It's a slow road catching up on my cultural touchstones.
9:55 Comedy is doing their part to help me with their tongue-in-cheek staged readings of movies that everyone but me can quote.
Last time it was "Clerks" and tonight it was "Anchorman," set in that long ago time before cable when people believed everything they saw on TV.
Actually, I wasn't watching any more TV back then than I do now, so I never believed anything anyway.
Knowing the drill, I rounded up some "Anchorman" lovers (they're surprisingly easy to find) and made it to Bottoms Up in time to get the front table facing the "stage" area.
As people trickled in, we did some major damage on a spinach salad and a Karen Combo (ordered as much for its ricotta, sausage, spinach and onions as its name), adjusting it from a red to a white pizza.
While we ate '70s music played and I was told by those far more knowledgeable that a lot of it was from the movie.
After a brief delay to allow those stuck on a snarled I-95 to arrive, the splendor that is "Anchorman" began with the multi-talented Evan Nasteff as Ron Burgundy.
Evan's got a knack for playing smarmy and the role gave him carte blanche to do so, which was hilarious.
WCVE's theater critic John Porter had narrator duties, frequently cracking up at the shenanigans onstage (and cheering on the actor who played a public TV reporter).
From the get-go the entire cast was laugh-out-loud funny, as much to the people who'd seen it dozens of times as to an "Anchorman" virgin like me.
The guy playing Ron's dog Baxter gets a special nod just for his standout performance as a bi-lingual dog, not to mention his cute fur hat.
Not missing an opportunity to bring the script home, several lines about reporter Brian's Sex Panther cologne (it's illegal in nine countries, you know) had been Richmond-ified.
It smells like Shockoe Bottom after 2 a.m.
It smells like the Mars bar bathroom!
During what was apparently a seminal scene where Ron tries to impress Veronica by playing jazz flute, Evan grabbed a three-hole punch and played it throughout the room.
Hey, Aqualung!
Ridiculous as it looked for him to be blowing into a hole punch, it was the never-ending trail of little white paper holes coming out of it that kept the crowd in stitches.
There was also a crazy funny group singalong to "Afternoon Delight," complete with harmonizing, a thumb war between the two lovers and a reference to a Fotomat, which couldn't have meant much to most of the audience but was the site of my first job.
No, seriously, I was a Fotomate. But I digress.
During the big fight scene between Channel 4 news and Channel 9, the actors left the stage and instead we got a video screen showing an epic battle between warriors, complete with cheetahs, cliffs and shields.
Even the environs played into the story when required, like when a train went clanging by making screeching noises just after Ron Burgundy told the TV audience off and an angry mob gathered at the station to heckle him.
So once again, I have upped my cultural literacy thanks to a bunch of actors and comedians who barely had to look at their scripts because they knew every line so well.
Milk was a bad choice.
Got it. "Anchorman" was kind of a big deal.
Showing posts with label 955 comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 955 comedy. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Thursday, September 20, 2012
An Evening with Silent Bob
I figure at the rate I'm going, I'll be caught up on my cultural literacy by 2020.
The only problem will be that by doing that, I'll have missed out on the next eight years.
But I can't worry about that.
As part of my effort to catch up, I found myself at the unlikely location of Bottoms Up for a staged reading of "Clerks" by 9:55 Comedy.
It was a fundraiser for the Fan Free Clinic and billed as "a chance to see 'Clerks' as it was never intended."
How better to see it?
This is the group that regularly does stand-up at Pie and while I'd heard from a friend that it could get pretty hilarious, I'd never checked it out for myself.
Instead, here I was ready to watch a bunch of comedians act their way through the 1994 Kevin Smith classic.
About which I knew next to nothing, making me the exception in the room.
My partner-in-crime (for the grasshopper must experience the new with a worldlier one) and I took a table in the second row.
Settling in for the long haul (a day at a convenience store) we ordered a bottle of Camelot Pinot Noir.
Since it had been years since I'd been to Bottoms Up, I had no idea that they now did anything but their trademark thick crust pizza.
I saw that my namesake pizza, the Karen, was still on the menu and made a case for ordering it based on its ingredients: sausage, onions, spinach and ricotta.
Hell, I'd like that combo no matter what the dated woman's name was on it.
A large spinach salad with bacon and eggs tided us over and suddenly there was a clown called Vulgar standing in front of the room and removing his clothing.
You know, because that's what clowns do before "Clerks," it turns out.
By the time he was down to a vest, short shorts and fishnets, the reading was beginning.
He returned periodically to hold up signs setting the scenes ("catharsis," "denouement" and the like) and make some absurd commentary like, "Rage against the machine, bitches!"
It was laugh-out-loud funny coming from a man with a clown smile painted on his face.
As a first-timer, I had no reference point for the original, but I found lots to laugh about.
This group of comedians was acting their way through this 1994 script (when, I'm guessing, most of them were still in elementary school) like hilarious pros.
