SICC: Semi-Finals Week--Night Six

"You learn how to do karate...so you never have to use that knowledge. So, it's just like geometry."--Rory Scovel

The 27th Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition
Semi-Finals Week--Night Six
The Fairhaven, Bellingham

THE REPORT: There is no joy in Mudville tonight. Perhaps there are celebrations in Washington DC, in Portland, Oregon...and, certainly, throughout the entire country of Canada...but Mudville is quiet tonight. The Mudville Mudhawks snatched defeat from the jaws of victory time and time again earlier in the day...and then a couple of fine Mudville comedians were in the mix for making the finals of the 27th Annual Mudville International Comedy Competition...and both did a great job--but after the judges' scores were totalled, the numbers just didn't fall the way the Mudvillians needed them to...

Oh, did I say Mudville? I meant Seattle...whoops.

Anyway...after enjoying a smoother than normal ride up to Bellingham tonight--no rain, no wind, no floods and precious little traffic--we were welcomed back, for the third time in this competition, to The Fairhaven in Bellingham...where the staff is incredibly friendly (and I'll give a shout out to Jessica, my server tonight...who I would totally crush on if that wasn't quite so unseemly for a man of my antiquity, unattractiveness and bulk) and the audience can be challenging (though, in another shout out--and when did THIS trend start?--let me give a big "Happy Birthday" to Lacy, who sat right up front with her husband to enjoy the show.)

When I say challenging, I speak from experience. I've played this room to various levels of success over the past couple of years. They always get a good number of people to come for their comedy nights--and tonight was no exception. However, whatever the number of people in the room--they often be talkative...sometimes amongst each other, as they lose interest in the show and show no sign of bothering to pay attention to any comedian who doesn't grab theirs and hold on to it throughout their sets...and sometimes they get talkative towards the performer on stage--being very vocal in their opinions of a comedian's material or wanting to involve themselves in some sort of unrequested dialogue...in either way, they'll totally disrupt a performer on stage without a care in the world.

This hasn't been a problem for the two preliminary week shows that have been held at The Fairhaven. Tonight, our third and final night here during this year's competition, we hoped that the third charm would be just as much of a charm as the first two.

Tonight there were some moments when the audience all seemed to break down into conversations. And there were a couple of people interrupting the comedian on stage to yell out whatever was on their mind at the time...but, for the most part, the Bellingham crowd behaved themselves throughout the show. Perhaps TOO behaved--as many comics found getting any momentum of laughter from them was nearly impossible (especially as the show went on.)

Even our charming host, Kermet Apio, seemed to be a bit lower-energy and confidence...and his normally audience-winning opening set seemed somewhat lost in the haze of the room.

The first performer of the night, Dylan Mandlsohn, ironically, was the one performer with no pressure on him tonight at all. His consistent high scores had not only earned him a ticket into the finals--but he'd be going to the finals as the top scorer for the week...NO MATTER WHAT HE DID TONIGHT. (With a drop score of 10.55, he could have sat on stage and sipped a frosty beverage for ten minutes, get a score of 1.00 and still end the week as the top comic of the semi-finals.)

Dylan decided to bring up some material that might find its way into his longer sets for the finals and work that with a couple of the bits that had earned him so many good scores over the past two rounds of competition. The mix was a bit curious--and you could tell that Dylan wasn't as confident with what he was doing tonight as he had been with his competition-5 or his competition-10. Not that it mattered.

His confidence couldn't have been helped by the audience's reaction on this night. They no sold a couple of good jokes--one, to the point where Dylan actually pointed out "That's a thinker, that one" as a clever joke got only a couple of delayed chuckles. His longer take on his own Jewishness got little from the audience. It wasn't until Dylan broke out the Mad Magazine face that he got his first significant full audience response.

One of the new things that Dylan tried--a bit about the singing talents of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera--was fresh and funny. "Christina Aguilera has a good voice--and it sets the bar higher for other strippers." He also got an applause break for his comparing premature ejaculation to the time spent on a rollercoaster.

