Laugh Meister
Congratulations to comedian and friend Dawan Owens, who won last night's DC Comedy Showcase at the Improv. Dawan was kick-ass funny, best when making fun of himself and his imperfections, like his birthmark which doubled as a neighborhood map for kid games around the way, and his spectacular college football career warming the bench. The audience roared at his step imitation of the law enforcement fraternity, Fraternal Order of Police, beating the crap out of a victim (none of anyone's jokes were PC). But I cracked up laughing when all 6+ feet of Dawan fell to the floor imitating a narcoleptic Harriet Tubman.
The competition just couldn't keep up. Their jokes were so lame that the audience doled out the laughs: one laugh per person. The fat guys, and there were sevearl, made really lame jokes about anticipating Thanksgiving (aren't surprise and irony key elements of a good joke?). The others clearly didn't know their audience and tried to joke about life in rural Spotsylvania and NASCAR races. Right.
Oddly, and maybe I just don't know so much about the art of telling jokes, the porkers plowed on with their horrible jokes. Are you supposed to continue with a five minute joke if it dies within the first 30 seconds? (Watching them squirm was kinda funny, I admit).
For these poor souls, the stage quickly turned from a comedic Gladiator's coliseum, slaying us with laugh after laugh, to the town square humiliating the village idiot. Crowned laugh-meister of DC, Dawan scored a a host spot at a future show and advances to the finals.
A word about the Improv: the smoke will kill you. Though they say there's a non-smoking section, that really means there are a few tables between you and the thirty people who can't laugh without a cigarette dangling from their lips and killing the rest of us. Host Allan Goodman, himself hilarious with his potty/booty jokes, greeted us: Hey Smoking Section, Hey second-hand smoking section. He was not laughing. By the end of the night, we at my table had scarves and jackets around our noses/mouths like we were evacuating a fire. I definitely left about a year of good breathing at the table.
Congrats again to Mr. Owens, and to the losers, take notes.
The competition just couldn't keep up. Their jokes were so lame that the audience doled out the laughs: one laugh per person. The fat guys, and there were sevearl, made really lame jokes about anticipating Thanksgiving (aren't surprise and irony key elements of a good joke?). The others clearly didn't know their audience and tried to joke about life in rural Spotsylvania and NASCAR races. Right.
Oddly, and maybe I just don't know so much about the art of telling jokes, the porkers plowed on with their horrible jokes. Are you supposed to continue with a five minute joke if it dies within the first 30 seconds? (Watching them squirm was kinda funny, I admit).
For these poor souls, the stage quickly turned from a comedic Gladiator's coliseum, slaying us with laugh after laugh, to the town square humiliating the village idiot. Crowned laugh-meister of DC, Dawan scored a a host spot at a future show and advances to the finals.
A word about the Improv: the smoke will kill you. Though they say there's a non-smoking section, that really means there are a few tables between you and the thirty people who can't laugh without a cigarette dangling from their lips and killing the rest of us. Host Allan Goodman, himself hilarious with his potty/booty jokes, greeted us: Hey Smoking Section, Hey second-hand smoking section. He was not laughing. By the end of the night, we at my table had scarves and jackets around our noses/mouths like we were evacuating a fire. I definitely left about a year of good breathing at the table.
Congrats again to Mr. Owens, and to the losers, take notes.
posted by Rhonda Henderson at 12:37 PM
1 Comments:
this review had me cracking up at 1 in the morning. packed with the irony missing from the "porkers thanksgiving jokes" I wonder how many of them, Ms. Henderson can knock down on def jam. porkers, do more than take notes. take your craft seriously, lest you die a hodge-podge of honesty in dc blogger's review.
improv...i have asthma.
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