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<p>Entries in Show Recap (163)</p>
<p>Friday Oct 21 2011  Cagematch @ The UCBT - 10.20.11</p>
<p>Friday, October 21, 2011 at 12:34PM Hardcore wrestling legend, standup comedian, and god Mick Foley made a surprise drop-in at Cagematch! It was insane! I tweeted "This is bigger than Diddy, right?" to which @chrisgethard promptly replied, "no way!" Okay, maybe not quite Diddy big, but on a scale of UCBT celebrity appearances from Matthew "Free Money" Lesko to Diddy, it's wayyyyy up there. It's one of those epic moments that only happens here. The UCBW has been around how long--like 5 years, right? And to get one of the most iconic pro-wrestlers of all time to not only come down to the show, but participate in a match! That's major. Can only imagine it's a dream come true for everyone involved.</p>

<p>"Have you heard the one about Superfly Jimmy Snuka?"</p>

<p>Razor Raymond (someone dressed like Razor Ramon on a Razor scooter) looks on disapprovingly as Mick tells everyone he'll be tonight's Guest Enforcer.</p>

<p>Zach Linder is just barely able to get back his special elbow pad from Mick.</p>

<p>Silvija Ozols, Gavin Speiller and Eddie Dunn of Rogue Elephant. I had a bad angle, sorry!!!</p>

<p>Kate Riley, Don Fanelli and Dru Johnston of Fuck That Shit, the new Cagematch champions!</p>

<p>Here's how the UCBW match ended... it was awesome.</p>

<p>Mick tweeted later:</p>

<p>> What an amazing time@UCBWin NYC last night - so many talented performers, and an incredibly supportive crowd! Thanks to@emilykim@charlietodd@themattlittle@robotriley@maryiampietroand all the people I missed...and everyone who sent out such spirited tweets. I would love to do another show at the historic Upright Citizens Brigade Theater!</p>

<p>The Apiary | 20 Comments | 130 References tagged Fuck That Shit , Mick Foley , Rogue Elephant in EXCLUSIVELY at The Apiary , Improv , Show Recap Thursday Oct 06 2011  The Jukebox @ Union Hall - 10.3.11</p>
<p>Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 11:23AM</p>

<p>Steve Jacobs and Steve Heislerare the infectious hosts ofThe Jukebox, an immensely fun comedic storytelling series punctuated with epic karaoke performances.</p>

<p>NOTES</p>

<p>--Dressed in personalized t-shirts from Steve Heisler's bar mitzvah, Steve and Steve kicked off the show with a lusty take on Boyz II Men's "I'll Make Love to You." Each edition of The Jukebox has a theme, and this one's was The 90's, thus giving the whole evening a Mortified + songs kind of vibe.</p>

<p>--The Jukebox format goes like this: performer tells a story > performer sings song related to that story > audience either laughs, laughs and sings along, OR waits patiently for the performer to finish.</p>

<p>--Chipper Eugene Mirman Festival producer,Caroline Creaghead,picked apart her sad tween journal to tell a tale of unrequited puppy love, finishing with "Don't Speak." Does Caroline know Perfect Pitch? She simply must audition for the X-Factor. Not the TV show--the mutant superhero team because of her singing powers!</p>

<p>--The show was supposed to feature Mike Doughty from the seminal '90s band Soul Coughing, but Doughty choked at the last minute citing a sudden illness OR WHATEVER. It didn't matter because his replacement,Andy Ross, fucking slaughtered everyone with a slow-build story about the day he called upon his thoroughly terrified teenage crush to come on stage and sing the female part of "I'm Having the Time of My Life" at his middle school talent show. As he did back then, he sang to us BOTH parts of the song alone, going between a room-shaking baritone to the kind of falsetto last heard in the movie White Chicks.</p>

<p>--The next edition of The Jukebox is 11/29. If you can't wait that long to watch people brilliantly nail and/or butcher your favorite songs live, Celebrity Duetsmakes its promising debut at Union Hall TOMORROW NIGHT. Or I guess you can go see Rock of Ages.There's always that.</p>

