COMEDY CONTEST San Fran Semi-Finals is Funny at Fifty

The San Francisco Comedy Competition is celebrating its 50th year with a list of laugh out loud comics. Previous competitors included Robin Williams, Ellen DeGeneres and Dana Carvey. As the comic host, Mike Winfield whose claim to fame was "being a 2 time loser on 'America's Got Talent,'" he kept a running gag that was cloyingly repetitive: "The next comic could get famous with this routine.." Still,  4/5 of the first10 comics were LOL. Comedienne Jay Rich did a hilarious set which began as an audience interplay on ages in the audience. Rich cleverly wove age into his routine, "Those of us born in the 1950's & 60's crawled so you youngsters can walk." He was referring to refer madness days when pot was illegal. "Now these Gen Z's just go into the store and ask if they have any Jerry Garcia flavored pot to sample."  Santa Rosa audiences are known to be mostly white which has long been remarked upon in good humor. But last night's host and contestants were a colorful, motley mix;  3 Afri-Amer. males, an Indian female, one white guy and a transexual women "6 years into transitioning." Why only 5/10 contestants mentioned?  Because at intermission, this baby-boomer went home to bed. However, this year's competition (not being my first rodeo) started only 10 minutes past 8 instead of its usual half-hour late start. Jay Rich was the first comic up. (Notoriously, comics go on from weakest to strongest performer). This wasn't true last night. I don't take issue with the claim women comics are not as funny as the men because I agree.  OH grow up! The comedienne who failed to illicit even a smirk from me was Ava Val who hails from Canada. Val transitioned from male to female. She appeared appeared on "Canada's Got Talent" 2005. She received 4 yeses! I'm guessing the votes were to avoid backlash from the public. However, Ava didn't have anything funny to say. She flung out her falsies and asked a man in front to feel her arm to see how soft her skin is. When he complied, Ava told him, "You know this means you're now gay." Comic Tyrik Woods is what I call a man's comedienne. In other, he appeals to male audiences and is off-putting to the more gentile gender as being too cringe-worthy. Still, I thought he had good comedic timing. He let the audience hang while spinning a yarn about what he did wrong while having oral sex with his girlfriend. "The horrible thing I did while going down on my girlfriend was,,,,I fell asleep." I did laugh at the unexpected answer but Woods pushed the envelope (which comics do). My favorite comic of the first 1/2 of night was Priya Puram. She was a pleasant surprise. She turned what felt like a mundane routine about her career in software engineering and engineered a sharp, high-energy delivery on the quirks of modern digital life. Spoiler alert: none of the contests I saw made it into the finals. Which means, the finalist should all be the creme de la creme of the comic crop. So get your tickets now to the finals next Friday at Clark Center for the Performing Arts in Arroyo Grande.

 

Priya Puram 

Terrel Butler