Secrets of the City

Our Brandi aka Bix is the fifth funniest person in the Twin Cities, which is about 340,500 places in front of me. She made it to the finals of the AMCE Comedy Club contest last night, and faced some good competition after breezing through the early rounds. The winner was a tubby kid in a baseball cap who was pretty darned funny, too. I couldn’t find anything to link to about it, but congrats to Bix and the other finalists. I myself decided* that ACME would be one of the most interesting places in the Twincy to become a regular. I was threatening my wife with weekly visits on Open Mike night. I am fascinated by the business, and need to go to open mikes beause there’d be more potential for stand up tragedy. *I also decided that Brandi is funny.

Metro Magazine rounds up a list of local comedians: Comedy has had to adapt, becoming smarter and more clever to keep us laughing, and nowhere is that more apparent than the Twin Cities. Ours is a well-read and astute audience not much for pity laughs. Our comedy clubs and improv theaters are breeding grounds for smart, innovative comedians, given that smart audiences breed smart comedians, or perhaps vice versa.

Who, in your opinion, are the really funny people of Minneapolis and St. Paul?

Art and Emily take a look at the open mic night at Acme Comedy Club: If I wanted to write about the other performers, I’d have to make up names for them like Hipster Moustache Dude, Air Force Lesbian and Ultra Minnesotan Accent Bug Lab Lady. And that just seems like a lot of work even though those are really good stage names and I would totally contact them and tell them they should use them if I could only remember what their names were.

Anybody here ever try out an open mic night, as performer or audience?

Steve Marsh interviews Tom Davis, longtime comedy partner of Al Franken and author of a new book about his days at Saturday Night Live: We did a Rolling Stones impression that was pretty convincing. And Al was Mick, so he got the expression and the moves and stuff perfect because we were imitating that exact tour in ’82. Mick Jagger was wearing those yellow pants and capezios.

It’s true: it’s pretty convincing.

The Strib looks at one of our wilder local celebs: Fancy Ray is not shy. He is louder than an AC/DC concert, more blinged out than Sammy Davis Jr. and more made up than any dude ought to be.

Anybody have a Fancy Ray story they want to share?

MinnPost point us to “Cabinet of Wonders” at the 7th Street entry, hosted by singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding and comedian Eugene Mirman ; local guests will include “ex-Husker Du drummer/songwriter Grant Hart, ex-Zuzu’s Petals frontwoman Laurie Lindeen (also author of “Petal Pusher,” spouse of Paul Westerberg, and poster woman for thriving despite multiple sclerosis), acerbic and whimsical author/journalist Dennis Cass and poet Todd Boss.” Sounds like a great show.

Local comedy duo The Mustache Rangers has just posted their 100th podcast, containing a live performance from ComedySportz. They’re a distinctly absurdist and cerebral duo, with this episode consisting of a winding and increasingly ridiculous discussion of the nature of time. Worth listening to!

The New York Times looks back at Minnesota’s contribution to the world of smart-asses making fun of a movie as they watch it: It was more than two decades ago that Mr. Hodgson walked away from a thriving stand-up comedy career, retreating to Minnesota to build sculptures of robots. There Mr. Hodgson, now 48, discovered that his eccentric hobby of building automatons, and especially his aptitude for finding the flaws in mass media, could be combined into something greater.

United Features has released its entire archive online, including 50 years of Peanuts.

But not too good