<p>The Apiary | 2 Comments | 6 References tagged Steve Jacobs , The Jukebox , steve heisler in EXCLUSIVELY at The Apiary , Show Recap Thursday Aug 18 2011  BRAD SACKS GETS A HANDJOB @ THE UCBT</p>
<p>Thursday, August 18, 2011 at 2:36PM  Illustration: Ramsey Ess</p>

<p>By: Lucas Hazlett</p>

<p>According to Joseph Campbell's definition of a monomyth, or Hero's Journey, every great narrative -- whether it be a movie, television show, play or novel -- follows the same essential story line. A single character leaves his or her normal way of life after another character compels them to obtain a valuable object or perform an important task.</p>

<p>In Lord of the Rings, Frodo leaves the shire after Gandalf compels him to destroy the One Ring. In Star Wars, Luke leaves Tatooine after Obi Wan compels him to rescue Princess Leia. And in The Matrix, Neo leaves the matrix after Morpheus compels him to save mankind by defeating the machines.</p>

<p>In Brad Sacks Gets a Hand Job, writers Adam Levy and Connor Izzett deftly utilize the same basic story structure. A nerdy kid leaves behind nerdy pursuits after a friend tells him that a girl wants to give him a hand job. By inserting lowbrow sexual specifics and wackadoo characters into a tried and true structure, they come away with a show that is narratively satisfying, ridiculously funny and could probably serve them better as a full-length feature film. For all intents and purposes, they make a hand job seem like it's going to save the world.</p>

<p>Brad Sacks (Tim Dunn) is a nerdy high school freshman who spends his days breaking into song, dancing and being "sick" at Magic the Gathering. He gives this all up after his friend Megan (Abra Tabak) reveals that Jessica Sanders (Emily Axford), the "hottest girl in school," wants to give him a hand job. With the help of his best friend Jake (Michael Hartney), who repeatedly hits the nail on the head with dramatic audience addresses comparing Brad's journey to Frodo's journey, Brad sets off to prepare for his date with destiny. Along the way he is repeatedly disrupted by the misguided interference of his sexually adventurous parents Gerald and Suzane (Matt Fisher and Beth Appel, who also directed the piece) and the horrible advice of his older, Jersey Shore-esque brother Dan (Dan Black).</p>

<p>Like most journeys, Brad overcomes these obstacles to claim his prize, but unlike Frodo's destroying the ring or Neo's defeating the race of machines, the prize Brad claims in the end is nothing like what he thought he'd get at the beginning.</p>

<p>* THE PLUG: Don't miss "Brad Sacks Gets a Handjob," happening THU, AUG 18 & 25 @ 8PM at The UCBT-NY | $5</p>

<p>--Lucas Hazlett is a comedy geek who improvises with anyone he can. He can be seen performing at The Peoples Improv Theater every Wednesday at 8PM with house team Stranger.</p>

<p>keithhuang | 1 Comment | 8 References tagged Abra Tabak , Adam Levy , Connor Izzett , Emily Axford , Michael Hartney , Tim Dunn in Show Recap Thursday Aug 04 2011  Mike Still: Dictator For Life @ The UCBT - 8.3.11</p>
<p>Thursday, August 4, 2011 at 5:04PM</p>

<p>In Mike Still's one-man show, Dictator For Life, he plays a demented dictator named Mike Still, the overlord of an island nation in the midst of an Arab Spring.</p>

<p>NOTES</p>

<p>--Over the past few years Mike Still has worked his way to the summit of improv mountain, becoming a clutch player in UCB Harold Night teams, musical improv groups and the theatre's Saturday night marquee squad, Death By Roo Roo. In Dictator For Life, he gets the stage to himself to show off some characters in his head and his versatility as a solo performer.</p>

<p>--In my favorite bit of the show, the stage goes dark, a smoke machine sputters, and Mike emerges from the fog in a lucha libre mask and black body suit as a yo-yo ninja who is shilling a video series called Secrets of Yo-Yo Revealed. The average person can now learn such yo-yo tricks like The Atomic Moonbeam, but Mike has paid the ultimate price for blabbing these secrets to the world: he's shunned from the yo-yo community and his street cred is in tatters.</p>

