Category: Live Events

In. oh, 40 minutes or so from now, tickets go on sale for “The Block Party All Stars featuring Dave Chappelle” - a show unannounced until today and naturally, as it’s Dave, had the appropriate PR effect - landing immediately on Yahoo’s home page (where I saw it.) Pretty effective promotion of his forthcoming concert film “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party”, which also features surprise attendance at a Chappelle event for some lucky folks. The show takes place this Sunday at 7PM at Seattle’s Paramount Theater. According to the office Ticketmaster site, you can only get a ticket if you live in Washington, Oregon or Idaho and each ticket costs $52.50. Love a report on this one if any of my readers attends.

Buy a ticket to “The Block Party All Stars featuring Dave Chappelle” (sales start at 1PM on 2/15/06)

UPDATE: Looks like Dave will be going to more than Seattle. It’s merely the first stop in a tour of shows to promote the film. Cities include:  San Francisco, Denver, Houston, Dallas, Birmingham, Charlotte, North Carolina, Upper Darby, PA and the close-to-Dave’s-farm Dayton, OH. I did notice on the Dallas page that it says Dave will not be performing a full set. With two musical acts at each destination, I’m not sure this is not true for all points in the tour. Visit ticketmaster for all these shows.

When I nearly vomited at the first one, I couldn’t imagine enduring this nonsense to five shows. The human body is amazing. This installment featured a cartoon by Phil Haney of National Lampoon and the site superawesomewow, Sketchfights’ producer Josh Callahan and the misindentified-by-TimeOut New York Jon Friedman. (Still TONY, thanks for the “Don’t Miss” plug). And the winner of the $100 prize, provided generously by V2 records on behalf of the CD companion to the Aristocrats movie, was Margot Leitman, whose variation of the Aristocrats joke featured Lionel Richie and Nicole Richie and much of the ephemera surrounding them, in a very VH1 “Best Week Ever” way, save for being far too filthy for VH1 (at least at this date). I’ll never watch the “Hello” video the same, Margot.

Once more, check all these people out doing shows around NYC that don’t require theaters like the PIT to go through a Level 4 decontamination process afterwards. Also sheck out Aristocontest host and co-producer Alex Zalben’s new podcast SketchfestTV. Good stuff. We’ll do one more of these in February. Check the Aristocrats Joke Database for date and time.

Thanks to the fine folks of V2 records, performing comics won prizes instead of a figuartive sloppy wet kiss from the sub-cockles of my heart (I have no idea what my fellow producer Alex Zalben gives them). This Aristocontest was a “Best of’ - bringing winners from the first three back to perform their filthy, horrific jokes once again - ensuring each a special place in Heaven, right next to Jerry Falwell. Thanks again to Bob Powers, Katherine Bryant (and the censoring and vomiting Alex Goldberg), Baron Vaughn and runners-up Bob Wiltfong and Kurt Braunohler. All got funny stuff going on besides offending their mothers by participating in this bullshit. Go see them do that.

And the winner of the $100 grand prize was… Andres Dubouchet! You can read his winning joke here. Be sure to hit him up for cab fare if you see him - you know he’s got the money now. That prize money was supplied by the CD Soundtrack for The Aristocrats movie (buy it now) .

Drawing at least one rave review in the bee-ell-oh-gee-oh-sphere, Aristocontest 3 was a grand time for all who can laugh at pictures of open sores on penises. Thanks to Josh Schrei (who brought the pics of syphilitic genitals. Thanks, Josh!), Jordan Carlos, Todd Levin, Richard Jones, and winner Baron Vaughn of the Brooklyn Comedy Company, whose rap version featured Rosa Parks violated in ways the KKK never imagined. And as always many thanks to host and co-conspirator Alex Zalben of Elephant Larry.

We’re doing it again in December. Aristocontest Four promises to have a few surprises. Stay tuned.

Also, check out Fearsome‘s new sketch show “Fearsome and such…” at the PIT. The team performs some fantastic funny stuff at a frenetic pace that all connects together. There’s some great observational stuff about how we physically look while making out, some time travel to destroy a terrible sketch, much rewinding of another and one painfully funny pause. Check it out Fridays at 8PM at the PIT.

This past Saturday’s Aristocontest was another great show. Thanks again to comics Roger Hailes, Jack Kukoda, second timer Joe Lipari, Seth Herzog and winner Kurt Braunohler, whose rendition of the Aristocrats act as an autopsy report was completely inspired. Thanks again to PIT Aristic Director and Elephant Larry-ite Alex Zalben, who organizes the whole thing including me. Go see Elephant Larry’s sketch show BOOM!

This past Saturday, the People’s Improv Theater and this site held our first Aristocontent, an evening of the filthiest joke told over and over again. Even with the joke told in a variety of differing ways (in song, as political satire and a tagteam telling featuring one player censoring the other), I had to admit I was a little worried people would be sick of it after a while. But the show went for an hour and forty five minutes and I didn’t detect any audience fatigue at all.

Thanks to all the participants: Andres du Bouchet (read his version), Joe Lipari, Shayna Ferm and Katherine Bryant from Fearsome, the sketch group Meat, Bob Powers (whose telling made me a little sick), Nate Kushner and PIT founder’s Ali Farahnakian who naturally segued into his version, casting himself as the agent.

Many thanks especially to Alex Zalben from Elephant Larry (who you should see if you haven’t yet), who came to me with the idea. So much fun. We’re talking about doing another one mid October. Watch this space or the Aristocrats Joke Database for more details.