In other NashvilleStandUp alumni doing really well at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival news, Jesse Case was written up by Punchline Magazine as well:

“Jan Davidson, and Jesse Case increased their following with their short time in Portland as people continued to talk about their performances long after their shows were over.”

Jesse, are your ears burning? Then you should get that looked at..

Read the rest of the Punchline Magazine wrap-up at: LA comedy represents in Portland; a SoCal perspective on the Bridgetown Comedy Festival

PunchlineMagazine’s Meagan Kate is in Portland reviewing the Bridgetown Comedy Festival. Here’s what she had to say about our pal, Billy Wayne Davis:

“I also got to see Billy Wayne Davis (finally), whose Southern charm made the audience warm to him immediately, and his material was on point. Also: he is adorable.”

You can read the rest of the write-up here, but that’s the only part that talks about how great NashvilleStandUp alum’s are.

UPDATE:
OregonLive.com wrote a short wrap-up of the festival and closed it with a quote from our pal:

Billy Wayne Davis got a laugh about the “Keep Portland Weird” slogan and its obviousness. “It’s like San Francisco going, ‘let’s keep the Bay here!’”

The animated comedy “Max the Hero” stars and was written by Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s and RiffTrax.com’s Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett. It was produced, directed and co-written by Nashville’s Mike Salva.

In the show, Max (voiced by Bill Corbett), is an accidental superhero who is kind of a lazy jerk. He never actually saves anybody. His jealous roommate, Stew (voiced by Michael J. Nelson), becomes his arch-rival. And they both injure their buddy Chip (voiced by Kevin Murphy) a lot.

We’ve seen it! It’s hilarious and well worth your time

Here’s a trailer, narrated by Nashville-based stand-up comedian / sketch performer / writer / heavy metal parody band The Dead Dead front man, Sean Parrott:

Max the Hero‘s 13 minute pilot episode will be screened at the upcoming New York Television Pilot Festival, where it is competing for $25,000 and a a development deal in the Independent Pilot Competition.

2009 Comic-Con International Film Festival (CCIFF) judge / KBPS Film Critic Beth Accomando called Max the Hero, “one of the handful of really outstanding films I saw that year.”

The firm has two screenings:

Wednesday, Sept. 22nd at 9:45 pm (tickets)
Thursday, Sept. 23rd at 7:30 pm (tickets)

Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick Street
NY, NY

The award-winning short has previously been recognized by the Dragon*Con Film Festival as “Best Animated Comedy – 2008,” and as “Best Animation – 2008″ by Rutgers Media Center’s Film and DV Festival. More about “Max The Hero” writer, director, producer Mike Salva can be found at ProjectMeatball.com, and on FaceBook.

Last night’s show at The End featured Gregg Turkington’s anti-comedy character, “America’s Funnyman” Neil Hamburger along with *major entertainer* Mike H from *major group* DAIQUIRI, local musician/comic Chris Crofton and a surprise set from Tom Green.

The Nashville Creme blog began their review of the show by noting that they rarely cover funny things: “Reviewing stand-up comedy isn’t normally part of The Spin’s job description.” Yeah, we know. Rethink that.

In honor of the Scene taking the time to chime in on local comedy shows, we’ll let them do the heavy lifting for us:

“..we would’ve been idiots to miss this show.”

Chris Crofton

“Chris Crofton began a streamlined version of an act we’ve come to know and love. With only a half-hour or so to spare, Crofton wasted no time, delving headfirst into gag-inducing sexual descriptions of fecalphiliacs, jokes about rockabilly douches, diatribes against new media, tales of desecrating slave burial grounds while on LSD and even a joke making light of the tragedy in Haiti.”