<p>Dictator for Life in the UCBT's inside window!</p>

<p>The Apiary | 2 Comments | 21 References tagged Dictator For Life , Mike Still in EXCLUSIVELY at The Apiary , Show Recap Tuesday Jun 28 2011  Hot Tub with Kurt and Kristen @ Littlefield - 6.27.11</p>
<p>Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 12:16PM</p>

<p>You don't need to be swimming in your t-shirt to feel good at Hot Tub, Kurt Braunohler and Kristen Schaal's weekly Park Slope party at Littlefield.</p>

<p>NOTES</p>

<p>--Kurt and Kristen played Guess Who? with the SOLD OUT CROWD to find a lucky RANDOM AUDIENCE MEMBER who was then tasked with pelting a moving Adira Amram Experience backup dancer with a ball of some kind. Deep within the chest of the dancer who got hit was a slip of paper revealing which bit Kurt and Kristen would do. Tonight, that bit was "Whoopie Cushion." Kristen then came out dressed as a whoopie cushion and Kurt sat on her.</p>

<p>--Area rocker Ted Leo noodled out 4 songs. All sounded very serious.</p>

<p>--Kristen introduced surprise guest Aziz Ansari saying he's performed for "probably a thousand people." He did a long set, working through baby phobias and general anxiety about adulthood.</p>

<p>--SHOUT OUTS: Rappers Waka Flocka, Gucci Mane and Wiz Khalifa each got name dropped in stories by comedians and it made me think I need to listen to less Ke$ha in order to fully appreciate modern jokes. Is this what you kids are listen to these days?</p>

<p>--Tough break for the Target at the Atlantic Center in Brooklyn. It got booed (for being shitty) during one of Wyatt Cenac's bits. :(</p>

<p>Rachel Feinstein</p>

<p>Adira Amram and the Experience</p>

<p>Ted Leo</p>

<p>Wyatt Cenac</p>

<p>The Apiary | Post a Comment | 1 Reference tagged Kristen Schaal , Kurt Braunohler in Show Recap Tuesday May 31 2011  The Brooks Brothers Memorial Day Clambake @ The UCBT NY - 5.30.11</p>
<p>Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 10:42AM</p>

<p>The zany people cruising aboard the S.S. Wasp make a wrong turn in the Nantucket Sound and end up at The UCBT in The Brooks Brothers Memorial Day Clambake, a character showcase hosted by Mike Schell and Alex Scordelis.</p>

<p>NOTES</p>

<p>--Justin Purnell bestowed one lucky RANDOM AUDIENCE MEMBER with an onstage lobster dinner for playing "Which Zip Code is Better?" From my angle, it looked like the lobster could've used a little butter.</p>

<p>--As members of the National Inbreeding Group, Anthony Atamanuik and John Gemberling advocated family trees "in the form of straight lines" and riffed on the unusual sexual practices they're in favor of ("babies 69-ing"). Naturally, all this inbreeding has caused unforeseen mutations--John has gills! The bit then rollicked into unhinged madness, resulting in Anthony doubling over in convulsions, giving birth to a bloody egg as John fertilized it with his "mouth semen." They were both then punched out by Shannon O'Neil, who sat there with oversized boxing gloves, tasked with sacking anyone if their bits went over 4 minutes.</p>

<p>--Wearing a circus tent for an outfit, Julie Klausner played the ghost of Elaine Kaufman, the noted NYC restaurateur whose restaurant to the stars was recently closed. She described all the bold faced names she's fucking in heaven (i.e. Hitler and Yassir Arafat) and gave updates on the deceased, "Elizabeth Edwards and Patrick Swayze are an item." "This one's for the Cindy Adamses in the room," she said, before rattling off more racy tidbits about other newly dead celebs. Only in New York, kids!</p>

<p>Cody Lindquist and Charlie Todd</p>

<p>Julie Klausner as the ghost of Elaine Kaufman</p>

<p>Lydia Hensler teaches self defense for waspy women as David Bluvband looks on with approval.</p>

<p>Chris Schell and Alex Scordelis as the hosts of this clambake, The Brooks Brothers</p>

