I went to Lee Camp's comedy album release party at the Tank with my roommate and her boyfriend. The night began with a futile attempt to find a Dunkin Donuts in Times Square which turned to sitting in an Irish pub for a while before the show.
It started with the star of Sirius XM's "The Alt Comedy Show" Mark Seman playing guitar and a kazoo (in a harmonica holder) and rapping. I don't think anyone was prepared for that, but it was quite funny, and there was a Light Bright.
Then, JR Havlan--emmy award winning writer for the Daily Show--did some standup, and despite not doing standup often if at all, was very funny, doing bits about Facebook and Blue Tooth and gym showers.
And then of course Lee Camp did an energetic 45-minute set of mostly material I hadn't heard before, save some things he's been putting on YouTube lately. However, just earlier today, I was thinking about an old joke he did about sweatshop workers stitching cries for help on clothing and wondered why he doesn't do that joke anymore. Well, tonight he showed a video of himself sneaking shirts into retail stores that say things like "My fingers really hurt" and "Help me." Very funny. There were also two other videos--one of him trying to convince people to have an obesity exchange program for children, and one of his phonecall to the governor of Texas office.
But mostly the show was fast talking, hard thinking, and energetic. As always, we leave with that "Yeah, we really should do something about our screwed up world" because it's a bit like motivational speaking comedy. If ever there's no laughter, it's because people are still processing what's just been said and you can literally hear the delay in the laughter, which is actually quite cool because it means people are really thinking and processing the ideas. It's not your typical "You know when" comedy or "Women, eh?" comedy.
After the show, I bought a CD from Lee, which he signed (below) and I gave him his free Plain Ketchup t-shirt for guesting on our podcast (above). He invited me out to the Irish pub around the corner afterward with some other people. So the three of us, having a good half hour before we had to leave to catch the last train home, went over to the pub. Lee's wife bought a round and we talked to her a bit. Then I got into a coversation with the opener JR. We chatted at length about Karl Pilkington. Not even kidding. He seems like a pretty cool guy. I gave him my card with our podcast URL on it before heading out.
On my way out, I said bye to Lee, and he reiterated that he thinks we've really got something here with the podcast, and how funny it was. I hope to God he's right. He gave some advice on climbing the comedy latter, and then I had to go catch the train. Really was a fantastic night. If you didn't got to the show, you certainly missed a good one. But you can watch some of the same content on his YouTube channel, like here:
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