Base Banality: Celebrity Saturdays at iO West
By Parker Deren
Guest Writer
pLAywriting in the city
Latex. Strippers. Threesomes. Superheroes. Porn star. Improv. Wrester. Anal sex. Maybe the reference to anal sex would have been funny, even witty, if the pedestrian locution was replaced by the word for the sodomitic byproduct named after a Republican politician. Instead of being a scintillating fest, my experience at iO West’s Celebrity Saturdays on August the 18th felt more like an IT nerd’s wet dream; in which the only people laughing seemed to be the casts’ friends.
My evening began with PodCRASH with That Chris Gore and ended with The Armando Show, a ninety-minute improv program that featured WWE (proclaimed) Superstar John Morrison. Reading the descriptions of the shows on iO’s website misleads the potential viewer into thinking that the lineup might be funny, perhaps even subversive. The shows were none of the above. Instead, they reified hegemonic geekdom in which the only women on stage the whole night were part of the first show: A porn actress, Nikki Hunter, from a video that alludes to a James Cameron flick and Gore’s nervous ex-girlfriend who recounts how she screwed three navy members in Vegas. Pun intended.
Before the evening was half way over, I found myself laughing hard — once. Partially out of misery. Also, I remembered what a friend said: There is a reason why there is a bar in the theater. Server, drink please…. At least the bar stocked Hendrick’s. It was more than welcome after sitting through the first hour of male-centric misogynistic humor.
PodCRASH with That Chris Gore
The concept of the sounds interesting: Dude is too lazy to have his own podcast; so, he “crashes” other people’s programs. The title of the show is a misnomer, because he appears as an invited guest on his stage. The night I caught the show, he collaborated with Caleb Bacon’s The Gentlemen’s Club; which included guests Nikki Hunter and Jordan Harbinger, co-founder The Art of Charm, a company dedicated to teaching clueless guys how to date.
The most disturbing, uncomfortable part of the night was not when Gore generalized that women are looking for men who alphabetize their CD collections or when he called his aforementioned ex-girlfriend, who he met at a porn party, onto stage. It was when he entered into a monologue about how the best way to date a stripper is to not be a customer. How does he know? Because he dated one. Gore’s story is uninteresting and cliché: He met her at Jumbo’s Clown Room, she was not bright and the best part of dating her was when her clothes came off. Leaving the intelligent person to wonder: What does this say about a forty-something-year-old man who dates vapid strippers? Gore doesn’t disclose that the owner of Jumbo’s is a woman and that some of her dancers are rumored to hold law degrees.
The Armando Show
It wouldn’t have been that torturous, if it weren’t for Chris Gore’s previous show. At the same time, I felt like I missed the punch lines and allusions of the all guy cast. Server, another drink please…
The humor at iO West is obvious. The show begins with the cast asking the audience for suggestions to begin their performance: Rubik’s Cube. A common request. The show was filled with characters and ideas that felt recycled: An emo kid named “Darkness” to an Improv group performing in front of prisoners. Hence, a reference to anal sex becomes trite. But, still, elicits chuckles.
There were times that the cast could have stretched their craft. A cast member’s reference of a Herman Miller Aeron Chair in darkest black to the only African-American actor, Thomas Fowler, could have led to a multitude of allusions from hipsters to NPR sponsorships to a profound, politically incorrect commentary on race. True comedy makes the esoteric humorous and universal. This is where the troupe fell short – they never took it there – the unsafe place that audiences rarely traverse on their own.
After seeing this show, I was reminded of something Henry Miller once wrote: And anything that falls short of this frightening spectacle, anything less shuddering, less terrifying, less mad, less intoxicated, less contaminating, is not art. The rest is counterfeit. The rest is human. The rest belongs to life and lifelessness.
Comedy at its most provocative creates art from bowels and stretches the parameters of the audience’s mind. By the time I left, I felt exhausted from the deluge of nondivergent frat boy humor. iO West mimics American culture and society. But, not in the tongue-in-cheek kind of way that makes life’s absurdities pee in your pants funny.
iO West is located at 6366 Hollywood Blvd. Hollywood, California. The themes and the lineup of Celebrity Saturdays changes weekly. Check the schedule for updates.
For alternatives eats to mediocre Kitchen 24 and froufrou Delphine, check out The Blue Boar Public House. They offer decent burgers at an average price.
Go on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. It’s much better than it is on the weekends. It’s brilliant, even. Saturdays tend to be more experimental and shallow efforts to reach outside the non-comedy community. Tuesday-Thursday is more of what iO is, or at least what it is to me. The whole wrestling/porn star thing is quite degrading to what iO should be, but it’s a way to get people in the seats, which is, unfortunately, where iO seems to be at right now.
Thank you, Ashley, for taking the time to read the article and write a response. I appreciate your loyalty to iO West as a performer/member of “Spaceman’s Promise.” As a member of the non-comedy community, I would hardly describe the PodCRASH or the Armando Show as experimental. From the PodCRASH archives it looks like Chris Gore has been “crashing” since December 2011, and The Armando Show format is taken from iO’s The Armando Diaz Experience in Chicago. As I alluded to in the article, Chris Gore’s show seemed derivative in form; but, also, reiterated the way a particular segment of the American population tries to silence women through objectification. Through not seeing women as people, it is easy to essentialize women to a stereotype: The neurotic, alphabetizing girlfriend; the vapid stripper; the “geeky” porn star turned adult film director. During – especially after – the two and a half hours I spent at iO West, I felt that my value, complexity and intelligence as a woman, and foremost as a human being, was undermined. At the end of the night, I felt assaulted and silenced. iO West chooses to announce cultural insensitivity versus use political incorrectness to question the base of conservative culture. One important anecdote, which I did not mention in my article, highlights this assertion that iO’s comedic politics is reductive: During a monologue, John Morrison chose to use a Japanese accent to recount a story of signing wrestling shirts in China. As a member of the non-comedy community, I feel offended that iO West does not take into consideration the intelligent cultural experiences of its audience.
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