Coconuts Comedy Club in St. Petersburg is a 130 person room attached to an Irish bar that is itself attached to a “Howard Johnson’s Resort” hotel. Needless to say, this is a “resort” like IHOP is “international.” No complaints about the club itself, though. The drinks aren’t expensive, the layout of the room is good and the stage is larger than most in New York.
I arrived a little before 9PM to sign up for a 9:30 show. I figured that there weren’t going to be too many comics coming to an open mic on St. Pete Beach, so why do I need to get there early? I was sadly mistaken. The first bad news was that there were already eight people signed up ahead of me. 9th wouldn’t have been so bad - each comic only gets five minutes - but there was a headliner that night. Coconuts puts its headliner on at 10:30, so I would be going up AFTER the headliner. And the featured performer. And, as it turns out, another local pro who followed the headliner. But how bad could it be? Very, very bad.
The emcee was Frankie Cramer, the house comic and a local pro. He appears to have been in the business for a while and has good stage presence. His audience work was decent enough, but his act was almost all offensive. A lot of homophobia. Highlight:
A guy was in here complaining about the gay jokes, [FLIPS OVER STOOL] I told him ‘Take a seat and relax with three of your friends.’
He also made a gratuitous* call to the audience to pile into our vehicles and drive around beating up Muslim convenience store clerks.
Could it be anything but gratuitous?, you did not ask. Yes. I am a firm believer that anything can be funny if you actually figure out the joke. He didn’t, though. A shared hatred of Arab immigrants was expected to provide all the laughs. And one audience member asked “Where’s the car!” Lovely. It went downhill from there.
The first comic was a prop comic. He had a bunch of homemade signs and pretended to do a series of “commercials” for profoundly stupid products. The only one I remember is “jail.” From the weathered look of his signs to the sighs of exasperation from the other open micers, it was clear that he did the same lame act every week. As a bonus, he always arrives early, so he is always the first to go up. Once I get to New York, I’ll be able to add his picture to the blog. It is a distant enough shot that you won’t see how unattractive he is, but you will be able to see his embarrassing props. So you have that to look forward to. No homophobia in his act, but this was simply the most nonsexual person I have ever seen. I don’t think it would occur to him to be interested in sexual activity of any kind.
Comic number two was a boring divorcee telling jokes about how men suck. These jokes were dated back in 1973 and downright painful in 2004.
Comic number three was a 20ish kid who was at least trying. He doesn’t know how to write yet, so he thinks that his drug problem is funny without making an effort to turn his life into something stageworthy. He joined the homophobia parade also. Still, an improvement over the first two.
Number four was the first black comic and the best of the open micers. I don’t remember any of his jokes, but I do know that he made me laugh a couple of times. It was nice to laugh, to be reminded that I could. On the other hand, he said “I’m for real” or “For real” or “I keep it real” after every sentence, so he has some habits in need of breaking. He was, of course, another comic who has issues with the gays. The big surprise of his set was that he is the first pro-Bush black comic I’ve ever seen, and certainly the only pro-Bush guy that keeps it real. I had hope that things would keep improving, because the comics were getting closer to acceptable.
Still, all of these guys were dying on stage, and they had a real audience to play to. The audience was there for the pros, and by the time #4 was finished, it was 10:20, so it was time for the featured* act.
I didn’t get the name of the feature. He was a comic that works out of Vancouver who got himself a Carnival cruise gig departing from Florida. He wanted a chance to work out his clean set before boarding the ship. His set was OK, if not spectacular. He was obviously much, much better than the open micers. After he did a little more than 10 minutes, he stopped his tape and pulled out his dirty material. Opening line:
When two guys are having anal sex, one of them is getting a raw deal.
Pardon me for asking, but WHERE IS THE GODDAMN JOKE? As far as I can tell, much of the “gay lifestyle” is built on guys digging anal sex. I don’t like bananas, but I don’t assume that people who eat bananas eat them even though they hate them. It was a disappointing turn in a decent set. He even finished with a decent joke that I grudgingly laughed at because I get very frutstrated by how often comics hack their way through a set by gay bashing (also,
gratuitous Bush bashing.)
