Last night a few us Laugh Buttoners headed to Broadway to see Jokes.com Live at Carolines. The show was part of NY Comedy Festival which has shows happening all week long at venues all over the city. We were seated front and center of the stage. Not a bad place to sit by any means, but it also pretty much comes with the guarantee we would become the target of some comedic moments at some point in the night. And that indeed happened, getting a few high fives, taking some jabs, and seeing probably too much of Bobby Lee when he decided to show the crowd his rainbow-colored tighty whiteys.
Things kicked off as Lee, the night’s host, bombarded the stage to some technical differences that didn’t really prevent him from getting things going or showing off his physique that consists of a pretty killer beer gut for a relatively small man. Lee kept the night fun in between sets from Joe Mande who, next to Aziz Ansari may have the best storytelling abilities when it comes into run-ins with celebrities. Morgan Murphy was up next and told some tremendously hilarious stories and some great observations about the smell the city gives off. It shows why she’s currently writing for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
Next up was Donnell Rawlings who delivered material about vibrators and managed to talk down then up racial stereotypes in his brief but hilarious time. Kurt Metzger anchored the evening and absolutely slayed by sharing his family’s recipe for growing your own Guidos from his hometown of New Jersey and exposing just how full of shit Kinoki foot pads are. Kurt Metzger is easily becoming one of my favorite people to watch work on stage.
Throughout the night, Lee was charged with asking all the comedians questions that were taken from Twitter submissions via the folks watching the event live. This proved to be a great addition to the show he would riff with the others about everything from helping visualize Rawlings’ “taking it in the face,” trying to find out if Murphy really had love for Paul Newman, discovering why Mande got into a Twitter fight with former MTV host Jesse Camp. And probably funniest part of the night coming from him helping Kurt Metzger put a heckler in his place which culminated with Metzger lamenting “Dude, you can’t really heckle anyone while wearing a sweater vest.” Which might just be the best advice we’ve heard in a long time.
Photos by Bill Shouldis
