I'm going to sting you, Winston Churchill!
Jun. 4th, 2006 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatYesterday evening, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bethje and I met in Philadelphia to see Michael Ian Black at the TLA. On the way down South Street, I observed something that I've occasionally seen at other times in the city (and maybe outside the city as well; I can't quite remember), which was someone getting out of his vehicle at a stoplight, in order to get something out of the back. The thing is, I've never known any of these people to actually hold up traffic by doing this. I know I'd never be able to time it so well if I were to try that.
The last time I went to the TLA, I parked way up at 2nd and Chestnut Streets, which meant a long walk. While walking there, though, I noticed that there was another garage on 3rd Street right near South Street. I remembered it and parked there yesterday, which made the aftermath a lot easier.
Anyway, Beth and I have now seen two-thirds of Stella. When we saw Michael Showalter a few weeks ago, the two other comedians he was touring with turned out to be hilarious. Not so for Black's opener, Rob Cantrell (no relation to Laura or Blu, as far as I know). I can't think of a single joke he did that DIDN'T fall flat. A good majority of his act was just him talking about weed, without really even making any real jokes. Michael himself was great, though. It's hard to describe jokes without losing the humor, but he did a bit on what the Nazis did right, and a riff on "Don't blame me, I voted for Kerry!" bumper stickers. He played off the audience a fair amount, and mentioned eBay, Craigslist, and MySpace. For his closer and encore, he read a few of his MySpace blog posts (after pointing out that the word "blog" sounds like a stool sample). I'm probably going to have to check out his page at some point.
We were sitting in the same place on the balcony as we had for the They Might Be Giants concert, and some really annoying woman was next to us. After Rob Cantrell's act, she said something about how he couldn't get laid. I didn't like him either, but I didn't know there was any correlation between a person's success in stand-up comedy and in his sex life. And when Michael was talking about how he saw fraternities and sports at college as an extension of high school, this woman loudly objected.
We waited outside for a little while after the show until Michael came out. He ended up talking to some people for quite a while. I was too nervous to say anything to him, but Beth got him to sign her Stella Shorts DVD. I'll leave it to her to say more about that encounter, should she choose to.
When we got back home, we watched the latest Bullshit! episode, which dealt with how people lie using numbers. There were some really interesting parts, like when the pollster demonstrated how he could get someone to give two contradictory answers through a careful choice of wording. Overall, though, I think it meandered a bit, and they could have said more about certain things.
There was also some George Carlin special on last night, but I didn't find what I caught of it to be funny. I remember liking Carlin quite a bit in college, and I even went to see him live. I've always preferred his language humor to his "everybody is stupid" humor, though. And I think I largely liked the language stuff because it was made up of the same kind of nit-picky observations I'm always making about what people say and write. No one ever laughs when I make them, though. Maybe if I were an aged hippie, they'd work better. {g}
bethje and I met in Philadelphia to see Michael Ian Black at the TLA. On the way down South Street, I observed something that I've occasionally seen at other times in the city (and maybe outside the city as well; I can't quite remember), which was someone getting out of his vehicle at a stoplight, in order to get something out of the back. The thing is, I've never known any of these people to actually hold up traffic by doing this. I know I'd never be able to time it so well if I were to try that.The last time I went to the TLA, I parked way up at 2nd and Chestnut Streets, which meant a long walk. While walking there, though, I noticed that there was another garage on 3rd Street right near South Street. I remembered it and parked there yesterday, which made the aftermath a lot easier.
Anyway, Beth and I have now seen two-thirds of Stella. When we saw Michael Showalter a few weeks ago, the two other comedians he was touring with turned out to be hilarious. Not so for Black's opener, Rob Cantrell (no relation to Laura or Blu, as far as I know). I can't think of a single joke he did that DIDN'T fall flat. A good majority of his act was just him talking about weed, without really even making any real jokes. Michael himself was great, though. It's hard to describe jokes without losing the humor, but he did a bit on what the Nazis did right, and a riff on "Don't blame me, I voted for Kerry!" bumper stickers. He played off the audience a fair amount, and mentioned eBay, Craigslist, and MySpace. For his closer and encore, he read a few of his MySpace blog posts (after pointing out that the word "blog" sounds like a stool sample). I'm probably going to have to check out his page at some point.
We were sitting in the same place on the balcony as we had for the They Might Be Giants concert, and some really annoying woman was next to us. After Rob Cantrell's act, she said something about how he couldn't get laid. I didn't like him either, but I didn't know there was any correlation between a person's success in stand-up comedy and in his sex life. And when Michael was talking about how he saw fraternities and sports at college as an extension of high school, this woman loudly objected.
We waited outside for a little while after the show until Michael came out. He ended up talking to some people for quite a while. I was too nervous to say anything to him, but Beth got him to sign her Stella Shorts DVD. I'll leave it to her to say more about that encounter, should she choose to.
When we got back home, we watched the latest Bullshit! episode, which dealt with how people lie using numbers. There were some really interesting parts, like when the pollster demonstrated how he could get someone to give two contradictory answers through a careful choice of wording. Overall, though, I think it meandered a bit, and they could have said more about certain things.
There was also some George Carlin special on last night, but I didn't find what I caught of it to be funny. I remember liking Carlin quite a bit in college, and I even went to see him live. I've always preferred his language humor to his "everybody is stupid" humor, though. And I think I largely liked the language stuff because it was made up of the same kind of nit-picky observations I'm always making about what people say and write. No one ever laughs when I make them, though. Maybe if I were an aged hippie, they'd work better. {g}
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Date: 2006-06-04 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 01:50 am (UTC)I had never heard of Blu Cantrell until I read this entry earlier this evening, then I went downstairs and was working on a crossword puzzle and GUESS WHAT ONE OF THE ANSWERS WAS. Hey, thanks for that!