On the other hand, there was a palpable rumble in the room when he went into his trio of AIDS jokes--including a total freeze out when he got to the "break up with a girl at the clinic" part. In the end, he got them back--but it was pretty clear that unless the judges saw things far differently than the audience, this would probably be his drop night for the week.

It wouldn't have mattered, but Dylan ran his set all the way up to the end of his allowed time--11:59. One more second and he'd have gotten a penalty--instead, he earned an encore point...for a curious set that never really found Dylan in the pocket with this crowd.

Still--you have to hand it to him for having such an incredible week. We'll see you in a couple of days for the finals, Dylan.

Next up was Boston's Myq Kaplan. Seattle Weekly writer Brian Miller, who had been following the competition in the early rounds, came to this Bellingham show and caught up with me before the performances started to find out how everyone was doing. Brian was shocked to find that Myq's unique brand of rapid-fire clever word twisting comedy wasn't putting him in the top contenders for the week.

In fact, Myq knew that he was mathematically eliminated from contention going into this set...and that can lead to an odd sense of fearlessness in a performer--and I think we saw that tonight. The Fairhaven was going to get Full-On Myq with no apologies and no pulled punches.

Myq continued to start off his semi-finals sets as he had the past couple of nights, by bunching a few jokes about the possibility that he's gay right off the top. I still think that this was a strategic error...but, by this point in the competition--strategy has nothing to do with anything. Now, in previous weeks, feeling the crowd slip away from him might have concerned Myq--but this was Full-On Myq, and he couldn't care less if they didn't find him totally relatable or if they didn't find him totally likeable or if they have issues with people being gay or if they wanted to start to talk to each other and not pay attention to him.

Full-On Myq plowed ahead. And he was turning some groans into chortles by "going there" and "saying that." As he noticed that one particular table seemed to be agreeing with all of his rhetorical comments, they began to take on the characteristics of those comments...at first, they were gay...then they were gay atheists--gaytheists...then, of course, they were gaytheist vegetarians. This seemed to energize his performance...and that energy carried past this one table and started to reach the rest of the room.

In discussing how those who argue against gay marriage always seem to go to discussions of marrying animals, wove together an edgy web of women having the right to vote, furniture being like women--things that men own (which got an applause break,) knowing about other cultures because he watches MTV Cribs, people marrying babies and dead people...until at one point in time Myq had pretzelled himself into a bit where he referred to his dead baby dog wife...and the sheer ludicrousness of it won many in the crowd over.

Mike earned himself another applause break with his Dr. Seuss stuff and, on this night in this room, Full-On Myq ended his set strongly by talking about having his ashes scattered in the faces of smokers so they could take on some Second Hand Myq and he earned his encore point.

I, too was surprised by Myq not having fared well with the judges this week--but I think that says more about this amazing collection of comics than anything negative about Myq. I come away with a strong appreciation for this young man's writing and performance skills...and I hope to see a lot more of Myq in the future.

Someone who was not looking forward to coming back to The Fairhaven was Rory Scovel--one of the five people trying to squeeze into three spots in the finals that were still in play on ths last night of the semi-finals week. Rory ended his preliminary week by coasting to his lowest score of the week on the last night, which was also at The Fairhaven--and the scores were, to some eyes, abnormally low. Rory would need to reach deep and pull out a strong set if he was going to hold on to his spot in the finals.

Since Myq had paved the road for an edgier brand of comedy than some of the rooms in this semi-finals week had gone for...Rory seemed to be set up well for having a good set--and he went right out and had a good set. His attitude set from the first moment when he kicked over the mic stand. "I don't NEED that in my act," he explained. (He would also knock over the stool as his set went on--for no other reason than he could...and that delicious sense of things not having any particular reason to happen that Rory exudes made for a lot of giggling throughout his set.)

