Another Walkie, Another Show…

[captainsblog]

Barely 24 hours after our last walk in the neighborhood, here we are again before I begin a Saturday morning of more sedate errands to banks, the post office and the office office. I started and ended my office workdays yesterday with trying to get two bankruptcy clients finally signed up. One is done and will be filed shortly, while the other took it home and I have not heard back. I returned from that final Rochester appointment just in time to get into the gym for the first time in a week. I had run out of paid classes while I did the craziness in June, but this was one I wanted to be there for: a friend of mine who’s been there for a few years was scheduled to coach her 2,000th class at the end of the day yesterday, and not only did I sign up for it, I even paid for the extra class well ahead of time to be sure of getting in.

That’s Ashley, with her friend and mine Jess on her left- another remarkable young woman that runs both of our Amherst locations, goes to college, coaches girls in a number of sports, and probably tries to take over the world at night when we’re not looking. We were there for 90 minutes of hard work, and among us we left more than 20,000 calories on the floor, over 1,000 of them mine. There were photos I joined in, a champagne bottle I did not, and then it was time to sit down for standup for a couple of hours.

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It is somewhat weird, with all the shows we both been to over the years, and with watching many comedians in both shows and televised standup sets, that we can’t remember going to an actual ticketed comedy show in the almost 30 years we’ve lived here. The last one either of us can remember was seeing Marsha Warfield, the last and only living of the female bailiffs on the original Night Court, doing standup at a long abandoned venue in downtown Rochester. But when I heard on the radio the other day that this performer would be coming to UB Friday night, I offered it up as a possibility and Eleanor gleefully jumped at it.

OK, we don’t jump; but we did buy, and as I vaguely remembered, that met once again dealing with the evil aliens on planet Ticketmonster.

At least I was ready this time. First thing I did was delete the accursed app on my phone which the last several times tried to send me to their Australian site, and the reinstalled one worked much better. As soon as I tried to transfer the tickets, though, I got this screen:

That’s not an error message. It's their fucking corporate logo. A few tries later, though. all was well, and I just needed to make sure the phone was fully charged the display the ducats at the door.

The very very packed Friday night door.

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Eleanor asked, “Does UB have a big summer session?“

I knew that they were one of many schools that had transitioned from having everybody show up at once the weekend before classes started to staggering the incoming class's orientation sessions throughout the previous summer. I did not expect that was what accounted for very full parking lots and a jammed lobby of UB's Center for the Arts half an hour before showtime.

Sure, Ilana Glazer is a famous comedian, as famous standup comedians go, but she's no Seinfeld in terms of name recognition. She and her comedy partner, Abbi Jacobson, had a long-running series on Comedy Central called Broad City that we’ve almost worked our entire way through, but it ended several years ago. They’ve both done other things in the meantime, but we weren’t really up on what those were for her at least. Still, she attracted a fairly large and vocal following that came out to the campus on a Friday night with many other things were going on here and elsewhere. If we hadn’t been planning on doing this, I might’ve detoured from Rochester to Geneva; I’d heard an interview on the radio earlier in the day with Judy Collins who was playing out there. Plus numerous concerts, plays and other outdoor events much closer to home.

Thanks to the handicap tag, parking was easier. The mobile tickets actually worked, and we were in our seats in the last row of the orchestra in plenty of time to catch the warm-up performer, the opening act, and finally Ilana herself.

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Another night without a program. Environmentally, good. For knowing about who's onstage besides the headliner, not so.

The warmup comic arrived a bit past the stated showtime. Sounds like he's part of Ilana's traveling crew, because he was new to Buffalo, his wife is from Lawn Guyland, and he got to experience our wonderful range of urgent care services here before the show when he wound up breaking his foot.  He was amazed that WellNow has a slushie machine in the waiting room! Might not be the best idea for, say, an oncology practice- Sorry, your Stage 3 carcinoma is now Stage 4, but how about a cherry Slush Puppie?- but he liked it for his own injury.  Then he brought out the opener, who at least got her name out. Liz Reaves is a local comic, who is friends with people I know on the local standup circuit (they with the Small Claims Not Heard case from earlier in the week). Her day job is as a teacher, or, as she put it, gaslighting your children. She was brutally honest with us as she can't be with them: their artwork sucks, their sports performances are lame, but you can't say that part to them. (I also learned, in looking HER up, that she also broke one of her feet about a month ago, Hey, comedy is dangerous.) She was funny and kept it fresh and reasonably quick in order to bring out our headliner:



The tix and announcements were clear about NO PHOTOGRAPHY DURING THE EVENT, but Ilana, knowing that permission is better than nonforgiveness, broke the moratorium early on for a minute or so while she went through several of the Compulsory Comic Poses like the one above. I didn't take that picture but stole it from someone in the audience who did. 

She then spent a good hour with her musings on life as a relatively new wife and mother. I didn't know she'd birthed since Broad City, but we know now. Every detail- her contraceptive methods before, her pregnancy problems during, and the utter love and even utterer frustration she feels dealing with this little person she made out of mostly her own material over 10 months.

While her Ilana character was decidedly bi, she defended being married to a  Guy. Guys are better than Men, the ones supporting the patriarchy and the bullshit. Guys are allies, and sympathize, and empathize. Men are assholes.  I would have concluded that all of us XYs in the audience, maybe a quarter of the room, were all Guys. I would find otherwise after she finished and we headed back to the car.

I hadn't navigated UB's labyrinth of parking lots in years, at least not when full. I parked in the back of the Spine a few times for Sunday morning 5Ks I volunteered at, but the place was pretty empty overall.  This lot was full and disorganized on the way out, and it turned out there were plenty of Men behind wheels. I let many women and Guys get in front of us to make up for them. Eventually, though, we came to a fork in the road where the counterintuitive turn was the much quicker one- one of the few things I actually remember from three years on that campus- and we were home at a relatively decent hour, laughed out and happy....

Yesterday, no shows, some mow, and ended the night with one of Ilana's more recent efforts:



It's no Broad City, but then, what is?