<p>The Apiary | 1 Comment | 2 References in EXCLUSIVELY at The Apiary , Show Recap Tuesday Apr 26 2011  MEATSTEAK is Dead @ Webster Hall - 4.19.11</p>
<p>Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 12:14PM  Resistance Dan prepares Robert and Danny for their decension into hell. In MEATSTEAK is Dead--a raucous road comedy for the stage--a drug deal gone bad gets the MEATSTEAK gang (Robert Dean, Nick Maritato, Danny Solomon, and Neil Stastny) killed, sending them in pairs bound for heaven and hell. After discovering that both are shitty places to live for all eternity, Danny and Robert take the next stairway out of heaven and go on a quest to spring Nick and Neil from the underworld and kick in the devil's dick, culminating (naturally) in a Crossroads-style singing battle for everybody's souls.</p>

<p>Not knowing how to use a pen won't get Nick out of his eternal punishment: office work!</p>

<p>Nate Fernald and Steve O'Brien, as the devil and God respectively</p>

<p>The Apiary | Post a Comment | 1 Reference tagged MEATSTEAK is Dead in EXCLUSIVELY at The Apiary , Show Recap Thursday Apr 21 2011  NEW EXC!TEMENT @ THE PIT - 4.2.11</p>
<p>Thursday, April 21, 2011 at 10:54AM New Excitement | Photo: Eric Michael Pearson By: Lucas Hazlett</p>

<p>Two men sit alone onstage, both humbly genuflecting before their God, praying as one of the men announces he is leaving the priesthood.</p>

<p>Before the other can respond, we hear a rumble just beyond the theater's locked doors. Is this the moment in a dramatic piece when a higher power calls to intercede? Not quite. It's the beginning of an onslaught of self-abusing mania about to unfold over the course of the hour.</p>

<p>With Flights, New Exc!tement (Mary Grill, Matt Hobby, Chris Manley, Randy Pearlstein and Chris Roberti) delivers sketch that hits all the right buttons and never veers off-course. They manage to be inoffensive without ever being bland, shocking without ever being purely disgusting, and when their sketches get high-brow (for instance, Roberti reciting lines of Robert Frost to frustrate his teammate Pearlstein during a game of Password) they never pander to any particular intellectual sensibility.</p>

<p>They have a voice that is original but still tips its hat to its historical influences. Much of New Exc!tement's style feels like a classic vaudeville group or cartoon -- think the Marx Brothers or Animaniacs -- whose only purpose seems to be to infuriate the straights of the world. The only difference here is that New Exc!tement revels in infuriating themselves.</p>

<p>In one sketch, the team rallies around ruining Matt Hobby as an actor trying to impress his father during a show; in another, Randy Pearlstein plays a sentient celestial being interrupting a pair of teenagers (played by real life couple Mary Grill and Matt Hobby) having an awkward first kiss.</p>

<p>And in perhaps the night's most absurd sketch, Hobby, Manley and Pearlstein play horses who lure a sickly Roberti outside his home to his death. All of this done with an absolute deference to the physicality and logistics that make slapstick comedy and cartoons so popular. The lines defining what are real versus impossible are redrawn at the discretion of any character but are never done arbitrarily. The logic is always sound. Even when objects that shouldn't exist in the reality they establish are suddenly -- and sometimes literally -- pulled out from someone's ass (okay, back pocket) to satisfy a joke it never feels like they're cheating!</p>

<p>According to their promotional materials, Flights is "a sketch show that plays in the places where we all get lost -- in grief, in love and occasionally in the deepest corners of outer space." This place is also the same comedic Twilight Zone where watching people being vomited on manages to be simultaneously shocking and low-brow yet perfect logical and the only intelligent resolution to a sketch. This is a place of comedic genius and New Exc!tement is its Vespucci. We can only hope they draw a map for the rest of us comedy nerds to take similar flights.</p>

<p>--Lucas Hazlett is a comedy geek who improvises with anyone he can. He can be seen performing at the Peoples Improv Theater (123 East 24th Street) every Wednesday night at 8:00PM with PIT House Team Stranger.</p>

<p>* THE PLUG: Don't miss "New Exc!tement: Flights," happening THURS, APRIL 21 @ 7PM at The PIT | $8</p>

<p>keithhuang | Post a Comment | 1 Reference tagged New Exc!tement , The PIT in Show Recap Page 1 2 3 4 5 ... 21 Next 8 Entries » Copyright © 2011, [theapiary.org]. All rights reserved.</p>