Madison's Stand-Up Comedy Competition, Round Three
After seeing the contestants whittled down to 10 during the first round of Comedy Club On State's Madison stand-up competition last week, The A.V. Club was left wondering whether or not the advancing comedians had chewed through their best material or if a mass of fresh jokes would be delivered in Wednesday night's third round. The answer? Both, sort of. Any regular patron of Madison comedy was immediately familiar with Alan Talaga’s set, which he performed as his alter-ego—Midwest soccer-uncle and talk-show host Dan Potacke. Talaga put a set together from a couple of familiar jokes from his bi-weekly variety hour, The Dan Potacke Show. One gag had Talaga convulsing in skull-freezing pain as chomped down on around six popsicles in under two minutes just to read the jokes on the sticks.
While Talaga stuck to the tried and true, newcomer Kevin Kunkel proved that he still had plenty of jokes he hadn’t exhausted. Kunkel expressed his frustration with the seating at the West Side’s Marcus Theatres, claiming that one row seemed to be designed specifically for “13-year-olds to fingerbang each other.” In the tradition of Monty Python, Kunkel also did a bit in the character of a pilot giving a sadistic lecture on airline safety, which may be why the up-and-comer was voted into the final round.
Madison’s twitchiest comedian, Paul Hart, hit the stage to a reworked version of T-Pain’s “Can’t Believe It.” Hart’s stunning rendition included lyrics like, “I love eating pussy, but only for 10 minutes” and even a line about “Red Lobster.” Additionally, Nick Hart (no relation to Paul) used his eight minutes to tell a single extended story about using jukebox terrorism to combat a large man who kept playing Nickelback songs at a bar. The story had Hart dumping a hundred dollars into a jukebox and queuing up New Kids On The Block’s “ You Got It (The Right Stuff)” 250 times.
Mike Schmidt and JoAnne Poniatowski made sure that there was no shortage of vagina, dick, or boob jokes. Several of Poniatowski’s jokes centered around the all-too-cherished American past-time of “motor-boating,” and Schmidt explained that getting raped by aliens for a free ride in spaceship is actually a pretty good deal for abductees. Another odd coincidence was that both David Leon and Dave Labedz made jokes about Go-gurt, the weird yogurt-in-a-squeeze-tube product. Labedz’s finest moment came from a brilliant anecdote about how everyone in Norwegian black metal band Dimmu Borgir has a ridiculous pseudonym, except for the drummer. “What happened, Nick? Did you forget to read your copy of Lord Of The Rings before band practice?” Labedz sputtered in what must have been the nerdiest voice possible.
While all 10 contestants really stepped it up for the third round, the audience became putty in the paws of Sean Moore, who closed the evening. The audience howled with laughter as Moore riffed on the marketing of Taco Bell. “The Taco Bell research labs only seem to have about six ingredients, but they always come up with something new and crazy. They’ll come out with the ‘Triple Nacho Burrito Mouthfuck,’ you’ll order it in the drive-thru, and eat it in your car…alone. But of course, then once you taste it—‘Damn it, Taco Bell! This tastes like everything else on the menu!’” When votes were tallied up at the end of the night, club manager Joe Buettner claimed that Moore “blew everyone out of the water.” Last night's winners—Sean Moore, Kevin Kunkel, and Mike Schmidt—will compete in the final round of the competition tonight at the Comedy Club. The club recommends calling and making a reservation ahead of time and guarantees that the show will sell out.
