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Bridgetown Comedy Festival 2017 has begun. After spending the night stumbling around to as many venues as possible, here are some of our favorite showcases and jokes from Thursday night.
Festival Opening Show, Bossanova Ballroom
Janeane Garofalo walks on stage with the most conspicuous, disheveled pile of notes imaginable. She's topping a lineup of comedians who've honed their set to Conan levels of precision, so it doesn't seem like she's affecting modest when she immediately disclaims her position as the headliner: "I'm just going last. Those guys know what they're doing." Still, not only is she seriously funny, but the fact that even Garofalo doesn't seem to know what's going to happen next just makes her set all the more exciting exciting, and reminds you just how precarious standup really is.
7:28. Dust Slay. "I used to work at a restaurant called Hyman's. It was on the same block as a restaurant called Sticky Fingers."
7:46. Amy Miller. 'My four-year-old niece is growing up in Oakland convinced that all the crime in her neighborhood is committed by Trump himself."
7:54. Drew Lynch. "'I only date guys who are taller than me, and I'm going to wear heels.' That's like me being like 'I'm only going to date girls that are shorter than me and I'm going to amputate my legs.'"
8:00. Sonia Denis. "Bridgetown has explicit rules about don't harass the patrons. But I'm like, 'fuck it, I'm a rebel.'"
8:04. Sonia Denis. "The only realistic depiction of me in a porno is just me doing this:" [holds mic in front of her face, stumbles backwards, and bats mic away with her hand]
8:15. Billy Wayne Davis. "'I ate a pot brownie and lost my mind,' . . . Shut the fuck up, I've smoked DMT."
8:26. Janeane Garofalo. "Is anyone here in AARP?" [Cheers from the audience] "Did you get your free backpack? Do fill out the paperwork. It's a fantastic backpack."
Dax Jordan and Sean Jordan: The Sklaren't Brothers, Cider Riot
The Sklaren't Brothers is one of the most delightfully weird showcases of the night. Respectively wearing t-shirts advertising Portland and a former year of Bridgetown, the Jordans explain that their showcase's name is the combination of a scene story—when they both lived here, everyone in Portland comedy assumed they were brothers—as well as the nerdy comedy reference (the Sklar Brothers). For its most absurd set, Philip Schallberger staggers on stage as his alter ego Hobo Tom to perform a completely nonsensical, PowerPoint-aided set involving a duck conspiracy.
9:38. Dax Jordan. "Whatever cat-poop-born virus makes you love puns, I have that."
9:48. Julia Claire. "I think now is a good time to tell you that when I was a kid, one year for my birthday my grandma gave me a book called The O'Reilly Factor For Kids."
9:57. Sean Jordan. "You go to slide his pants down, you look up, and he's already wearing a condom. What would you do?"
10:01. Christian Ricketts. "People want to hear the scar story. They don't want to hear the rash story."
10:09. Dax Jordan. "I never tell people I'm a comedian. Nothing good ever comes of that. I tell people I'm a wedding DJ—no follow up questions. Nobody wants to know shit about a wedding DJ."
SEE IT: Go to bridgetowncomedy.com for full schedule and tickets.