The reason I couldn’t find the headliner on the web was because I heard his name wrong. His name isn’t “Uncle Bob,” it is “Uncle" Dow Thomas. The intro says that he hails from Dayton, and gives the impression that he is a road comic. As far as I can tell from his gigs calendar, though, he only performs in the clubs around St. Pete - and not the A list clubs in Tampa. He is a prop comic and also does a lot of song parodies to the tune of Christmas carols, does goofy songs that involve him putting on masks and makes a lot of jokes at his own expense. That is probably the way you have to go when you cultivate a look that can best be described as “Count Dracula by way of hippie.” His comedy isn’t really my thing, but the audience loved him. About halfway through his act, Zinester wrote “At least he’s not hateful” on my blog notes, only to have him do a really fey gay impression. Sigh. He went on for over FIFTY MINUTES! When he was done, there were still four more comics before me. Half the meager audience left when he finished.
The next comic was a local pro who wasn’t particularly good. He was a black guy who did some stuff about black people’s names; nothing original. He told one joke that got no response. He actually tested the mic! He got heckled. He actually said “I don’t come to the gay sex club where you work and knock the dick out of your mouth." He did a “black People’s Court parody”: Child Support Court. It had the germ of something funny in it, but he insisted on doing the People’s Court music in between every sentence fragment. An OK 1.5 minute bit became an interminable 3.5 minute torture session.
Number eight was a regular open micer. He had the ironic distance and smug superiority that comes from being the jaded guy in the back of the club, silently judging all of the other comics. Like so many comics like him, he sucked. Also, a racist who casually said the word “towelhead” in one of his jokes. Ironically, it was a joke about how the Irish used to be the targets of racism.
Number nine was a fat, middle aged female schoolteacher. She has apparently lost 200 pounds after a gastric bypass, so (no joke) congratulations to her. She is dating now, so she had some dating jokes. The only line I remember was the setup to a joke. See if you can spot where she went wrong. Dating, you know, that four-letter word ...
Tenth was a local comic. Clearly a regular. Decent presence, but no material to speak of.
#11 was “Ed the Possum Man.” Terrifyingly bad. Apparently he tried out for Last Comic Standing in Tampa and made it on TV. Sort of like William Hung on American Idol without the subsequent ironic fame. He spent two full minutes joking about his gag pants with hot peppers on them.
I came next at roughly midnight. Click here to read about my set.
Three comics left. The first was a second time performer who came with a bunch of friends. His friends were the only hecklers in the club. He was performing in a short-sleeved shirt with a blood-test bandage on his left arm. He never mentioned the bandage, but I couldn’t stop staring at it. Since he was incoherent anyway, I assume it was for the best.
Up next was a kid who couldn’t have been older than 17. He told a couple of Jay London-like one liners and then a joke that wasn’t bad (if not memorable either). He then looked down at his notes, announced that he realized the rest of his jokes sucked and walked off stage. He took off his shirt (he had a t-shirt on underneath), threw it to the ground and kicked it into the face of one of the comics in the wings. It was a pity. He is so young and really needs to learn how to perform. He showed some potential, but he’ll never make it if he is so easily broken.
Finally, a woman came to the stage with the same ironic doing-this-for-a-while stance as one of the earlier comics. She pulled off the attitude better and performed all new jokes that she was reading directly to the stragglers. There might be some potential there. She at least has the confidence to go up and bomb without getting bitter.
So that was that. 15 comics. A very long night. Nobody that I can advise you to look for.
I’m going back tonight.
* Quick comedy lingo lesson: “Guest performer” is shorthand for “nobody”—“featured performers” are opening acts—“headliner” is exactly what you think it is. The emcee of a show is typically someone comfortably above “guest,” but well short of “headliner.”
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