Blog Brent Weinbach tests the crowd

There's nothing about San Francisco stand-up Brent Weinbach's act that announces: "Hey, folks, it's funny time!" To a point, you have to trust him, and let him take the act where he will. He looked surprisingly slight and hunched-over as he sat at the Comedy Club On State's bar before Thursday night's show (and he's got two more sets to go on Friday and Saturday each). Watching a line of college kids make their way in, he worried aloud about how his material might go over with this crowd. Indeed, his set explored a full range of crowd reactions, from puzzled, fidgety silences to giddy moments of relief. He doesn't do impressions so much as descend into characters who seem unaware they're part of a comedy act. "I like that you can laugh at something and not understand why," he said at one point during the show. But that's the brilliance of it, so instead of a straight-up review, here's a rundown of the show's riskiest moments. (I will leave out plenty of stuff and try not to spoil the act for anyone thinking about going tonight or tomorrow, and yes, it's daring and mostly hysterical.)

-In the stiff, arch voice Weinbach uses as his "neutral" stage voice, he explains that "I like a woman with a figure like this," then steps away from the mic. With smoothly fluttering hand motions, he outlines in air what appear to be humungous, cascading fat folds.

-A knock-knock joke somehow becomes the "bubblegum in a dish" rhyme, but sung in Auto-Tuned R&B style (Weinbach should do some session work on vocals between gigs, just to fuck with people).

-In the same vocal idiom, he sexually serenades a birthday girl pulled up from the audience. "This guy's got stones!" the leather-jacketed guy next to me proclaims.

-The difference between "gay eyes" and "psychotic eyes." One ends with him staring out into the audience for an uncomfortable length of time, with his disturbingly long tongue hanging out.

-Again, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, he ends up crumpled around his mic stand like a sloth in drug withdrawal, hissing out such mutant-comedy bits as: "What's the difference between ice cream and a bucket of severed heads? I DON'T LIKE ICE CREAM!" And here is where you start to wonder just how far Weinbach has gotten you to come along. His comedy is deceptively physical, but people underestimate his little slouched figure; his characters and tone are distinctive but not easy to define.

-Finally, he introduces a dance number called "The Bone Collector," which he says will be in the traditional Japanese "butoh" style. With his back to the audience, he cues up "Bad To The Bone," then his neck whips around and he flashes a raunchy grin (or is it more of a sneer?), by far the creepiest of all the facial expressions he's shared so far. My neighbor pipes up again: "I don't know how many drinks I've had, but not enough for this."

Of course, the openers didn't exactly prepare anyone for Weinbach's approach. Kansas City's Mike Baldwin brought a contented stoner-on-the-verge-of-giggling delivery to his material. The best bit riffed on a pizza commercial that actually pointed out people have to specify that they want a certain pizza deal in order to get it. This lead him to ponder a guy who calls up to order a pizza and just lazily tells the place to bring his favorite.

But Thursday night is locals night at the club, so before Baldwin, Madison's Chris Waelti kicked things off with the first of three short sets from Madison-area comics. Waelti is very much the haplessly drunk and/or stoned dude down the street, fixating on silly things and, as he puts it, sometimes pissing on his alarm clock. I like his bit about making trading cards for the regulars at dive bars, and his recurring jokes about calling corn "maize"—hence "maize mazes," getting "maize-holed" in prison, and guys with "maize-rows"—are eventually charming in their way. Paul Hart followed up with his shaky-voiced stage persona and finished weird-but-strong with a quick bit about how hookers are like chili dogs. Brady Pittz finished the local segment with apparently his last set in town before moving away. He came off pretty affable for a big-shouldered football player dressed like a football coach (sweater vest, khakis). Being a big fella, he put the needed intensity into a bit about the "drilling" that goes on in porn videos.

The local guys have some promising moments, and I think they're trying to build good sets that stay away from cheesy nightclub-comic trappings and aspire toward more of a Dave Attell vibe. All in all, it kept me curious enough that I still want to check out the Comedy Club's new weekly local open mic, which starts Wednesday.