In Search of a Good Laugh

By PAUL BROWNFIELD

May 4, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The other day I logged on to the Web site https://www.mediatrip.com, selected the prompt for a show called “No Drink Minimum,” downloaded a free copy of RealPlayer software and clicked on a comic named Boris. Boris, rotund, with a dry delivery, talked about how fat he is. “I’m tempted to just give up and pull a Brian Wilson,” said Boris. “Just get all fat, go in my room, come out and everybody goes, ‘Oh, he’s a genius.’ ”

Boris is one of the regular acts at Largo, the Fairfax Avenue club that on Monday nights buzzes with the best and coolest-seeming people in the high school hallways of cool, alternative comedy. As I watched Boris--and other Largo regulars, including Paul F. Tompkins, Dana Gould and Mary Lynn Rajskub--it occurred to me that this was a far more efficient way to catch a Largo show, given that parking in the Fairfax District is a pain and it’s hard to get a seat at a show, unless you’re a TV executive or have a dinner reservation or get to the club an hour and a half early, like some sycophant alternative-comedy groupie.

In the end, however, cybercomedy, for me, didn’t quite cut it. Ultimately, it was a bit like cybersex--or at least what I’ve heard about cybersex: not all that authentic, accompanied by a residue of guilt afterward. There is still something raw and unpredictable, and thus better, about seeing comedy live. For all of the faults of the L.A. comedy scene--a diluted talent pool, too many industry showcases--the pulse of a scene still beats.

The mainstream clubs are still breathing, though going to them too often involves watching comics play to the lowest-common denominators in the room. There are three Improvs--in Hollywood on Melrose Avenue, in Brea, and an impressive new room at the Irvine Spectrum, a great place to catch such out-of-towners as Dave Attell or Mitch Hedberg or a headlining pro like Brian Regan. There’s also the Ice House in Pasadena, the Comedy Store and Laugh Factory in Hollywood, and the Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach.

In L.A., you can also now get your comedy by ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender (who said funny is funny)? Once a month, the Hollywood Improv does the all-female Girl Genius Club, while the Comedy Store (whose quality and stature have dropped precipitously since Richard Pryor and David Letterman haunted the place in the 1970s) has an African American comedy night, called “Phat Tuesday,” and semi-regular Latino nights and “Clean Comedy” nights. The Laugh Factory does a Latino night, and the Hollywood Improv does a weekly African American night and Latino night, as well as a monthly gay night.

Women, particularly (Margaret Cho, Janeane Garofalo, Kathy Griffin), have thrived in the alternative comedy scene, which for close to a decade now has weaned comics off the cadence of the road guy. At times, alternative comedy is neither alternative nor comedy (discuss), but the scene has given rise to new voices, voices you can hear at venues as varied as Westwood’s Gypsy Cafe on Friday nights and the Italian restaurant Farfalle in L.A., which presents comedy on Wednesday nights.

No matter where you go, really, the acts are hit and miss (and more miss than hit). Better, then, to attack it this way: Find a comic you like, then follow the entertainer around the city. Here are several performers to get you started:

Todd Glass: Nobody’s better than Glass at articulating the career limbo between having a TV deal and not having one, between wanting a TV deal and yourself for wanting one in the first place. Like Andy Kindler, one of the godfathers of the local alternative comedy scene, Glass deconstructs his act while he’s doing it; he tells a joke, doesn’t get a laugh, stops himself, comments on the joke, on not getting the laugh, then continues. This is what’s known in the biz as anti-comedy--or, if you prefer, meta-comedy. Many of the alternative comedy people have been doing it for some time, but not all as well as Glass (and none better than Kindler, for that matter). Onstage, Glass is angry and he sweats, which may explain why the Glass experience is best enjoyed live: His energy and desperation, so immediate in a club, are neutralized through the prism of TV. Interspersed throughout his act are cheesy sound bites, a la those awful morning-zoo shows on the radio, making Glass a multimedia experience. Glass now hosts “Tuesdays With Todd” at the Irvine Improv.

Where he performs: Largo, the Improvs, the Martini Lounge in Hollywood, LunaPark in West Hollywood.

Laugh line: “If the people on ‘Jeopardy’ are so smart, why can’t they write their names better?”