I was surprised to see a non-comedian friend in the production, although he's an actor (albeit one who'd stepped in at the eleventh hour) so last-minute line learning was well within his capabilities.
He played multiple characters, including one as a customer who reacted to hearing how many times clerk Dante's girlfriend had orally pleasured other guys.
"Thirty seven!" Dante tells him.
"In a row?" he asks incredulously. The room roared.
After our Karen pizza, we indulged in a brownie sundae while watching the travails of the mid-90s lifestyle in Jersey.
Not far into the reading, I realized that a lot of the people sitting around us were saying every line out loud.
Every line.
Things like, "Aside from the cheating, we were a perfect couple" and the recurring "Bunch of savages in this town."
Listening to the slacker jargon of a generation, I realized that I was seeing "Clerks" in a perfectly appropriate way: low key, D.I.Y and in a roomful of people who loved it.
Considering these were non-actors except for one, they did a surprisingly good job of pulling off the reading.
Dante was suitably passive, Randall's smarminess was a thing of beauty and the drug dealer Jay was so over the top cliched and funny as to be an act unto himself.
But credit goes to the entire ensemble because for a story that takes place entirely in a small store, it never lagged for a minute.
And at the end of the evening, $200 had been raised for Fan Free Clinic.
But more importantly, much more importantly, I'd finally added "Clerks" to my cultural touchstones, although, granted, nearly two decades late.
"I'm not even supposed to be here today!" Dante laments over and over.
Got it. Finally.
The only problem will be that by doing that, I'll have missed out on the next eight years.
But I can't worry about that.
As part of my effort to catch up, I found myself at the unlikely location of Bottoms Up for a staged reading of "Clerks" by 9:55 Comedy.
It was a fundraiser for the Fan Free Clinic and billed as "a chance to see 'Clerks' as it was never intended."
How better to see it?
This is the group that regularly does stand-up at Pie and while I'd heard from a friend that it could get pretty hilarious, I'd never checked it out for myself.
Instead, here I was ready to watch a bunch of comedians act their way through the 1994 Kevin Smith classic.
About which I knew next to nothing, making me the exception in the room.
My partner-in-crime (for the grasshopper must experience the new with a worldlier one) and I took a table in the second row.
Settling in for the long haul (a day at a convenience store) we ordered a bottle of Camelot Pinot Noir.
Since it had been years since I'd been to Bottoms Up, I had no idea that they now did anything but their trademark thick crust pizza.
I saw that my namesake pizza, the Karen, was still on the menu and made a case for ordering it based on its ingredients: sausage, onions, spinach and ricotta.
Hell, I'd like that combo no matter what the dated woman's name was on it.
A large spinach salad with bacon and eggs tided us over and suddenly there was a clown called Vulgar standing in front of the room and removing his clothing.
You know, because that's what clowns do before "Clerks," it turns out.
By the time he was down to a vest, short shorts and fishnets, the reading was beginning.
He returned periodically to hold up signs setting the scenes ("catharsis," "denouement" and the like) and make some absurd commentary like, "Rage against the machine, bitches!"
It was laugh-out-loud funny coming from a man with a clown smile painted on his face.
As a first-timer, I had no reference point for the original, but I found lots to laugh about.
This group of comedians was acting their way through this 1994 script (when, I'm guessing, most of them were still in elementary school) like hilarious pros.
I was surprised to see a non-comedian friend in the production, although he's an actor (albeit one who'd stepped in at the eleventh hour) so last-minute line learning was well within his capabilities.
He played multiple characters, including one as a customer who reacted to hearing how many times clerk Dante's girlfriend had orally pleasured other guys.
"Thirty seven!" Dante tells him.
"In a row?" he asks incredulously. The room roared.
After our Karen pizza, we indulged in a brownie sundae while watching the travails of the mid-90s lifestyle in Jersey.
Not far into the reading, I realized that a lot of the people sitting around us were saying every line out loud.
Every line.
Things like, "Aside from the cheating, we were a perfect couple" and the recurring "Bunch of savages in this town."
Listening to the slacker jargon of a generation, I realized that I was seeing "Clerks" in a perfectly appropriate way: low key, D.I.Y and in a roomful of people who loved it.
Considering these were non-actors except for one, they did a surprisingly good job of pulling off the reading.
Dante was suitably passive, Randall's smarminess was a thing of beauty and the drug dealer Jay was so over the top cliched and funny as to be an act unto himself.
But credit goes to the entire ensemble because for a story that takes place entirely in a small store, it never lagged for a minute.
And at the end of the evening, $200 had been raised for Fan Free Clinic.
But more importantly, much more importantly, I'd finally added "Clerks" to my cultural touchstones, although, granted, nearly two decades late.
"I'm not even supposed to be here today!" Dante laments over and over.
Got it. Finally.
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