Wandered out to Cap City Comedy Club last night. This is the first time I’ve ever gone to Cap City and been disappointed with the headliner comic. Maybe it was the scant audience, but I doubt it. I don’t think Brent Weinbach would know what funny was if it hit him over the head. I have a hard time understanding how anyone could think he was funny. Clever in his ability to shift from one characterization to another, but definitely not funny.
The two warm up comics for the Headliner were both better than he was. Tom Segura (whose name was misspelled on the Cap City website) should have been the headliner himself. He managed to riff on both Larry Craig and Lauren Caitlin Upton during his set. Being able to work current events into a set, the mark of a good comic. Brent could have swept floors after the show was over, about all the comedy he’s good for. “Some people criticize me for being a self-centered asshole.” That should have been one of Brent’s lines. It might even have been funny.
[The wife suggests that “egotistical prick” is a more apt description. Egotistical is a requirement for someone to think himself as funny as Brent must have thought he was. Him and the drunk female in the back. That made two people. I would say that the rest of us weren’t drunk enough, I know I wasn’t; but I think it would have taken more than a few drinks to make up the humor gap. I’m thinking of something more along the lines of 2 or 3 sharp blows to the forehead with a ballpeen hammer. Whose forehead to apply the treatment to; that is the real question.]
Speaking of something that might have been funny, Last Comic Standing has ceased to be amusing with the elimination of Amy Schumer and Gerry Dee. It might turn out alright if Lavell wins, but if the Jeff Foxworthy clone wins, I’m giving up on the show. Not that I’ve followed it for the full 5 year length of it’s run; in fact, this is only the second year I’ve caught it. If I had known it was on I might have watched it more regularly; as usual, life gets in the way of my television viewing.
It figures that the LA resident who grew up in Hickory (with the accompanying neck spasm) ended up winning LCS. Foxworthy has completely mined out the subject of southern humor as far as I’m concerned, making fun of his former fellow southerners while safely living in tinsel town. I really don’t have the stomach for another comic that mines in the same vein.
I think there’s a fatal flaw present in the way the final five are judged on LCS. All the other stages of the competition are judged by groups of people who have heard more than a few minutes of each comics performance; they get to hear the whole act. The final five you only get to hear five or 10 minute sets at best, and that’s what you are expected to vote on. I don’t believe it’s possible to judge a comic’s relative talent (once you get beyond, “can you tell a joke and be funny?”) based on a 10 minute set. Some of the early drop outs were funnier, in the 10 minutes that we got to see (clipped from the acts performed in front of live audiences) than the final five were doing 10 minutes straight.
[and what was the deal with that final episode? Carrottop? Who are these people? Might as well have brought on Gallagher]
As for giving up on LCS, it depends on what it’s up against next year. If there are some good shows coming out on DVD, I just might not have time for it.