Here’s some shaky video of Mr. Crofton doing some NSFW stand-up at the 2009 NY Film Festival:

*major entertainer* Mike H

“Clad in a bizarre hodgepodge consisting of a porn star’s sport coat, shorts, a makeshift kilt, an insurance salesman’s tie, fluffy Zorro mask and stuffed octopus hat, Daiquiri [ed note: actually this was a solo performance from *major entertainer* Mike H of the group Daiquiri] looked as if he’d just gone dumpster diving behind Southern Thrift. Using a myriad of effects processors, a Kaos pad, microphones, an overhead projector and some samples, this excitable artiste spent the first portion of his set singing and spastically dancing about the stage to minute-long compositions that we can best describe as sounding like a cross between Dan Deacon and Limp Bizkit.”

Here’s a clip of *major entertainer* Mike H performing on Tom Green’s House Tonight:

At some point, Mike H’s pal Tom Green jumped on stage and helped out with a cover of Wham!’s “Everything She Wants.” After the show Mike complained that some of his gadgets didn’t work at all & he considered his set to be terrible compared to other recent outings. I found his set to be hilarious and entertaining on many levels. His song “Opening Act” could be the greatest thing ever performed by an opening act.

“Donning his trademark cheap tux and exaggerated comb-over, Hamburger came onstage and showered us with side-splitting anti-joke after anti-joke, proving that he’s simply unequaled in the art of insult comedy. Over the course of an hour, everyone from Scientologists to rock stars, dead celebrities and clothing manufacturers became targets of Hamburger’s merciless raillery.”

Here’s one of Neil Hamburger’s appearances on Jimmy Kimmel:

Awesome awesome awesome. Hamburger is in Louisville tonight and Knoxville Wed.. I’d highly recommend it, if you have the means. The show ended with a BONUS set from our friend Tom Green doing some highlights from his new stand-up act. “Good times,” as Mr. Green would say. The Scene erroneously reported that Tom was drunk and although that was the case Saturday when he jumped up at The Stage to sing “Summer of ’69″.. and Sunday at Tootsie’s when he spat rhymes from, “Rapper’s Delight”.. he had not been drinking Monday and was sober. We promise.

It was a very fun show. Now if we could just get the Scene out to review a few comedy shows even if they DON’T also involve local musicians..

Review by Nashville-based up-and-coming stand-up comedian and hyphen-enthusiast Riley Fox:

About a half-hour or so ago from this writing, I returned home after seeing one of the best stand-up comedy shows I think I may have ever seen. (At least in my top five.)

It was Steve Hofstetter with Phil Mazo at 12th & Porter in downtown Nashville, TN.

First, I’ll discuss the venue. 12th & Porter is a little rock club in downtown Nashville. It’s located at the corner of 12th Avenue North, and, well… Porter. (The same venue naming device is used for another popular Nashville music venue, 3rd & Lindsley, which is located at the corner of… 3rd & Lindsley. For a town full of musicians and other creative people, Nashville really half-assed on some of these venue names. There’s even a venue that, at one point–and it may still have this name–was called The Place. That’s it. The Place. “Hey, what are you guys gonna do before you head to The Place?” “Oh, we’re gonna go eat at A Restaurant.”)

12th & Porter has two rooms: the main showroom, and a side lounge. This show that I saw was in the side lounge room. There were a couple of high-top tables in the back; couple of couches along the side wall, which was adorned with beautifully vibrant paintings of such past music stars as Hank Williams, The Beatles, Stevie Ray Vaughan, etc. The rest of the room had chairs set up in rows, theater-style, facing the stage. Whoever made that call was extremely smart to do so. Stand-up shows work best when the seating is arranged as such so that the entire audience is focused on the show throughout its entire duration. Then, of course, there was the stage, which wasn’t too big, but also wasn’t too small. In the immortal words of Goldilocks, “it was just right.”

If I may go off on a bit of a tangent here, I’d like to profess my love for small, intimate venues. I fucking love them, and I love doing shows in them. Smaller venues are always much more fun than large venues, because with a smaller room you get a greater sense of that intimacy with an audience, and you can really engage them on a much more personal level than even in a big comedy club showroom. You get a connection that isn’t common in other rooms. That’s why if someone ever gave me the choice of performing in a concert hall or stadium for 5,000 people, or a rock club or coffeehouse in front of 50–I’d go with the 50 people any day of the week. I could go on and on about this, but the point is that smaller crowds make better shows because as a performer you can connect with them on a more personal and honest level than a stadium full of random faces. And this show that I saw was definitely one of those.