Sean Cullen: When Cullen shopped his one-man show “Wood, Cheese and Children” at the Montreal Comedy Festival and later at the HBO Workspace in L.A., TV people noticed. Cullen has the outre intellect of an Eddie Izzard, the sensational British performer, though Cullen is larger, doesn’t wear eye shadow and is more preoccupied with things like Clamato, a particularly Canadian drink, mixed with alcohol, that combines the tastes of tomato juice and clams. Also memorable is his folk song “With the Food of Your Choice, I Will End Your Life Tonight,” in which, accompanied by a guitarist, Cullen takes suggestions from the audience (“Sausage!”), then improvises a death anthem. “I do a lot of stream-of-consciousness, but it’s kind of like a theatrical show,” he says. “A lot more theatrical than your average stand-up.”

A Toronto native, Cullen has been cast as part of the sketch comedy troupe on Ellen DeGeneres’ pilot for CBS--this after the network passed on several attempts to build a show around Cullen. What CBS apparently sees--a blue-collar shlemiel, a la Kevin James--doesn’t do justice to Cullen’s more highbrow talent. In Toronto, he emerged from the same club--the Alt.comedy Lounge--that spawned the sketch comedy troupe Kids in the Hall. These days, Cullen can typically be found at Largo or, less often, the Improv, though if the DeGeneres pilot is picked up, he may not be getting around as much.

Where he performs: Largo, the Improvs.

Laugh line: “I have two cats. . . . They’re called Trouble and Danger. We used to have two hamsters called Arts and Entertainment. But Trouble and Danger got at Arts and Entertainment one day and now we just have Entertainment with no real integrity.”

Judy Toll: Beth Lapides has been running the Sunday night Uncabaret shows downstairs at LunaPark since 1993. Lapides does a little performing at the top, is brassy and loud, then heads to the back of the room. You think it’s over, but it’s not--she’s got a mike, it’s live, and she knows how to use it. As the performers perform, Lapides chimes in with questions, comments, what have you. To Lapides’ credit, she’s built a solid following for a solid show. On a given night, you can catch former “Saturday Night Live” cast members Julia Sweeney and Kevin Nealon or Uncab regulars Henriette Mantel and Bob Odenkirk. But one of the best regulars in the room is the lesser-known Judy Toll. The comedian and TV writer (she’s put in hard time on everything from “Conrad Bloom” to “Alright Already”) has used the Uncab’s confessional atmosphere to recount her misadventures as a Scientologist and as a single woman enduring the hell of such dating services as It’s Just Lunch. Basically, onstage, her life is an open book, and she’s charming enough that you don’t feel trapped in her self-absorption. “Now I’m engaged to be married,” Toll says. “So that’s the new thing. I have these soon-to-be stepkids. Me and the little girl, we play abusive mommy and battered stepdaughter.”

Toll’s life could also be coming to a small screen near you, if ABC picks up a midseason pilot she’s written called--what else?--”Me and My Needs.”

“It’s about the most neurotic woman on the planet whose goal is to just be normal,” Toll says. “She just can’t do it. She joins every self-help group and cult she can find.”

Who should star as Toll? “Besides me?” Toll asks. “Joan Cusack or Molly Shannon would be great. . . .

Or me.”

Where she performs: LunaPark.

Laugh line: “My problem with men is that I have this deadly combination of being desperate but picky.”

Jimmy Pardo: Beware the comic with a hard-and-fast persona, but Pardo’s works. It combines the mannerisms of Johnny Carson and the swagger of a Rat Packer, but it’s self-effacing, not serious. Plus, Pardo has good diction, which is always appreciated. Pardo approaches his profession seriously, usually wearing a suit to work. The formal wear matches his formal tone, even offstage, in conversation. Ask Pardo where he’s next performing, and he says: “Let me check what I like to call my calendar.” Pardo (no relation to longtime “Saturday Night Live” emcee Don) is from Chicago, where he grew up idolizing Carson. In other words, he came to L.A. dreaming of hosting a show, not starring as a character in one. For this reason too, you’re better off seeing Pardo emcee a night at Largo than you are trying to catch 10 or 15 minutes of his set crammed into a showcase night at the Improv.

