On Entertainment LOL Festival is A-OK
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he final four days of the inaugural Santa Barbara LOL Comedy Festival features a plethora of acts, more name-brand jokesters than the town has ever seen in such a short stretch. The big show on Thursday (September 4-7) is the first date of Russell Peters’s “Almost Famous”, a new world tour from the Canadian comic who has appeared on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, his own Netflix special and a bit part in the current hit movie Chef. Expect his latest take on jobs, mobile phones, relationships, and his signature improv at the 8 pm show at the Granada. Also on Thursday: Monique Marvez and Nadine Rajabi host Hot Funny Femmes also starring Amy Anderson, Grace Fraga, Jen Murphy, Rachel Bradley, and Jill Michele Melean, with two shows (7:30 and 9:30 pm) at the New Vic. The action shifts to the Lobero on Friday for both Jay Mohr at 8 pm (see the Q&A below), and a 10 pm show with Brad Williams, who gets a leg up (sorry) on most comics as a dwarf. His TV appearances include Legit, Live at Gotham, the Tonight Show, and Jimmy Kimmel Live, where he’s riffed on relationships, sex, and his and other’s disabilities. Both shows are being filmed for later airing. All three shows at the Lobero on Saturday are also one-hour specials being recorded live for later broadcast, starting with Kirk Fox, whose stand-up appearances include Comedy Central Presents, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Last Comic Standing, plus the movies Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Reno 911! (6 pm) and a recurring role as Joe from Sewage on Parks and Recreation. At 8 pm it’s Ben Gleib, the host of Idiotest, the new comedy brain-teaser game show on the Game Show Network, and a longtime star of Chelsea Lately. The evening concludes with a late-night program featuring famously foul-mouthed stand-up Andrew Dice Clay hosting The Blue Show, featuring Eleanor Kerrigan, Jason Rouse, Michael Wheels Paris, and Colin Kane. The festival ends where it began last Tuesday, at the Arlington Theatre, with the local debut of Jim Jefferies, the popular comic who is the creator and star of Legit on FX, and scored cable hits with the specials I Swear to God on HBO and Alchoholocaust on Showtime. For details, tickets, and more information, visit www.lolcomedyfestival.com.
Mohr & More
Jay Mohr has reached a lot more
28 MONTECITO JOURNAL
She writes half of my stand-up act. The special up in Santa Barbara, too. It’s called “Happy. And a Lot.” Every day when I pick my son up from preschool, they hand you a report card for the day. The two lines are right next to each other, and the teacher always writes: “Mood? Happy. What they ate for lunch: A lot.” And that’s me in a nutshell. I’m happy. And I’m a lot. Unless you’re my wife, I don’t think you want to drive across the country with me. Halfway through Ohio, you’d want to take my head off.
by Steven Libowitz
Steven Libowitz has reported on the arts and entertainment for more than 30 years; he has contributed to the Montecito Journal for more than ten years.
people via his roles in Hollywood films such as Jerry Maguire and Picture Perfect, to name just two, and is heard by thousands of listeners each week via his sports radio program and home-garage-based podcast. But stand-up comedy remains his professional passion, as he even refers to those other vehicles as ways to pay the bills or promote his shows, which still number close to 200 a year. His one-hour gig at the Lobero on Friday is being filmed as his second special to run on Showtime. He happily dished on his early start, wrestling, and working with his wife, actress Nikki Cox. Q. I understand you were always the class clown and a big talker. Is comedy or talk radio the only career path for people like you? A. Yeah, I think so. Comedy is the tricky one; I think you are born a comic – you can’t learn it. Maybe the timing or the spacing, but that offthe-cuff work ethic of driving eight hours to get $50 when you’re first starting out, you can’t teach that. But parents, if you have kids who can’t stop talking and get thrown out of class, don’t get too frightened because maybe there’s a career out there for them. What would you be doing if you couldn’t talk for a living? Coaching high school wrestling would be my dream job. If I could make sitcom money doing that, it would be a no-brainer. It’s such an important sport, with lots of life lessons. You practice with a bunch of guys, learn moves, push through barriers of stamina and endurance, and spend a huge amount of time in trainings. And then it all comes down to six minutes on a mat with another guy who’s been doing the same thing as you. Just you and him. It’s a monastic life. But there’s so much you can coach. It’s such a mental game. You can get in kids’ heads and get them on the right path. You’re making me think about Robin Williams. Yeah, Robin was a great wrestler. I was an average wrestler who turned
Mohr for your money: Jay Mohr performs Friday at the Lobero
out to be an average person. But I can take my averageness and make champions. So while we’re on that subject, how did his death affect you? Hopefully, this puts more of a light on mental illness awareness. There seems to be such a stigma. I suffer from panic disorder. And I have had depression in my life. [The problem is] as a guy, machismo gets in the way of asking for help. We go through the same routines of self-medicating, exercising maniacally, to try to outrun the cloud that we wake up with in the morning. With Robin, think of how happy he made you and realize when he looked in the mirror, he didn’t experience any of it. That’s the disease. You got your start in New Jersey way back when, and then worked your way up to the Saturday Night Live stint, a few big movie roles, some TV shows and lots more. What stands out the most for you? I get asked all the time what was my big break. If there’s only one, you haven’t done life the right way. I’ve had about 40. Obviously SNL: when Don Pardo says “Jaayyy Mohrrrr”, the first time you hear that you get goose bumps. Then Jerry Maguire, with Tom Cruise, the biggest movie star in the world at the time. My sitcom was great, because it means the network trusts you. And now with Mohr Sports, every day for three hours I’m heard all over the country. That definitely helps sell tickets to my stand-up shows. But my guest appearance on Las Vegas was the single biggest break of my life. That’s where I met my wife. When you marry the right person, you become a better person. That’s why they call it the better half. I was a maniac – unhappy, uncomfortable with quiet, never ever to be still. When I met her, everything calmed down on my insides just because of how our energy mixes.
• The Voice of the Village •
So why sports? How does it relate to comedy? What makes it work for me is that I noticed that nobody is having fun on sports radio. It’s just numbers and data and lots of yelling. There was a big space to operate in positivity, and to let listeners know that they matter. Then there’s your podcast. Yeah, I sit in my garage at a card table and interview celebrities. I’ve talked to David Lee Roth, Charlie Sheen, the drummer from the Black Crowes. Nobody ever asked Sheen about acting. He was in Platoon and Wall Street. It’s kind of important. But mostly it’s comedians. My wife is on this current episode. I got her in the car, and took out the voice recorder while we were stuck in traffic. It’s really funny. Nikki really wrote your new routine? Yeah, literally. She’s a horrible insomniac. I wake up and ask her how she slept and she hands me a spiral notebook that’s filled. And I just do what she wrote. It turns into a lot of material. It’s good to sleep with a writer. So what’s it about? It can’t be all about your son and pre-school? The show about how to keep marriage together. Some impressions. I talk about those murder shows on TV. There’s no real thread. I have ADD – I have to jump off a cliff and build my wings on the way down. So I don’t have a point of view. It’s just that there’s 1,500 people in front of me, and I want to make them laugh a lot and often.
Crim Conviction
Carey Crim’s daughter isn’t yet at the age where she has to worry about what might happen when she’s left in the care of teachers or other adults. But she couldn’t help but notice the huge increase in new stories of teachers having affairs with their students, especially the one where the victim waited for the abuser to get out of prison to resume the relationship. “It’s an utterly fascinating topic because these are people you feel like 4 – 11 September 2014