Seattle International Comedy Tryouts!
This is my second year trying out for this comp! Yaaaaaay.
Postscript: about a third of these people are still doing comedy, one is dead, and three are pretty successful!
Category: seattle
Dreams Come True at Bumbershoot!
Seattlites, I stand before you proclaiming that this year’s Bumbershoot comedy line-up will be not only good but great.
I have been afforded the opportunity to join my favoritest talk show ever, the Famous Mysterious Actor show, alongside Billy Wayne Davis! I will be there at the Comedy Theatre West, The Vera Project Stage, for a wonderful show that starts at 1:15 with candy and screaming. Please join me!
A Stranger quote from the ravishing and hilarious Lindy West:
Famous Mysterious Actor Show
The Famous Mysterious Actor, host of the hilariously surreal late night talk show parody known as The Famous Mysterious Actor Show, performs in what appears to be a Mexican wrestling mask, soiled army parka, and black fright wig. He was not born to fame, but is more than willing to thrust it down your throat.
Lindy West on The Famous Mysterious Actor
The very funny Lindy West wrote blurbs for all the comedy events at Bumbershoot, I particularly liked her take on FMA.
FAMOUS MYSTERIOUS ACTOR
The Famous Mysterious Actor is a frightening specter. It has long hair, like a woman, or a hippie. It has a high-pitched voice, like a woman. Or a wild bird of some kind that speaks human language. It has a thing about Pixi Stix, like most women, and it wears a mask like Eric Stoltz in Mask or Jim Carrey in Look Who’s Masking Now. Or a Mexican. It is very mysterious. It comes from Portland. LW
48 Hours With Eddie Izzard and Eddie Brill
I am happy to report I got to see my hero, Eddie Izzard, do a show in Seattle last weekend. I was surprised that the ever-helpful Seattle Stranger curiously promoted the (sold-out) show as being titled “Work in Progress”, as it actually was a work in progress. No merch, no tour, no makeup or Uma Thurman breasts (which Wikipedia claims his Sexie rack was modeled from). This set had ramblings about history, language, war, 300, sharks, Wikipedia, Alien, and a fly that hit him in the face onstage. If it sounds like established Eddie, it is, but with new directions, ideas and punchlines, and further honing of his own Eddie-ness.
He got a little upset at the PNW tendency of the crowd to scream “WHOO!” at random times, “stemming his flow”, but I hope that he understood on some level that we are just so filled with love for him that it occasionally escapes our bodies with a high-pitched “woo” noise. I was so excited that I didn’t have to fly to El Lay to see one of these, I didn’t mind driving from Portland and back in 24 hours.
I had to get back to town to do a comedy workshop with the guy who books for Letterman, veteran comedy scenester Eddie Brill. It was super-great and educational, and he told me about visiting a comedy club that Eddie Izzard ran in London, which may be called Screaming Blue Murder, and I didn’t know ever existed. After spending the day working on my act with him, I now feel free to drop his name at every opportunity. Example: “Well, as my good personal friend Eddie Brill, Letterman’s comedy booker, says: I’d love a Grande Soy Latte.”
Update: A couple of years later, Eddie Brill lost his job booking for Letterman because when asked why there had only been 8 female comics in the history of the show, he said that those were the only women who were funny. He did hundreds of these comedy workshops, and none of those comics ever got booked on Letterman. Later, Letterman retired, one day we will all be dead, etc.
Sakura-con 2007- A Spy in the House of Nerd
The author as sad dolly.
I am back from adventure at the 10th Sakura-Con in Seattle, where I witnessed glomping, filking, and cosplay.
Costume Overview:
I have mixed feelings about discussing an anime convention, because on the one hand, it’s just nerds trying to lose their virginity while dressed as Japanese manga characters. On the other, there are too many horrors to go undocumented. It is filled with teenagers dressed as their favorite anime and videogame characteres, and I don’t know any of them, but you see the same ones over and over and eventually develop opinions about whose are better. It’s like Halloween, if there were only ten options for things to be. The Sailor Moon population alone could fill a city bus. My favorites were an adorable Black Sailor Moon who knew Para Para Paradise dances, and a boy Sailor Moon, who left and came back at 1AM dressed as a rubber nurse.
There were a lot of Marios, but I think this one was the best. There was a little-kid team Mario and Luigi, and their mother was dressed as the princess, which I found disturbing in an Oedipal manner. Or Jocastan, as the case may be.
I’m assuming that this is a cosplay of Mana of Malice Mizer, the “Queen” of Gothic Lolita. He was giant, and had large shoes, and liked having his picture taken.
This is what we call a high-commitment costume. I don’t know what it is, but she was not going to speak, eat, drink, or have feeling in her hands for the day, but she looked fantastic.
Awesome bloody nurses from Silent Hill. I don’t mean it in the English slang sense. I mean they’re covered in blood.
The most popular option appears to be making a costume at home of your favorite character, and if you have a ridiculously oversized weapon, so much the better. Duct-taped and foil covered blades abound. If you have nothing in particular in mind, you can dress as a little Gothic Lolita dolly, but if you can’t get that together, you can just throw on a kimono and cat ears and call it a day. If you are dressed as a gothic lolita, other Lolitas will recognize you as one of them, and they will give you candy and tell you where stuff is.
The adorable fourteen year old on the right told me she was in love with a guy dressed as Jack Sparrow, (left) and that she had been to a doll meetup, where you introduce your doll to other dolls.
Fun Facts:
There is roughly a 30% overlap between Anime watchers and Furries.
Attendees at the rave, Club Sakura, can’t dance to anything below 240 BPM, because they are limited to jumping up and down.
A casual attendee might think that they would enjoy singing karaoke, but it will all be in Japanese, so give up. I sort of know the Ranma 1/2 song, and that’s not gonna cut it.
Dance, Dance, Revolution goes 24 hours a day, which is the only way to be sure you’ll get a turn.
People will line up to play console games that they played at home yesterday, because they can do it with other people.
Otaku, or obsessive nerd, is not an insult- it’s a goal.
Any 24 hour nerd event will degenerate into games of Hearts eventually.
Kid Whatever rules Club Sakura.
50% of people attending Cosplay events in their teens will be going to S&M conventions in their forties.
Dancing doesn’t count if it doesn’t involve glowsticks.