I wanted to see comedy. The Twin Cities can support the big acts in the grand venues. Brian and I have seen our share. Patton Oswalt, John Mulaney, Demetri Martin and Brian Regan at the State. Bill Burr at the Orpheum. For a cool mid-sized place, I loved seeing Mulaney and Hannibal Buress at The Varsity. That was magical. And we saw Tommy Johnagin at Acme. The place was okay. The support columns that interfered with sightlines didn’t help the vibe, but I’ll take it. I probably liked it better than the place at the Mall of America. I just kept thinking, “This could be better.” Put a candle on the table. Something. Feng shui! People! Feng shui! Space matters. Mood matters. This place didn’t have it.

We saw Maria Bamford at the Women’s Club. They should use some of those dues to replace the seating in the theater and they would truly have a sweet place. I guess it’s serviceable. But honestly, I would be happy to see Bamford anywhere. And unlike the casinos, I wouldn’t avoid the Women’s Club. We had to go to a casino to see Kathleen Madigan. The flat seating on banquet chairs was not for me. Again, no mood. The show was a striking contrast to seeing someone like Kathy Griffin. Her act was great. But even better was being in a room full of nuts who adore the woman. It was electric. Whereas in a casino, I get the impression that there are people like us who took a shower and made a point a to see a particular show, but we might be outnumbered by the people who are wandering in the place because they ran out of quarters.

Below all of this, I didn’t know what the scene was. With no aspirations to take the stage as a comedian, it can be hard to remember to go to an open mic on a Tuesday night. But we finally did it. A few weeks ago (on a Friday night!) we got to a ten o’clock show in the basement of the Corner Bar on the West Bank.

My expectations were zero. But more than wanting entertainment, I wanted to satisfy my curiosity. So whatever happened, it was going to be great. When Brian read a review that trashed the place because it was a dive, I thought, yep. That’s exactly what I want. It was actually a nice space. Intimate. And I appreciated that my view was not obstructed by a pillar. The place had a nice buzz and a hint of danger. Although we arrived at the bar an hour early, there was a chance that we wouldn’t get into the show. Some guy opens the door to the basement and people funnel in from various directions until they run out of seats. It was our first time there and this was oddly stressful. I’m a middle-aged white lady. Could you please tell me where I can find the line?

We guessed that we might see ten comedians. There were almost twenty! We figured that most of it would be rough. Plenty of it was. At the same time, I was encouraged by much of it too. If we wanted to cultivate a scene in the Twin Cities where we rely more on the local entertainment, you have to ask yourself if we have the chops. I would say I left this experience feeling more encouraged than discouraged. There is still the question of how we actually cultivate talent and create the kinds of scenes that make the Twin Cities a great place to be. For now I’m just a butt in a seat. And for whatever it’s worth, Brian and I made a few observations based on what we saw.

Mainly, I’m just amazed that anyone has the guts to do stand-up. I’m so happy to be living in a place where I can go out and see stuff for my entertainment. Thank you!

Tips for Comedians

Take the stage. Find your spot. Center. Up front. You know, the spot! A few people were trying to hide in the back corner. It might seem like the safest thing to do, but it just compounds the awkwardness.

Be in your body. This can mean a lot of things. It could mean stand up straight. Take a strong stance with both feet planted on the ground. No slouching. A dance class or tai chi might help.

Do not turn on yourself. Resist the temptation to go to self-deprecation or commenting on how you think it’s going. Instead, commit to what you are doing. Pause. Breathe. Do the thing instead of talking about it.

Do not turn on the audience. I’ve seen teasing the audience work. But some things should be left for the more experienced. One guy who was sort of doing okay complained about how bad the audience was whenever he didn’t get the laugh he expected. I thought the audience was rather supportive, so these comments were just confusing.

You’re not as edgy as you think. Along those same lines, I don’t like to be scolded because I can’t take your edginess. I’m not offended. I just didn’t think that was funny.

Bring your friends! You would have thought one law student was a rock star by the way the crowd went crazy for him. On the other hand, I can imagine wanting to try stand-up without the pressure of failing in front of all of your co-workers.

Learn to use the microphone. Don’t scream. Watch how others are using the mic to some good effect or look up a tutorial on YouTube. I’m not talking about doing anything fancy. There were just a few examples where better mic handling would have helped.

Know when to stop. Maybe it drives the organizers crazy if people don’t fill out their allotted time, but I thought it was cool when people did their thing and let the bit end.

Plan your exit. Think about how to get off the stage without apologizing. Never apologize. You’re doing fine! Remind me of your name. Wave. Say thank you.

