the comic's comic

Tony V gets busy around the holidays

The end of the year always tends to get extra busy for Tony V in Boston, as he's in demand to preside over the annual holiday comedy parties at both the Comedy Studio and Comedy Connection, usually also gets asked to perform for the city's New Year's Eve celebration, plus his regular club work. "People forget that this is when we work," he told me. "They'll go, 'Can you come to party on Saturday night?' No!"

Tony V said he helped start Boston's First Night comedy shows, which over the years moved from Suffolk University to the State House ("that room is not actually conducive to comedy") to the Wang Center to the Hynes Convention Center. "You're basically in a plane hangar," he said. "The room we're in is about as big as basically downtown Concord, New Hampshire. On one side of us there's a band, on the other side there's an ethnic thing. Everything is going on at the same time. I'd like to think it's me, but it is First Night and I'm not a mime. Not cast aspersions, but at least we're talking to them."

He did refer to then-Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey onstage by a four-letter word that remains one of comedy's few taboos. But he said comedian parties allowed for exceptions to the rule. "That night is intended for us to do everything we couldn't say, which makes it all the worse. It's like the Walsh Brothers up there, in the most ridiculous sweaters I've ever seen, blowing their dead grandmother's ashes into the audience. Where else could you possibly see that?" The holiday skits went over much better with the packed Comedy Studio crowd than with the meager group who showed up the following night at the Connection. "We had something for everybody and they still didn't get it," he said. "All I can do is chide them for that and make them feel bad."

Tony V also makes time for the comedy scene's Ding Ho reunions. "Those are guys I only see once a year, if I see them at all..All of us sitting around telling road stories as if they happened yesterday," he said. But unlike many of them, he still tests his mettle with the young college crowds. "I think anyone who doesn't do that is an idiot," he said. "You prove yourself every night. You don't just close your office door and coast. When I get a room of 20-somethings to laught about something that doesn't involve their genitals, I feel good. It makes you a better comic and a better person."

Gary Gulman goes home for the holidays

Last year, I introduced Gary Gulman to an Arizona comedy-club audience as "the pride of Peabody."
Turns out there is now some truth to that.
Gulman, 34, lives in Los Angeles but returned to his hometown this summer for a special performance on "Gary Gulman Day."
"I got a proclamation from the mayor," he said. "I did a show to raise money for the YMCA in Peabody. The show took place at City Hall. It was really cool. So I am sort of the pride of Peabody, I guess - along with the Northshore Mall."
He comes back every couple of months.
"It’s very odd to go back there," he said. "Most people from Peabody, I don’t know if you know this, but they’ve never been to Boston. They’ve never seen me in person. So I’m pretty excited."
Plus, Gulman is a celebrity of sorts after two seasons in prime time on NBC’s Last Comic Standing. Do people treat him any differently?
"I lift weights for free at PowerFit Gym, which is nice," he said. "I still have a core group of fans everywhere I go, but here I don’t worry about selling out the shows as much. That’s really helpful."
Fans have learned about his obsession with cookies, candy and snack food. Sold-out shows across the country during the Last Comic Standing run attracted long lines of adoring fans, many with bags full of cookies.
"I put on a lot of weight during that run," Gulman said.
But it hasn’t deterred him from keeping up on the latest snack-food news.
"KitKat has gone the way of the Oreo - every single combination possible to lure more eaters," Gulman said. "White chocolate. Extra creamy chocolate. Then they tried an experiment with an orange creme KitKat. Moving into the fruit world is a risk. You may lose your core audience. But they are thinking outside the wrapper, so I give them credit for that."
But an extra-crispy KitKat? No, no.
"Nobody gets off on the wafer in the KitKat," he said.
Then again, he added, "that’s how they discovered penicillin, so maybe one of these will be the next wonder of the world."
Just then, Gulman drives past a Bernie & Phyl billboard.
"I love that every person who owns a furniture store has to do their own TV commercials," Gulman said. "Every great thespian comes from a background of selling love seats."
Gulman flies back to L.A. next week to tape The Tonight Show with Jay Leno for Dec. 23, "with Sienna Miller of Jude Law infidelity fame."
Then it’s the ”very rare” convergence of Christmas and Hanukkah on the calendar.
"I’ve wanted to celebrate Christmas for so long," Gulman said. "And I’ve outgrown the toy aspect of it. But the trees and the lights, and I’m not sure about this, but there may have been a religious component to it at some point."
Don’t think Gulman missed the whole holiday-tree/war-on- Christmas debate.
"I think it’s a real waste of time," he said. "The more minute and unimportant, the more they rally around it these days."
When really, we should be talking about KitKats.
"Exactly!" Gulman said.

South Park's Christmas tradition

Well, if it isn't Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo.

