Gotham Comedy Club

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In this post, I mentioned that we might go see Jamie Lissow (again) at the Gotham Comedy Club.

After enjoying the Vienna Boys Choir at Carnegie Hall in the afternoon, we relaxed in the apartment and watched most of To Catch A Thief by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.

For the second night in a row, which was also only the second time in forever, we took our car out of the garage and drove a whopping 11 blocks to eat at a wonderful vegetarian Indian restaurant called Pongal on 28th and Lexington Avenue. On a typical Sunday night in NYC (especially in the winter), parking should have been a breeze down there.

Unfortunately, NBC was shooting something down there, and the police had signs all over the neighborhood saying “No Parking” after 7pm. 🙁

I dropped the others off, and after circling the neighborhood twice, found a great spot two blocks away, so it ended up being fine.

We had a fantastic meal that all of us enjoyed, but we also all felt stuffed to the gills afterwards. One of the five of us didn’t have an interest in the comedy, so she walked back to the apartment and relaxed there for the evening. The rest of us drove to Gotham Comedy Club, and we got a great spot on the street, directly across from the front door.

It’s a beautiful club, with a spacious layout between the tables (a very welcome change to lots of NY venues where you are packed in like cattle). Unfortunately, the seats are extremely uncomfortable, and need way more padding. In addition to a cover, they have a two drink per person minimum, or a food order. Obviously, we were too stuffed to order food, so two drinks it was going to be.

Again, unfortunately, our waitress was hyper-aggressive about wanting to start the drinks rolling. We were seated at 8:15pm for a 9pm show, so it was disappointing to get that much pressure/attitude that early in the evening. To boot, the gratuity is built in to the check…

We really went to see Jamie Lissow, who was the MC last night. When he came out, he was pretty funny, but 95% was interacting with the crowd (“Where are you from?”, followed by funny ad-libs, etc.). He was definitely good with the crowd. Unfortunately, while he was on stage between every act, he only told two or three jokes, instead just making introductions the rest of the evening.

There were roughly seven other comedians last night. All of them had good stage presence, and each had at least one good joke, a few of them a handful. Unfortunately, all but one of them resorted to ultra-crude humor to try and get laughs. We haven’t been to a comedy club in ages, so perhaps this is the norm. It just happens to not be that clever (in our opinion) and is, in fact, lazy.

The crudeness actually doesn’t bother me at all, but it really bugs Lois, so I cringe when they say something that I know is flat out offensive. Jerry Seinfeld (among many others) has proven that you can have a 100% clean act and still make it. Of course, perhaps it’s much harder to actually think about everyday life, and spin it in a funny way, rather than another sex joke filled with curse words…

The last comic, Kevin Flynn, who was the best of the bunch (not including Jamie) was introduced as having been in a movie with Ben Stiller (The Heartbreak Kid). IMDB doesn’t list him, but oscars.org does, so I am not 100% sure.

After the show was over we were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to say hello to Jamie, and let him know that I was the guy whose blog he commented on. Hopefully, he got a kick out of that.

We definitely enjoyed the evening and were glad we went, but on balance, we’d rather see live music than gamble on the quality of comedians we haven’t seen before.

We got back to the apartment a little after 11pm, and watched the end of To Catch A Thief. We didn’t discuss the movie afterwards, as Lois and I went straight to bed. But, just based on body language, I’m guessing that I enjoyed it more than the other four people combined. 😉