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Date Posted: 03/30/03 6:42pm
Author: Molle
Subject: Greg at the UPAC in Kingston NY

This past weekend I went out to see Greg play in Kingston. The show started at maybe eight fifteen. A DJ from the local radio station opened it, and he was so non-funny as to redefine the concept of pain. His main spiel, other than misprounouncing Greg's name, was to talk about using his breast-feeding wife as a sprinkler system. It was bad. Beyond bad. Before he crawled off stage back to the rock he lives under, he introduced Kevin Meaney, who would be the host for the rest of the night.

Kevin Meaney was really funny. He did a lot of the bits I remember from his Comedy Central Presents show, the Sister Mary Hulk Hogan bit, the snoring bit, the Housekeeping bit, and the big puss on the face bit, but he was a lot more surreal and musical than I expected him to be, and it was beautiful. He did an impression of Ethel Merman and Johnny Mathis singing Winter Wonderland together, did a duet with the ghost of Sinatra and impersonated all the singers of We Are the World. Not really timely, but it was a stitch.

Tina Georgi was on next. I'm not terribly sure how to spell her name, so forgive me if this is wrong. She talked about being an SOB, or Sicillian just Off the Boat, and how she used to be an elementary school teacher for one day. Apparently during a parent teacher conference, a mother asked her, "Is there any way my son can pass this test?" and she answered, "If he eats it." She also talked about poetic justice when a beautiful friend has an ugly baby. She had a nice stage presence, very quick and snarky.

Dom Irerra was next, and he surprised me. I was expecting him to do more of the Italian goombah schtick I've seen on TV, but he seems much smarter and more surreal than the stuff I've seen him do. There was a guy in the audience who kept screaming something like "Eck! Eck!" through the set, and Dom Irerra launched into a riff about English hecklers who would scream "Eh fahck feche," and how the only reaction was, "You know, when you say that, you win. I have no idea how to respond to that." I recommend checking him out more if you have the chance.

Greg came on and the audience seemed to be against him from the start. Apparently Kingston is a No Irony Zone. Greg looks skinnier than he did last year, and his hair is flatter. He also seems to be using the mikestand more than I remember (given that this was my first Greg show in a couple of years). I remember him just taking the mike and pacing, now he uses the mikestand like a rockstar, straddling it, dragging it across the stage, gesturing with it.

It was an interesting set, given that the audience, who'd been whooping it up through a parade of men-and-women jokes and family jokes, had suddenly been struck dumb. The people next to me were dead silent. People were walking out. It was bad. Mega-bad. Scary-bad. I was angry and embarrassed for him. Greg mostly remained above it, though he commented about not knowing what to talk about. War jokes seemed to be verboten and political jokes made a small whistling sound as they flew overhead. At one point Greg picked up the night's program (I have a copy sitting in front of me right now) from his stool and started reading through it, riffing on the advertisements. The Dutchess County Fairgrounds got reamed. Apparently they have a Progressive Dairy Goat Show coming up on the 21st of June. "Dairy goats. Not eating goats. Is there any other kind?" And they also have 'Winter Storage' in October. "I just see two guys foldin' towels." We also got to hear Greg's views on colonial reenactments. He doesn't like them. He doesn't like parents who bring their children to them. "They would rather play XBOX until they die." He also talked about Kim Jong-il, 'that dwarfish Elvis impersonator,' and did an impression of him singing "I Can't Help Falling in Love with You." Greg's Kim Jong-il voice sounds sort of like Greg's gremlin voice with an Asian accent. He talked about reality shows and how the next one should be about asking two Puerto Rican gangbangers talking on their cell phones during a movie to shut up, or asking two rednecks wearing ten-gallon hats at a bull rodeo to remove their headgear while dressed in a gay pride Judy Garland leotard to enable you to see. He closed, if I remember correctly, with talking about going to a San Francisco rally (presumably a peace rally, but I guess any mention of the terms 'peace' and 'war' would incite the crowd even more), and seeing people with signs like 'Punks against Bullshit.' Then followed a lecture about how to letter a sign correctly. "You need to do before you go to bed. You can't get up, take a bong hit and start writing, because you write too big." He also talked about seeing an elderly man on the sidelines, in a lather, holding up a sign that said, "Shut up! I was protesting thirty years ago!"

All in all, it was a weird, uncomfortable set, mostly because of the creeps in the audience who couldn't get with the program. It's irony, people. You won't turn into a commie if you have a chuckle. Sit down and have a big steaming cup of self-awareness, huh?

Afterwards I met some people who'd come out for Greg as well, who were kind enough to let me hang around after the show with them. Greg seemed to have scarpered, so we basically hung out for an hour and a half in lovely downtown Kingston, where the sirens blare long into the night. It was oddly enjoyable.

Now I've somehow managed to make it home, I've smoked too many cigarettes and haven't had enough alcohol over the weekend, and I hate the Holiday Inn. That is all.

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