Where he performs: The Improvs, Largo.

Laugh line: “The last time I drank, I drove into a ditch, which doesn’t sound like that big of a deal except that I stopped at the ditch, looked left and right, then drove into the ditch.”

Kathleen Roll: Roll has performed her comedy at drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers. This is not a setup for a joke. “The audiences there are really great,” Roll says of her dates at the Tarzana Treatment Center. Onstage, her frozen expression belies a sharp wit, comedy that can derive from the vagaries of being a working comic in L.A., scratching out a living in low- or no-paying venues such as bookstores, art galleries, jazz clubs, restaurants--even, she jokes, the Museum of Tolerance. “I had to follow this Rwandan improv troupe,” Roll says of the experience. “A little hacky, if you ask me.” Roll, 29, from Arizona, moved to L.A. in 1996 after cutting her teeth in the New York comedy scene. What’s the difference between doing comedy in New York and L.A.? “The main difference is, you have to be really funny in New York. It’s not as cliquey. You’re not as defined.”

Where she performs: Borders Books (West Hollywood), Gallery 706 (Hollywood), Improv Underground Theater (Santa Monica), Farfalle (Los Angeles).

Laugh line: “I’m starting to wonder if my therapist has my best interests at heart. Last week I told him I was thinking about committing suicide. And he said, ‘Kathleen, actions speak louder than words.’ ”

Bob Marley: Marley is not only not the reggae star, he’s from Maine and among the best of the fastball-down-the-middle acts playing to the weekend rabble. Like other L.A. headliners, Marley does a lot of road work, but when he’s in L.A. you can find him up to several times a week at the Laugh Factory, slaying ‘em with well-worn bits about keg parties in the woods and his parents’ idiosyncrasies. It’s crowd-pleasing mainstream comedy, but you laugh. With his blue-collar, Maine roots (his father worked in a department store warehouse, his mother for the phone company), Marley, you could argue, is a sitcom-waiting-to-happen, though he doesn’t necessarily take that as a compliment. “I’ve heard ‘fish out of water’ a lot,” Marley says. “I don’t mind that term, but it typecasts me a bit. Oftentimes a fish out of water is a one-note joke.”

Where he performs: The Laugh Factory.

Laugh line: “You ever have to do something for your father just because you had your shoes on? . . . ‘Hey, you’ve got your shoes on, go pave the driveway.’ ”

No Time/Tenacious D: L.A. audiences exhausted by conventional forms of live comedy (stand-up, sketch, improv), can turn to two of the funniest acts in music--Tenacious D and No Time.

Tenacious D features Kyle Gass and Jack Black. The duo’s short-lived HBO series last year built a cult following, and its stock has risen thanks to Black’s turn as the belligerent record-store crony Barry in “High Fidelity.” Black has described Tenacious D’s music as folk-metal with “a weird nursery-rhyme quality,” but it’s something you have to see for yourself. They’ll be at the Roxy on May 11.

No Time is made up of Billy Portman, Robert Cohen and Chas Mastin, who together form a formidably funny white-rap trio, taking on subjects as disparate as Chuck Mangione, procreating athletes and war. “Bring it on, Slob-a-don,” is the refrain in “(We Got the) Whole Third World (in Our Hands).”

“It’s that fine line of parodying a genre while doing it well,” says Portman. “We’re not doing Weird Al rap parodies. Hopefully, the songs stand on their own.”

Where they perform: Tenacious D, the Roxy, May 11. No Time, LunaPark, Thursday nights through May.

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Comedy Spots

Here are some of the places that offer comedy in the Los Angeles area:

Borders, 330 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 659-4045.

Brea Improv, 945 E. Birch St., Brea, (714) 529-7878.

Comedy and Magic Club, 1018 Hermosa Ave., Hermosa Beach, (310) 372-1193.

Comedy Store, 8433 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 656-6225.

Farfalle, 143 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 938-2504.

Gallery Seven-Zero-Six, 706 Heliotrope Drive, Hollywood, (323) 661-0786.

Gypsy Cafe, 940 Broxton Ave., Westwood, (310) 824-2119.

The Hollywood Improv, 8162 Melrose Ave., Hollywood, (323) 651-2583.