Nov162007

Broadband Theatre - The Comedy Festival, Day 1

Filed Under Live Events, The Comedy Festival

Live shows that feature what’s so funny on the web are always hard. Sometimes they turn into marketing/advertising presentations, sometimes they feature guest whose humor is more accidental than conscious. This show dodged a fair amount of that. Hosted by Pete and Brian, the show featured work from the Blerds, John Roberts, Chelsea Peretti, Machinma, Garage Comedy and Funny or Die. The highlights:

The Blerds shared videos made for places outside the web that fell apart before they saw the light of day, including an ad they did for Jose Cuervo because “we’re too edgy for Mexican boose online.” The Blerds also played a video for their late friend Pat Brice. I was happy that no one laughed during the intro for it, so many comedy shows have salutes to faux dead friends now that I’m worried that talk about real dead people might be taken as jokes. Here’s Pat’s vid:

Chelsea Peretti did a live version of “All My Exes” with out web comedy genius ZeFrank as her guest. Peretti reminisced about their good times together and ZeFrank corrected her - when Peretti asked him what he was thinking about in a photo where he wistfully looks out a window, Ze said, “escape.”

My favorite part of the 5 PM show (a brutal time for comedy) was Garage Comedy - stand-up Brody Stevens took the stage dealing with texted heckles from audience’s members and the live player.  Stevens talked non-stop, deflecting Twitter-ed bullets like “I don’t think old Blue Eyes would approve of white Jew thighs here” and “I’d rather be losing money downstairs right now” with verve and energy. He even got down into the crowd and requested old-fashioned verbal heckling.

Funny or Die demonstrated how the Internet was destroying the environment, presenting pictorial evidence of Google dumping baby polar bears onto ice floes every time someone searches for their own name. They then debuted a new video showing their own commitment to Mother Earth featuring The Green Team (Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Adam McKay). I’d embed here, but the video hasn’t made it to the web yet. But here’s a quote from it:

Make love to Mother Earth. Make a small hole, fill it with a little bit of water for lubrication and go to town.

Update: Funny or Die has posted the “Green Team” video. Here it is:

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