Be vulnerable. This is probably too much to ask of someone who is new at stand-up, but if you don’t eventually get there, you’ll never be my favorite comedian. Devastating. I know. I just say that because there will always be room for people who have been at it for a while who have mediocre success and a shitload of bitterness. Some of the earlier points address this. Instead of being vulnerable, you hide in the back of the stage. Instead of being vulnerable you lash out at the audience. Make sense? The best example of this type of diversion tactic came from one of the stronger acts. There was something there, but then he went into jokes about… Raunchy is fine. Whatever, floats your boat. But it doesn’t work when it’s a substitute for vulnerability, which was our sense here.

Don’t be too vulnerable. On the other hand, it’s always useful to ask if the stage is the best place for your vulnerable state. The formula is Tragedy + Time = Comedy. Some acts seemed like they might have needed a little more time. Whatever you decide, make sure you’re taking care of yourself in other ways too. Cultivate friends. Learn how to fly a kite. Build a tree-house. Join a book club. Take a class. Find a therapist. Whatever feeds your soul.

Avoid insider jokes. It’s cool to see that there appears to be a community of comedians that support each other. But don’t expect the good will you have there to carry you.

Skip the pleasantries. After the fifth comedian in a long lineup, you can skip the “How’s everyone doing tonight?” Look at comedians who just start and do that. I could also do without the “Let’s keep it going for Ralph, everyone! Give it up for Ralph!” In the meantime, Ralph has left. Ralph is throwing up in the bathroom. Leave Ralph out of this.

Write better material.

End strong or as strong as you can. A good example of this was the guy who ended with cell phone impressions.

Connect. It’s scary to connect with the audience, but it’s a requirement of the job. Imagine reading a story to a little kid. That’s what I mean by connect. I’m not talking about the crowd work where you’re giving people the business. That’s fine. But what I mean by connect is not aggressive. It’s just a way to let me know that it matters that I am there. I thought the guy who told the story about his dad who has Alzheimer did a nice job with this. Again, there were others too.

Acknowledge your celebrity double. Steve Buscemi and Maria Bamford, you know who you are.

Never be bitter. Never tell the audience that they don’t know what’s funny. Never tell the audience that they do not matter. Do not verbalize, “I’m doing this joke for me. I don’t care if you think. It’s funny.”

I love you, Winona! What a pleasure it was to be whisked away by Fran and Margot to the home of the Great River Shakespeare Festival in the middle of the week. The Merry Wives of Winsor was a thoroughly enjoyable production and ensured that we will be back for more. You packed the house and now I know why.

It’s a beautiful drive from the Twin Cities to Winona State University that has been hosting the festival for the past eleven years. What? I could have seen Yo-Yo Mah for twenty-five dollars at your Beethoven Festival? Now you’re just bragging. No wonder the inn keeper was bustling on air when she put on that fresh pot of coffee. I thought she might actually do a pirouette.

On the way down, we cut over to the Wisconsin to snake our way down the river to Stockholm. We saw eagles swooping just off the bluffs and that never gets old. After wandering through an art gallery where I was sorry that my parents had not been with us as I saw a million beautiful things they would have loved, we cheated and enjoyed our dessert before dinner at the Stockholm Pie Company. Then it was to the Minnesota Marine Art Museum. What a treasure. Again, the woodcut prints by Nick Wroblewski made me wish that my parents could have made the trip. My dad would have been impressed.

We didn’t do anything especially noteworthy for dinner, although my spinach cranberry salad at the Green Mill hit the spot. Then it was to the show (delightful, as I said) and back to the motel. Before leaving the next day, at breakfast we learned from a Harley rider who was waiting for her man to get out of bed that there was a lot more to see. A bank with stained glass windows? I won’t miss it.

Thanks for a lovely day off, Winona.

We’ve been enjoying The Walker’s Out There series, which comes around every year in the heart of winter, a good time to hunker down in their cave of a theater that makes the audience feel like a part of the set with its wavy gray walls that bring spray-painted Styrofoam to mind. With one exception, we loved the series, each show for different reasons. We recommend that you catch the last of it tonight or tomorrow. Lola Arias’s The Year I Was Born is definitely worth seeing.

Generally worried about the road conditions and realizing that the time I was going to use to make myself presentable might be needed to help shovel our way out instead, we considered bagging it. I’m really glad we didn’t.

