but signed them as if by giving their approval they were somehow sticking it to Doug.
At one point, Graham and Doug were just going back and forth and then just started making noises at each other (“Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnh”) that they held for a really long time. They said that’s what the film crew gets to listen to for nine hours when they are in the car with Graham and Doug.
Last up were the Sklar brothers, Jason and Randy.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sketchartists/121980965/
Jason talked about now that he has a young daughter, he gets what he calls “baby brain” at times. He was watching the credits roll after “United States of Tara” and when he saw the name of Diablo Cody (unintentional callback) he went off an angry rant that some 14-year-old was allowed to write a show for Showtime and he isn’t. He explained that he had somehow flip-flopped Diablo Cody into Dakota Fanning. And when he realized what he had done, he stayed angry at Dakota for being so precocious that he would actually think that her writing an episode of “Tara” would be possible.
The Sklars have a Twitter account, and said that writing short little quips isn’t their bag. They also explained that their stand-up is them introducing a premise that they then take and perform as a sort of sketch. (I have to admit I can’t recall any of their Twitter jokes, but I wanted to include their description of their performance style.)
The brothers Sklar closed the show with the help of Graham, who all did dueling Johnny Carsons talking about upcoming guests who were basketball stars of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s who would perform unusual sex acts. Each of them took turns, and while I can’t remember any of the sex acts that were named, I think one was “an Eiffel Tower,” some of the players referenced were Thunder Dan Majerle, Artis Gilmore, Tree Rollins, Nate “Tiny” Archibald, and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and Ralph Sampson (a two-fer).
Then the show concluded and I returned to my car, which was parked for free at a metered space across the street in front of a gentleman’s club, where a group of LAPD officers, including a police photographer, were gathered.
They were there to verify that some noise-abatement construction had been done in the club as part of a complaint settlement with neighbors. Not a single person had been killed.
The End
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