It's early afternoon of my third day here and things are pretty quiet. No one's in the foyer admiring Howie Mandel's shoes (which are also not there). Various members of Kids In The Hall have stopped haunting the bar/lobby area like seminal sketch comedy group ghosts. The underground mall is surprising free of industry people with green and blue passes swinging around their necks.
So where is everyone? They're all resting. Last night there were several late-night shows, including Tune In (which was music & comedy–sooo hot right now!), the Green Room (featuring Billy Connolly, Lewis Black, and Eddie Izzard, but hosted by Paul Provenza, a comic that Andy Kindler described earlier yesterday as the only guy to ever let non-fame go to his head), and The Alternative Show, which I only saw the last hour of. During that hour, though, I saw Bob Odenkirk do stand-up (part of it shirtless), I witnessed two women from the audience get into a fight (one of them actually earnestly used the phrase "Hold me back," and someone actually earnestly did), and I heard Zach Galifianakis perfectly sum up the festival in one, succinct joke: "I tried to hang myself by my laminate last night."
Last night was also the big JFL party, held at their headquarters "Le Loft," a phrase that I'm pretty sure translates to "high school gymnasium during the most neon dance of the school year." The theme of this party (you knew there was going to be a theme, right?) was "80s At Midnight": midnight because that's when the party started, and "80s" because apparently JFL is into three things: comedy, the French comedic arts (or whatever "Babass" is), and girls' night out!
I wish I could convey to you how weird and wrong this party was. Have you ever heard "Footloose" played so loudly by an 80s cover band that all other sound is rendered mute, while waiting for an elevator next to Alonzo Bodden and Greg Proops, and watching the whole industry side of comedy gyrate on a dance floor? Well, it was exactly that precise level of both weirdness and wrongness.
Anyway, as for my goals: 1. The small dictionary of annoying industry-speak.
Third entry: Noise, n., a terrifically irritating synonym for "buzz." Usage: "Have you seen Spymonkey? There's a ton of great noise about them." 2. Documenting Howie Mandel's choice of footwear.
Instead of documenting Mandel's footwear, today I'm going to document Dom Irrera's existence. Dom Irrera still exists. It's true. I saw him yesterday in the hotel bar. 3. Seeing as many interesting shows as possible.
Both The Alternative Show and The Green Room (Provenza notwithstanding) were pretty interesting, as was Eddie Izzard's stand-up at the Imperial Theater. Izzard did an impression of the inner voices of a human appendix that ended with one voice saying to the other, "Let's explode." Tonight, I'm going to something called SpyMonkey and the William Shatner Gala. 4. Seeing as many non-interesting shows as possible.
Apart from Provenza, I'm still an under-achiever on this goal. But guess who's part of the Willam Shatner Gala? Harland Williams. 5. The Cards Of Shame collection.
It's still a small collection, only three cards, but that's six shameful eyes looking at me right now. 6. Finding out who made the Just For Laughs logo and why.
Evidently his name is Bonhomme. This is a picture of him pondering his own existence: