Tri Valley Life
What’s happening around the Valley in music, theater, art, movies and more
LLI
DOLORES FOX CIARDE
in Dublin is Bunjo’s Comedy Club nual Killer an h ent sev hosting the etition. mp Laughs Comedy Co
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO The winners of the first night of the seventh annual Killer Laughs Comedy Competit ion gather around host Mean Dave (center). Also shown (left to right) are Saul Trujillo, Pete Munoz, PX Floro and Abhay Nadkarni.
Like to laugh? Check out
this competition ‘Killer comedy’ in its seventh year in Dublin BY DOLORES FOX CIARDELLI
If you eat two pieces of toast with butter on them, that’s considered normal, comedian Saul Trujillo told the audience at Bunjo’s Comedy Club in Dublin. But if you put the two pieces of buttered bread together, that is not normal: That is a fat sandwich. Trujillo’s comic delivery of this observation and others helped earn him first place in the opening preliminary round of the seventh annual Killer Laughs Comedy Competition on July 18. Nine hopefuls bounded up to the stage one by one to deliver their five-minute routines. Except the hefty Leanne Ridgers did not “bound” — she slowly pulled herself up and compared the climb to scaling Mount Everest. The comedians joked about themselves, the audience — mostly white and not especially young — and having reached the pinnacle of performing in the Lowe’s parking lot. Comedy fans Lettie and Frank Camp arrived early to get good seats in the cozy back room at Vito’s Express Pizza, across the parkPage 14 • August 15, 2014 • Pleasanton Weekly
ing lot from Lowe’s, where Bunjo’s is located. The couple, who live in Pleasanton and have been married 48 years, said they’ve enjoyed comedians together since they were dating in San Francisco, where they saw a lot of improv and some famous names, including Woody Allen. The Camps had nothing but admiration for those willing to stand up in the spotlight, face the audience and try for laughs. “There are an interesting number who are in tech jobs,” Frank noted. “They are young but quick.” Comedian Stephen Turner, 46, a senior software engineer, was calmly checking his iPhone before the show started. He is also a rhythm guitarist with a Grateful Dead cover band, he said, but only performs about four nights a month because he is also married with children. “People who are really going after it get out four, five, six nights a week,” he said. Turner, who lives in San Jose, draws from his own life for his material — nerd jokes
and dad humor. It was at a former competition that he realized why he is a comedian. He thought he would be upset if he wasn’t one of the winners until someone asked, “Is that why you’re doing this?” No, he realized; he really didn’t care if he won or lost. What he values is the night that he’s really “on” and the audience is digging it. He’s doing it for that high. Although Turner always liked to joke around, he said he didn’t realize he wanted to perform comedy until he was 35; one lunch hour he was making coworkers laugh and they encouraged him to go onstage. “Standup comedy is frighteningly easy to get into — and frighteningly hard to quit,” he said. Most comedy clubs open the mic to newcomers on slow weeknights and all it takes is the nerve to sign up, Turner explained. He started at a club in Sunnyvale; it allowed comedians four minutes to perform and for every person they brought to the club they were allowed an extra minute. “That’s how they pay their bills,” he said. “Comedy clubs are vehicles for selling alcohol.” The hardest clubs to perform in are those that are part of a bar or restaurant that may have competing noise. Bunjo’s, with its dedicated room for 50 in back of the pizza place, was a good setup. Turner hadn’t decided what he would do that night, he said, because it partly depended on where he was in the lineup of nine. “I watch the others, and I watch the audience,” he said. Bunjo’s was launched a few years ago by John DeKoven, tech support specialist by day and comedy club impresario by night. He is proud that competition winners have gone on to bigger and better things. “The inaugural winner in 2007, David VanAvermate, later was a runner up in the San Francisco International Comedy Com-
petition,” DeKoven said. “Last year’s winner, Sandra Risser, is incredible. She is 73 or 74 years old and probably performs four or five times a week all over the country.” The Killer Laughs Competition starts with 80 comedians, performing in eight preliminary rounds every Friday through Sept. 5. The top four from each night, chosen by the audience, move on to the quarterfinals, being held Sept. 12 to Oct. 3. Again the audience votes and the top four go to the semifinals, which are held in two rounds, Oct. 10 and 17. The top four from those competitions are in the finals Oct. 24, and the top three winners receive awards and cash prizes. The preliminary rounds have a $10 cover charge, and reservations can be made at 2644413 or info@bunjoscomedy.com. “The preliminary rounds can be very hitand-miss as we have funny comics to newbies, so the prelims are a way to weed out the chaff,” DeKoven said. “The quarterfinals are better, and then of course the cream rises to the top for the semifinals and the final round.” The first preliminary round July 18 was hosted by Mean Dave, a bearded, long-haired fellow who joked about his appearance. At the end of the evening, as the audience votes were being tallied, headliner comic Jeff Applebaum was onstage, drawing nonstop laughs from the audience. “Applebaum tours nationally and has been on ‘The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson,’” DeKoven said. As the tables began to fill just before the show started at 8:30 p.m., DeKoven said it’s hard to predict how many will show up to watch. “A couple of months ago, we had to turn people away,” he said. At the end of the evening, the four winners were announced: Trujillo along with Pete Munoz, PX Floro and Abhay Nadkarni. But the other five had gotten a few laughs, too — and that was the point. Q