The Year I Was Born was great theater and solid story-telling and it will stick with me for a long time. Following eleven Chileans with disparate political and economic backgrounds and who were born during Pinochet’s reign (1973-1990), the piece widened my vision and deepened my capacity to absorb parallel histories such that I could somehow understand everything at once. What was I doing when Alexandra’s mother, Pitty, was gunned down by government thugs? I can only hope that I wasn’t cursing Verizon or consumed with some similar inanity.

By comparison, Wunderbaum’s (with LAPD) Hospital was a didactic dud that would make me think twice about seeing a show put on by political activists the same way I might be highly skeptical of a movie starring Keanu Reeves. Unlike The Year I Was Born, which is also a historical piece that relies on personal stories, this show has few theatrical elements that work. Instead it lays out the history of health care in the United States in such a way that it wouldn’t have been surprising if they had fired up PowerPoint. Overall, Hospital lacked a sense of humor, a refuge that even a play about a brutal dictatorship provided.

Kuro Tanino’s Niwa Gekidan Penino (The Room Nobody Knows) was visually stunning the minute the curtains opened to a diorama-esque scene that made you long to step into its sparkling amethyst cubby. It was a scene so intimate that the audience was actually seated on the main stage, creating a stage within a stage that I liked to imagine infinitely repeated itself. The music was equally breathtaking. There is no version of Pachelbel’s Canon that will ever come close to what four actors accomplished with recorders. More than once for a conventionally unacceptable number of minutes, the director leaves us in the pitch dark with nothing but this music. Everything else melts away. Every worry. Every plan. Every thought. If I could conjure up this moment on demand, I’m not sure I would do anything else.

Equally addictive was a moment from Clément Layes’ Public in Private. A potted plant. A spotlight. A performer, head tucked and pointing to the plant in the light. Music! Cut mid-note! That was it for me. More than wondering how this guy did the entire show with a glass of water balanced on the side of his head, or recalling other stand-alone physical feats that amazed and made for wonderfully playful moments, I’ll think about that plant and wonder how such an image could make me feel sad about the state of the world and hopeful at the same time. I love a show that leaves you speechless, and this is one of them.

BJH: I didn’t fall asleep. See It.

RJS: I didn’t wake up mad. Skip it.

RJS: While there are reasons to recommend this movie, I suspect I’m just hoping that the words of the coke-snorting Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey) might penetrate our collective psyche. Hanna deflowers Wall Street neophyte, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), with the truth about legalized gambling, as he describes an unsustainable game of musical chairs where there are a few winners and a lot of losers, and where no goods are produced and trillions of dollars of wealth is “all on paper.” It sounded pretty accurate to me and it’s better entertainment than The Crash Course.

Another scene that should have been required viewing for Mr. Randall’s high school Family Economics class where I learned how to balance an imaginary checkbook is where Belfort sells four thousand dollars of penny stocks to some schmuck over the telephone. As he reels in fish bait, Belfort and his sleazy crew of rehabilitated losers pantomime their valued customer – a family man who’s finally asserting some independence from his more cautious ball and chain – literally taking it up the ass.

From the beginning, we know that we’re in for a stomach-turning, eye-averting ride when for $10,000 an employee at a brokerage firm entertains her co-workers by shaving her head. Apparently abusing midgets and lining up to gangbang skanky whores at the office in the middle of a workday didn’t cut it for these assholes. While she quickly loses her idolatrous audience to more seductive pleasures before the deed is done – imagine a toddler casually setting aside a shiny new toy as he wanders off for a television fix – the mangy woman is not humiliated in vain. Ten grand will pay for a boob job.

The degradation of every single woman in this movie was very, very upsetting and leaves nothing about the lifestyle of the superrich – as it is depicted here – to be envied. And where I might suspect some movies of hiding behind “telling it like it is” as an excuse to flirt with gratuitous violence and misogynistic fantasies where a man can whack off to a bombshell at a party in front of his wife without the threat of consequences. I can’t make that case here no more than it’s justified to be upset with a war journalist for taking pictures of dead children.

With frame-by-frame disturbing images, I wondered if the movie could have been an effective art exhibit to be absorbed on the viewer’s own terms. As it is, I felt assaulted and maybe that’s the point. We would have missed out on some physically comical scenes, like when a paralyzed luded-up Belfort has to get himself behind the wheel of his car to stop the Feds from ruining his ill-gotten life. But there are other scenes that would have translated to paint quite well. For example, there’s the brief moment when we see The Wolf carrying a monkey through a sea of cubicles full of bottom feeders who will say anything to close a deal because they’ve bought into a system where they matter and you don’t.

On second thoughts, maybe The Wolf of Wall Street is worth seeing.