Don’t expect to see the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and Comedy Central singing Christmas carols together.
In the past week, Catholic League President Bill Donohue has condemned the Viacom-owned cable network for airing two Christmas shows that mock Catholicism.
Donohue unsuccessfully sought apologies and/or early retirement for Denis Leary’s Merry F#$%in’ Christmas and the South Park season finale, “Bloody Mary.”
Leary’s special re-airs five times between Saturday and Christmas, while the “Bloody Mary” episode of South Park is set to repeat Dec. 28 as part of a marathon re-airing of the Emmy-winning animated comedy’s ninth season.
The Catholic League remains hopeful, though, that an appeal to Viacom director (and Roman Catholic) Joseph Califano might find more success than past complaints over the years. They previously tangled with South Park over the 2002 episode, “Red Hot Catholic Love,” to no avail.
“We realize appealing to Comedy Central on a moral basis isn’t going to get us anywhere,” said League spokeswoman Kiera McCaffrey.
Appealing to the public isn’t likely to work, either. Two-thirds of the almost 30,000 responses to an online survey at thebostonchannel.com think Comedy Central shouldn’t apologize for last week’s South Park episode, which featured a bleeding statue of the Virgin Mary and a parody of Pope Benedict XVI.
Another cable channel, Bravo, calls South Park one of its “Great Things About the Holidays.”
The show grew out of an animated short called “Jesus vs. Frosty” when creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were still Colorado college students. In the original toon, Jesus used his halo to decapitate a serial-killing Frosty.
That film got revised as a Jesus vs. Santa death-match called “The Spirit of Christmas,” which ultimately launched South Park.
The South Park tradition of skewering the holidays began in 1997 with the introduction of “Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo.” Subsequent years have seen “Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson,” “Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics,” “Are You There God, It’s Me Jesus,” “A Very Crappy Christmas,” “Red Sleigh Down,” “It’s Christmas in Canada,” and “Woodland Critter Christmas.”

Related: South Park Studios

Val Kappa does Premium Blend

Val Kappa makes me smile, chuckle, giggle and laugh all the time. So when her Comedy Central debut approached with Premium Blend, I did what I could to promote her. Good thing I get to interview comics every week, eh?

Val on MySpace
Val's blog
Watch a clip of Val on Comedy Central

Val Kappa, 27, has a very subtle, dry, wry style.
That might explain why she hasn’t exactly taken to the hills to toot her own horn.
"I haven’t told a lot of people," she said. "For some people, I’ll say, 'Hey, just a warning, I look like a corpse mother on it.' "
At least that was her impression after seeing herself on TV.
"I took a quick peek, and then I looked away," she said. "I think I look like a mom who just got out of a coffin and said, 'Hey, I think I’m going to try my hand at stand-up comedy.' "
Didn’t the other comedians on the show, which include Emerson College colleague Dan Levy, give her pointers?
"No. They were like, 'Just walk to the microphone,' " Kappa said.
Comedy Central was equally, um, helpful.
"There was a memo sent out, and it said not to wear certain colors," she said. "We were told not to wear red."
So Kappa had to find a different shirt.
"Normally, I won’t wear pink," she said. "But I’m not on TV, so I thought, 'I guess I’ll take it down a notch and wear pink.' "
It’s a long way from Saugus, where Kappa grew up among the orange dinosaur, plastic cows and leaning tower of pizza along Route 1.
"Saugus, when you drive through it on the highway, looks like a low-key Vegas," she said. "Growing up, I never thought anything about it. I figured this is what all towns are."
She since has lived in Boston, New York and Los Angeles. For now, though, Kappa is back in Saugus, plotting her next move.
She recently signed up at the local Gold’s Gym, too.
"They have a separate floor for women. I’d never seen that before," Kappa said.
"You don’t have to go to the women’s section. It’s optional. Sometimes I alternate. Yeah, I’ll go to the women’s section today. Other times I’ll work out with the men. I like to mix it up at Gold’s Gym."
Kappa figured some women might feel intimidated or worry about getting hit on by men at the gym. "So they say, 'We’re going to put in another floor for you, girl in spandex, so you don’t have to worry anymore,' " she said.
Kappa isn’t worried.
"I’m just a jolly exerciser," she said. "I’m sure if people watch me, they think I’m not using the machines the right way."
She prefers the elliptical machines, like the ones made famous on infomercials by the pony-tailed Tony Little.
"I don’t exercise like him, thank God," Kappa said. "He’s an intense dude. It kind of makes me not want to use it."
Which brings us back to Kappa’s subtle style.
"I’m not someone who makes anyone want to use a machine. I don’t think I’m a good spokesperson for exercise," she said. "I’d be good at promoting water. That’s about it. I like to drink water. So I could say, 'Hey you guys, drink water!' And then I’d drink it.”
That’s Kappa for you.
"Some people think I’m doing a character," she said. "No. I’m just doing me."

Andy Ofiesh and his Naked Comedy Showcase

Andy Ofiesh anticipates the first question about why he prefers to tell his jokes in the buff.
"Why, oh why, Andy, are you doing naked comedy?" Ofiesh asked rhetorically at the start of last month’s Naked Comedy Showcase in Cambridge. "I said I’m living a dream - and it’s the one where you’re naked, standing in front of a bunch of strangers, doing comedy."
This Waltham software writer and stand-up comic has fulfilled that dream on several occasions during the past three years, from private house parties to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland and ImprovBoston in between.
Ofiesh began a regular residency at ImprovBoston last month, holding court in nothing but shoes the first Wednesday of each month through February.
He delivers some of the same jokes clothed each Saturday at the Comedy Studio, but also gets laughs from Cambridge’s detailed legal explanations for nude performance.
Some comics tell jokes without referencing the fact that they’re naked, while others address their nudity directly. One woman last month presented a silent clown skit, while Chris Walsh closed out the show with his parody of Puppetry of the Penis.
Spectators who appreciated the comedy seemed to outnumber those who may have simply wanted to see naked people.
Ofiesh advises the comics - who tonight should include both men and women and both stand-up and sketch acts - not to worry about their self-image, but to embrace it.
"When you have this vulnerability established by being naked in front of an audience, I say take that and run with it," he said.
Even if that vulnerability, in sub-freezing temperatures, leads to, ahem, shrinkage.
"Let it go," Ofiesh said. "I don’t like the dry skin on my elbows, either. I don’t worry about that."

The Naked Comedy Showcase now performs monthly shows in New York City at The PIT and in Boston at ImprovBoston.