Maureen Andary of The Sweater Set
@ Fort Reno
Q:What's your song for summer?
A:"Our song about summer love. The lyrics are 'Oh, you're just for fun, don't you know. I only want you for summer months.'"
THURSDAY: Emmy award-winning comedian Kathy Griffin will delight, horrify, outrage and bedazzle audiences at Merriweather Post Pavilion on Thursday, where the scabrous stand-up queen and star of her own show on HBO ("My Life on the D-List") dishes on the minutiae of a bottom-feeder living under the underbelly of American celebrity.
» Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, Md.; Thu., June 25,
8 p.m., $35-$75; 800-551-7328.
Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post
IT'S BEEN 24 HOURS since Remy Munasifi uploaded his latest video on YouTube. And if you've got a Twitter feed or a Facebook page or a Gmail account, you've probably already seen it: It's a rap lauding the 28-year-old's Starbucks-laden, Whole Foods-hoppin' 'hood: Arlington, Virginia.
"Arlington: The Rap," which sings the praises of Crate & Barrel and notes the ubiquity of brown flip-flops, has jumped from 300 to 30,000 YouTube views in less than a day. We caught up with Munasifi to quiz him on his, uh, Clarendon street cred.
» EXPRESS: What makes Arlington so hardcore?
» MUNASIFI: It's populated by straight-up thugs. Really, seersucker is a fabric, but it's really a fabric that holds the town together. I was on the Metro and I saw a guy with brown flip-flops and seersucker shorts and I said, 'Yes! This is a video that needs to be made.'
It's a unique place — that's why I moved here. I like it a lot. There are a lot of individuals, unique personalities, creative people. It's kinda artsy. Everybody's real nice, too. It's not something that happens completely up and down the East Coast.
» EXPRESS: The video has gotten a lot of traffic in just 24 hours. Has response been crazy?
» MUNASIFI: That's cool. Now I'm just worried that folks are going to get sick of it; it's only been a day. I'm just happy that folks liked it. I put other videos out there — about something general. But this [song] was about a two-mile radius, so I didn't think it was really going to do [well].
» EXPRESS: Where did the idea come from?
» MUNASIFI: I live in Clarendon now, just a couple blocks from the Metro. I just moved here a few weeks ago and I thought that would be kinda cool to introduce everybody to my new 'hood. I really like Clarendon; I didn't land here by accident. It was like a celebration. I got a couple e-mails yesterday that folks liked it, and I was content with that. So far today it's been more of the same.
GABRIEL IGLESIAS IS like a human cartoon. He switches among characters he's met at a breakneck speed — anyone from racist Southern cops, mean Irish bartenders, his lively Mexican-American friends and family, California Valley Girls near his hometown of Long Beach, and suave D.C. tour guides. He also sports loud Hawaiian shirts and even has nicknames like Picachu and Fluffy. Oh, and he's easily excitable, letting out his trademark high-pitched squeal at the sight of a dozen Krispy Kremes, and sensually discusses chocolate cake over the phone with his girl (disturbingly similar to phone sex).
The 2006 Comedy Central comedian of the year has made the late-night television circuit (appearances on "The Tonight Show," "The Late Late Show" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live"), was infamously booted off NBC's "Last Comic Standing" that year (he jokes, "I was the first Mexican deported on national TV"), and his one-hour special "2 Hot 2 Fluffy," debuts on Comedy Central in October.
» EXPRESS: Why "fluffy"?
» IGLESIAS: My mom called me that; sure beats the hell out of "fat." I then created the five levels of fatness and I've adapted that for my online clothing store for plus-sized people [fluffyshop.com]. There, you can get the big, the "healthy," the "husky," the "fluffy" and the "Damn!" I've recently added a sixth level called the "Oh, hell, no!" [size 6XL]. I've lost a few pounds, so I'm between a husky and a fluffy.
Continue Reading "Human Cartoon: Comedian Gabriel Iglesias" »
MIKE DUGAN PULLS NO PUNCHES exploring the darker edges of the male psyche in his show "Men Fake Foreplay," now at Bethesda Theatre. The comedian and Emmy-winning writer wrote for Jay Leno and Dennis Miller before launching his 90-minute monologue filled with funny and philosophical insights. Whether he's trying to figure out why men really cheat or why they don't seem to understand complex communication, Dugan's take on the man-woman thing goes far beyond yuks about leaving the toilet seat up.
» EXPRESS: How did "Men Fake Foreplay" come to be?
» DUGAN: When I was writing for late night, I was making a lot of money, but I wanted to write for my own voice. I mean, how many ways can you call Monica Lewinsky a slut? The more I looked around, the more I realized the world is designed to help men do the right thing, not the easy thing.
» EXPRESS: What is the title saying?
» DUGAN: Yeah, it's not about sex. There are actually two definitions in the dictionary for foreplay: the one about sex, and then there's, "Actions or behaviors that precede an event." I set out to redefine foreplay as all the things a man does.