I’d estimate that there were approximately 50-75 people packed into this little lounge room. As I sat my seat, I eavesdropped on several people’s conversations, and much to my surprise: many of them were talking about comedy. It was mainly about famous comedians they’d seen, but anytime you hear an audience before a comedy show talking about comedy on some level, that’s a great sign. It means the audience knows what the fuck is going on, and they are there for the purpose of seeing the comedy show versus the random yahoos who happened to show up by coincidence.

The show was opened by one of the employees of 12th & Porter, who briefly introduced Phil Mazo. I’d heard of Mazo several times before, as he’s got a pretty sizeable online base, but I’d never seen him or heard any of his material before tonight. For those unfamiliar with Mazo, he has a very clean-cut boyish look (he seriously looks like he could easily be mistaken for a high school sophomore), and he contrasts it with a lot of edgy, dark material. Most of Phil’s act was about relationships; particularly the more sexual aspects of them, of which I’m usually not a big fan. However, his material was very well-written with a few twists that surprised me. He didn’t break away from his material too much, although one of my favorite moments of the night was when he was in the middle of a bit about threesomes when a glass broke on the floor. Mazo’s comment: “Did I bring up some personal shit there?”

After Phil Mazo finished, he introduced the headliner, Steve Hofstetter. I had seen Steve once before, though it was under much less-than-desirable circumstances: he played Volunteer State Community College in Gallatin, TN. In the cafeteria. AT NOON. Needless to say, it wasn’t a fantastic show, but Hofstetter was still able to pull it off given the environment he was in. This time, however, he was in a club at night in front of people who were there to see him–or at least the comedy show in general (which is good enough). And he fucking ROCKED. He weaved between his own clever, highly polished, intelligent material and extremely quick-witted interactions with the crowd.

Believe me when I say this: Steve Hofstetter has one of the quickest minds I have ever seen in comedy. It’s amazing how fast he is. He spent at least two or three minutes riffing on the Wal-Mart in Johnson City, TN after a woman in the crowd mentioned that she was from Johnson City:

“Why did you live in Johnson City?”
“I graduated and moved in with a friend.”
“Well, then you need to get better fucking friends.”

Steve did approximately 50 minutes or so onstage, and the laughs never let up due to his rapid-paced style of speaking. The crowd that he performed for fucking LOVED him and Phil. I can honestly say it may have been the hottest group of people in terms of audience response that I have ever seen. They were there to laugh, and laugh they did: from the dirty jokes to the clean jokes, from the smart jokes to the dumb jokes, from the innocent jokes to the downright demonic jokes. This audience kicked ass, and Mazo and Hofstetter deserved it. And I bet it won’t be long before the two of them, who frequently tour together, will be rolling through Nashville again.

“This guy got mad because I was funnier than him. I said, ‘I’m a professional comedian, so obviously that must mean I’m funnier than you.’ He said, ‘Yeah, well, you’re a douche.’ And I said, ‘You know what? You’re right: I am a douche. Because after I fucked your mother, she smelled better.’” – Steve Hofstetter

Until next time,

–Riley

Riley Fox is an up-and-coming stand-up comedian in Nashville, Tennessee. He enjoys progressive-rock, self-loathing, and overuse-of-hyphens. His overarching self-consciousness and indecisiveness causes great unease in social situations, and is also very introverted and delusional to an extent. However, despite all of these psychological shortcomings, he has still somehow convinced himself to pursue a career entertaining and performing in front of audiences of people. He’s not quite sure how it happened, either. He is currently working on a BA degree in English, and writes in his spare time. He would also like to borrow $20 dollars. Please?