Review - Performance
Day 28 (338) – The Weekend in Review (pt. 2)
The comedy weekend started off when I went to see the ShadowBox Cabaret Lunchbox Show on Friday. I had never seen the ShadowBox show, but a guy at work at some free tickets, so I figured I’d check it out.
What’s interesting is that the ShadowBox embraces Rated R humor, they certainly aren’t catering to any children. The show itself is a mixture of sketch comedy and rock n’ roll music. The comedy is pretty solid, the actors really get into their characters and they had some pretty funny premises. The rock n’ roll music was also pretty good, though I didn’t recognize any of the songs. I’d like to see their evening show to really see how good they are, but if you have 2 hours or so for lunch, it’s something worth seeing (though the food is mediocre at best).
After returning to work for a few hours, I headed up to Miami University to join the rest of the Smarty Pants cast to help with Miami’s ImprovFest. North Carolina State was unable to make it, but Miami, UD and OSU came out and performed some hilarious improv. All of the groups did very well, with The 8th Floor “winning” (I put that in quotes because it’s not really about winning, it’s about making the audience laugh – which all of the groups did) thanks to some of the best “World’s Worst” scenes I’ve seen.
We wrapped up that show around 10pm, grabbed some food, and then went to see the Second City show at 11pm (they were at Miami for the night). They were great as usual, with some excellent skits (sorry ShadowBox, it’s hard to compare to Second City).
After that show the laughs didn’t stop as some of us went to Megan’s house and hung out till about 4am. Moran, Nate and I then decided it would be a good idea to drive back to Cincinnati, so by the time we got back and Moran and Nate finally shut up, I didn’t get to sleep till after 6am.
I slept in till about 11am, and then we all started to get ready for our trip up to Dayton. The Funny Bone show went great, we had over 100 people (ranging from little kids to grandparents) come out for the first Smarty Pants/Dayton Funny Bone Family-Friendly Show. During intermission, Lisa (the amazing person that we are working with at the Funny Bone) told us she was enjoying the show, thought it was a success, and was ready to do it again. That’s an incredible compliment considering we had another half of a show to go. So look for us to be back at the Dayton Funny Bone sometime in February.
The Funny Bone show finished around 4:30pm. Some of the Smarty Pants group went to UD to set up for the night’s ImprovFest, while Matt, Nate and I headed out to Beavercreek for a corporate banquet dinner. We had a little bit of time to kill before the show, so we went to the Fairfield Commons mall where we ran into some people that were at the Funny Bone show that said they really enjoyed it. (Note: Nate is an awful person because he watched a small child walk right into a sign, and rather than warn her about it he just chanted “Walk into that sign, walk into that sign” and then busted out laughing when she did.)
We arrived at the banquet dinner at 6:45pm. As we walked in in our jeans and Smarty Pants t-shirts, we noticed everyone else was in shirt and tie or elegant dress. We sat down to eat (they encouraged that we did) and then provided their entertainment as they finished dessert. The show itself was alright, I think I struggle the most with corporate shows because it’s hard to know where the line is and as Nate put it, older adults aren’t necessarily looking for “jokes”, they want to be impressed. We had some very funny moments but the show went a little longer than it probably should have.
We left the corporate show and headed straight to UD to catch the end of the ImprovFest. Our timing was pretty good, as we came in on the last game of the Championship, with UD “winning” after an amazing gesture by one of the Miami’s players (he willingly lost points by cursing so the home team would win). After a brief break, Smarty Pants, in addition to representatives from each of the college improv groups, performed some long form improv comedy… and it was INCREDIBLE. Every scene that was performed was hilarious, with everyone on stage getting into the act. There were so many great moments that the show could’ve ended 8 or 9 times. My favorite moment was when Nate got the entire audience to help him make a beat so we could have a dance off, and Kyle came out of the audience with his guitar creating some great dance music (amazing).
The show wrapped up after 11pm, and then a bunch of us went out to BW3′s to celebrate the hilarious (and successful) weekend. Moran performed a strip show on a chair, and I have to give props to Kevin as well. Moran, Nate and I then retruned to Cincinnati, and ended up hanging out with Matt and Laura as they came back to our place after celebrating Jim and Keenan’s birthday by bar hopping. As usual, it was a ridiculously funny time, and was a great end to a great weekend.
All in all the weekend was not only wildly funny, but it was very successful. If laughter really is the best medicine, then I should be healthy for a very long time, based on just this weekend’s dose. The fact that this came the week after a great comedy weekend baffles me that we can even be allowed to have this much fun, but it just confirms my belief that 2007 is going to be a great year for comedy.
