I saw Richard Jeni at the Irvine Improv tonight. It was entirely by accident, my buddy Sam called me up and wanted to know if I wanted to hang out. We wanted to go to the Fox Sports Grill at the Irvine Spectrum, but they had a 45 minute wait because everyone wanted to see the world series game. So we're just hanging around the Spectrum, looking for a place to eat, and of course, on a Saturday night every place has lines out the door. We walk by the Improv and see that Richard Jeni has three shows that night, but the 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM shows are sold out. With twenty minutes to go, we get on the waiting list for 7:00 PM show, suddenly out of no where, this *ahem* uniformed individual comes by, whisks us into a corner, and asks us for $45 cash for two tickets (that's just a dollar more than list price). Of course, we paid and we got in. That's how accidental it was.
Anyway, once we got in, I got the distinct feeling that Sam (whose full name is Samuel Miranda) and I were the minority representation, for the audience was overwhelmingly white. Let me rephrase; the audience was exceedingly middle-class, middle-aged white. If you probably added up both our ages, then perhaps we'd be in the same age group as the audience. The conservative nature of the audience showed especially when the comics tried to push the envelope into more edgier stuff and got muted applause and even some boos. Nevertheless, the show was a lot of fun, the other side acts were actually funnier (IMHO) than Richard Jeni (and he was in top form as always). On the whole a very good evening. Got me thinking that most stand-up comics have a formula: rotate your joke between that of sex, marriage, women, and disgusting bodily functions, throw in a bit of current affairs and you can never really go wrong =).
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