Continue Reading "Pulling No Punches, Faking Foreplay: Comedian Mike Dugan" »
"EVERYBODY IN NEW JERSEY thinks they're an insult comedian," remarks Jeffrey Ross, 43. "If there was an academy of roasting, it would be in Jersey. I never realized I was funny until I went away to college. Back home in Jersey, I was just another guy."
Ross was a little-known stand-up comic before his work as a producer of and participant in the Friars Club roasts put him on the map. Now people come to his stand-up gigs expecting to see a roast — so Ross puts a podium onstage, invites fans to stand behind it and goes to town, Jersey style.
» EXPRESS: What kind of relationship did you have with [early television comedian] Milton Berle?
» ROSS: Milton taught me a lot. He must have hosted hundreds of roasts. After my first roast, he gave me a kiss on the cheek in front of a thousand people and invited me back to the Club to have a drink and a cigar. We'd have lunch all the time. He taught me to smoke cigars. He literally stuck one up his nose and explained that if it smelled like crap, it was genuine Cubano.
Continue Reading "Friars Club Roastmaster: Comedian Jeffrey Ross" »
WEDNESDAY: Before Christopher Guest was making mockumentaries about dog shows, he made the greatest (fake) rockumentary of all time: "This Is Spinal Tap."
Since their drummer is always dead, you'll have to settle for the three members of the band playing their headbanger music — Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean. They've also impersonated a folk band on screen and thus will be opening for themselves.
» Warner Theatre, 513 13th St. NW; Wed., May 13, 8 p.m., $39.50-$65; 800-551-7328. (Metro Center)
Photo courtesy MGM Home Entertainment
SATURDAY: The art of the impersonation had fallen into disrepute; it took modern comics, especially Frank Caliendo, right, to restore luster to the subgenre. The star of "Frank TV" comes to the Patriot Center on Saturday with Bill Engvall.
» Patriot Center, GMU, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax; Sat., May 9, 8 p.m., $49.50; 703-573-7328.
Written by Express' Arion Berger
MONDAY: If you don't know who these guys are, you haven't been watching "Flight of the Conchords." And in that case, we're going to take a moment of silence to feel sorry for you.
But then we'll shake you by the shoulders and tell you to go see Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement — the New Zealand comedy duo whose songs prove that every joke is twice as funny when it's sung in a kiwi accent.
» Constitution Hall, 1776 D St. NW; Mon., April 13, 7:30 p.m., $38.50; 202-397-7328. (Farragut West)
Photo by Nicole Rivelli
LIKE MANY YOUNG women, Kristen Schaal moved to New York with dreams of becoming an actress. Thank goodness that didn't work out. Otherwise, the world might have missed out on one of the funniest and most distinctive voices to emerge from the morass of improv classes and open-mic nights in quite a while.
"When acting proved to be almost impossible," she recalls, "I was like, 'OK, let me figure out other ways to perform.' Stand up and improv became routes that I could take to forge something for myself."
Schaal delivers her jokes with a wide grin, impish eyes and a giggle of a voice, all of which betray a quick mind and a strong grasp of the absurd. She might not look like a troublemaker, but she seems to get into a lot of trouble.
Those two pursuits — improv and stand-up — have landed her a few acting parts, most notably on HBO's "Flight of the Conchords," which stars the New Zealand novelty-folk act with whom she is currently touring. She plays super-obsessed stalker-fan Mel, who regularly takes her devotion to the duo to uncomfortable extremes. And Schaal, her hyperactive glee offsetting the other actors' straight faces, threatens to steal every scene.
With her cult fanbase growing, Schaal is taking more acting roles — including a small part in the upcoming Salma Hayek movie "Cirque du Freak" — but she's also staying active in her other pursuits, including a regular stint on "The Daily Show," a British TV pilot for her Web series "Penelope Princess of Pets" and a book that she describes as "a collection of short stories that are incredibly erotic and funny. From sex experts, which we are." Expect Schaal's singular brand of inspired insanity. "It's going to save lives," she predicts. "Already now I'm just imaging the world in the fall of 2010 as being completely different after this book comes out."
More than a year before Schaal becomes a sexual Messiah to the world, we got her on the phone for a brief chat about improv vs. stand-up, getting confused with her characters, and what it's like being a horse with a silly head.
» EXPRESS: You do so much different work. Was that a calculated effort, or do these projects just fall into your lap?
» SCHAAL: I think it definitely just sort of happens. I'm grateful that I can have so many opportunities. I hope it never ends. I hope I'm really spread thin my whole life!
SATURDAY: Would you trust a guy who dropped out of NYU Law with one year to go — fully funded, we might add — to pursue a career in comedy to tell you what's important in life?
Apparently you would. Demetri Martin's musical stand-up comedy has garnered so many fans that Comedy Central's given him his own show: "Important Things with Demetri Martin." Before that, this multi-talented funnyman appeared on "The Daily Show" and "Flight of the Conchords." Catch his gig at the Warner Theater Saturday night — they just scheduled a second, late-night show.
» Warner Theatre, 1299 Pennsylvania Ave. NW; Sat., April 11, 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., $30; 202-783-4000. (Metro Center)
Written by Express' Brian Austin
Photo courtesy Comedy Central
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