Jessy Delfino's Blog

EATING IT and et al

YESTERDAY was so much fun. I started off the evening with my debut performance at Luna Lounge's "Eating It." It was a special event where fifty comics performed in fifty minutes, give or take a few minutes. Some of the highlights of the evening:

Andres du Bouchet went on the stage and looked for his notes for about fifty seconds, unable to find them. Finally, he did "find" what he was looking for - two middle fingers which he gave to the audience. Though it wasn't super ingenious or even his, it was very funny and adorable. Andres has a great show called, "Tuesday Night of Amazing Inventions and Also There Is A Game" at St. Marks Theater. It is a really great, really great show. Go and see it.

Roger Hailes, Nick Kroll, Andrea Rosen and Chelsea Peretti did a dance piece where they sort of gyrated on stage for about 30 seconds all dressed in white, then Chelsea turned around and had a huge "period blood" stain on the back of her shorts. Dark and funny and clever. I love Roger, Nick and Chelsea's sense of humor. I don't know Andrea too well.

Liam had a really cute sketch with Claudia, where she pretended to be a mail-order comedy partner, then just spent her part of the sketch trying to pick up Liam or anyone who would marry her into Americanization.

Amber Tozer did a phone sketch where she called a comedy hotline. "To hear a dick joke, press 2. To hear a really big dick joke, press 3." Then, the phone guy verbally assaulted her and called her a whore for wanting to hear a really big dick joke. In her adorable way, she called the phone guy a "douche." Amber is one of my favorite comics and people.

Seth Herzog did a character of a drunk idiot who was getting on stage. He was calling out to his friend that he was on stage and how excited he was that he was totally gonna fuck a hot chick and etc. He is so funny, and good at being loud, which is not easy to pull off.

Kimmy Gatewood had a cute sketch with her "dark side." Kimmy played trombone as her "good side" and her "dark side" smoked, called her names, told her to "lick it" and physically abused her, then let her fall on her ass in a trust fall. I enjoyed the cuteness of the darkness.

Shauna, Adira and Ann (Hot Little Pieces of Ass) did a number all dressed up in fifties dresses. They sang a song about how they needed to get fucked, but in a fifties-esque formula. Very cute. I love them all - Shauna and Ann are both extremely talented character actors and Adira is one of the most genuinely raw funny people I've ever met.

There were so many other great acts who I can't really remember right now, but the thing I thought was really great about the show was that all these 'typical' comics who normally would get up and tell jokety joke joke after jokety joke joke got to let their hair down and act out a little bit - trying out characters and sketches and alternatively weird bits that they didn't normally get to do in a typical comedy venue setting. I was very impressed with the creativity of them all, but I guess that is why they were chosen to perform on Eating It and why Eating It is heralded as one of the city's best comedy shows.

After Eating It I had to run over to Bowery Poetry Club to perform on The McGuffin? which I missed because Eating It was running behind schedule. I hated missing that show because it is always packed and the crowd there likes me very much. So instead, I performed on Show N Tell. Touching You opened up the show this week (every week they have a new performer open up the show) with his project Narcissist starring Kim Katzburg on vocals and insanity, as he says. She basically gyrates around on stage with her nose scotch taped up and screams and tells the audience to fuck her pussy. Though I don't particularly love the act, I do appreciate what she's doing and wish there was more weird shit out there like that. Rachel Trachtenburg of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players played the bells on Touching You's jarring homage to Laurie Anderson, entitled "Lou Reed's Cock." (Don't touch it, don't lick it, don't go anywhere near that thing....)

I had a nice little set at Show N Tell. I played "Sudden Change", my song that is not about menopause, then "I Think Of You", which is a parody about women who cut themselves, (when I think of you, I cut myself....and in the scabs I see your face....) then finished off the set with a little-performed ditty called "The Song You Wrote About Me" which is a song about how my "boyfriend" wrote a song about how much he loved me, then broke up with me for some random girl, so I planned to commit suicide to the song he wrote about me. A guy named Brian came and videotaped my set and interviewed me for an entertainment and arts based tv show he produces for WNYE - Channel 25. Jason Trachtenburg also performed, I always enjoy watching him because he is funny and he always seems to be acting like he's on acid, but I'm not sure. I like people who take acid. They are generally awesome people.

Other highlights of the show were Johanna Buccola performing a character who pretended to get confused on stage, and an actual real audience member went on stage to comfort her, also Rich Shapiro performed who's craziness I just adore, Milton Katz is funny and adorable always, the O'Deb's took a break to allow for "Big Mac" - Tonya dressed up like a cheeseburger, and Diane as Anna Nicole Smith to host the show. I love Show N Tell and recommend it to the world.
It's $3 and goes from 10 pm to 3 am. There is always a beer chugging contest, there is always a writing contest, (for example - name the O'Debra's new brand of douche - Some entries were "Guns of Brooklyn" and "Granny's Old Snapper Flush" - just a small indication of the creativity and originality of the crowd) and at the end there is a beer walk, which is like a cake walk, but with beer. Anyone can perform, some people are really great, some are just okay, some are awful, but no matter what, the show is never boring. It's every Monday night at 10 pm at the Bowery Poetry Club on Bowery a block north of Houston. People do everything from poetry to characters to music to dances to readings to tom foolery to venting on stage. Sometimes, there's even nudity.

I finished off the evening with a taco with Touching You at our favorite cheap Lower East Side taco hole "San Loco." You gotta love the fact that you can find a taco joint open until 4 am on a Monday. I love New York.