Laugh-to-Laugh

This past weekend, my evenings were loaded with live stand-up comedy -- I went to comedy clubs on both Friday and Saturday night.

Friday night was a trip to Comedy Works for my brother-in-law's birthday. He's a big fan of the comedian John Pinette. Perhaps you've seen this comedian on Comedy Central, either in a new special that's been airing in recent weeks, or a few years back in a heavily-played bit: "Nyquil -- may make you drowsy. Oh, yeah."

In any case, this was a fun guy to see live. He had a lot of good material. My one complaint (and I knew this would be the case going in), is that as a well-in-excess-of-300-pounds man, most of his act centers around fat jokes. Take any particular run of, say, 15 minutes of them, and it's truly very funny. But take his whole 45- to 60-minute act? I have to be honest and say that the fat jokes (funny though they were) wore just a little thin for me. It's a minor complaint, though, because he was really a load of laughs.

Though I actually preferred the comedian who opened for him. I had never before seen or heard of Tommy Johnagin, but I now find myself really wishing he was more well-known than he is. I'd like to see more of his stuff, but he's not big enough to have much out there. He delivers his material very straight-forwardly. It's not a high energy performance, but it's funny as hell. And it's nearly impossible to recount any of it here. For one, the huge laughs came so constantly that it almost became a blur afterward -- I could only remember pieces of what I'd heard. And second, most of what I remember really has to be taken in the full context of his act. For example, you wouldn't think jokes about Amber Alerts or eating babies could be funny, but in the tapestry of his entire act, they're hysterical.

Saturday night, I ended up going to a smaller comedy club in the Denver suburbs, Wit's End, thanks to free tickets from a friend. This is the sort of place where you'll probably never see a comedian you've heard of, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be any less funny.

The first of the two performers was Dan Swartout. I came dangerously close to "fat joke overload" with this guy, coming off of John Pinette the night before. But fortunately, this comedian had a very different style. He had almost impossibly high energy, and plenty of (pun not intended) non-fat content. He closed his act with his "One Non-Blonde" rendition of "What's Up," which I can tell you is going to stay with me for a long time.

The second of the two comedians was Mike Merryfield. Overall, I enjoyed this act more than the opener, but it wasn't a case of laughing throughout the routine. He definitely was the edgiest of all four comedians I saw on the weekend, with material that danced perhaps a little too close to the borderlines of racism and sexism by playing on stereotypes. But he also had the entire audience doing a ridiculous parody of a British accent at one point, so he definitely had some peaks and valleys.

All told, I had a lot of fun on both nights. If I had to make a competition of it, I'd proclaim Tommy Johnagin my favorite comedian of the four. But it's not, it was just a fun couple of nights out.

(I've decided the most applicable tag for this post is "theater," since I'm talking about live performances. This begs the question, now that Blogger supports tags, does it seem to you that every single post should have a tag? That's probably a debate for another time.)