Instead of the loosey-goosey set he had the last time he was in Bellingham, Rory delivered a solid semi-final set. He also tried to juice his material a bit for the lower attention spans of this crowd. Things like "She's DRIVING the car" in the Road Head bit became "She's driving the FUCKING car"--to good effect. He also added a new tag that I hadn't heard him say in that bit. "Road head--that's how you spell 'engagement ring,'" which worked very well.

He also was able to milk out more laughs with his act outs--something that other comedians facing a crowd who might lose their involvement with what's happening on stage rather quickly might never have risked doing. He hooked them in with a good story, told well...and then kept getting laughs with what he was doing up there when he wasn't talking.

The crowd related to his "When you smoke pot out of an apple, that's a pretty good sign you're going through some financial shit right now" bit... They also roared at the "sprinkled with rainbows and smiles" line in his Yoga chunk.

I wrote in my notes, "They're loving him." They were. He closed strong and earned himself a huge encore point--putting the pressure on the other performers fighting him for his spot in the finals.

One of those performers feeling the pressure was Seattle's Geoff Brousseau, who followed Rory. Geoff, who admitted to me before this show that he's never done particularly well in this room--and it is a room that area performers find themselves working on a semi-regular basis. Tonight, he'd need to...because although he came into the night in fifth place, he struggled a bit the night before in Ellensburg and his drop score was pretty low...so, he'd have to improve upon that with a good score tonight in order to hold off those who would want to push him out of the top five.

And this is when it got chilly in Mudville.

The Fairhaven's love for Rory shut down nearly instantly when he was done--and instead of riding a wave of momentum to the stage, as you might expect after a huge pop like Rory got, Geoff found himself stepping onto the stage in a very cold room. His attempt to tag Rory's set--saying that his nickname used to be Genie...a call back to Rory's "I want to get blown by a Genie" bit--fell a bit flat. His "anti-pandering, pandering open" which had been so successful for the last night of his preliminary week and for the first four nights of the semi-finals, also failed to connect--as it had in Ellensburg the night before.

Geoff's greatest gift is his relatability--people feel like they know him, like him and want to hear about what crazy things he gets up to... From there, Geoff's vocal skills and perfectly timed physicality carry the day. The previous night, in front of the CWU college students, and tonight, in front of a VERY young crowd at The Fairhaven...Geoff seemed distant...unrelatable...and, if I can project a bit...he seemed old.

Because of that, Geoff's stories were falling on deaf ears. He'd get some chuckles. Some groans. He even got the first "yelling at the comedian for no reason" of the night. But he never gained the momentum and love from this audience that he deserved.

Now, and I told Geoff this after the show, I was very proud of how Geoff handled himself. He didn't snap. He didn't take it out on the audience. He maintained his composure--he varied his delivery speed and style to see if he could get them with different dynamics--and he trusted the strength of his material right to the end.

His closing material is so well written and strong that he easily earned his encore point...but I could tell that he wasn't as happy with what how things had gone tonight.

I thought, with all of the pressure on him to score highly, that he might implode on stage if it didn't come together for him--but, he didn't. He would leave it in the hands of the judges--and hopefully THEY could see what this audience didn't see...and they heard what this audience didn't fully respond to...and they'd give him a score that would allow him to move on to the finals and get five more chances to rock the house.

Another performer looking for the chance to move on to the finals was Damonde Tschritter. Damonde had barely made it to this semi-final round...using his consistent but not-top-5 scores over the course of the preliminary week to jump up from 7th place going into the last night and ending up in the top 5 for the week.

Going into this last night of the semi-finals, Damonde was in...that's right...7th place. However, it would be tougher for Damonde to make the same leap this week--because the people fighting for one of the three spots in the finals in play have all been very consistent themselves.

That said--the struggle that Geoff Brousseau had with this crowd on this night provided both an opportunity for those on the outside looking in to make a run for it...but also provided a good reason for extreme caution...as it is never certain if The Fairhaven audience, once lost, could be recaptured.

Especially by a storytelling comedian like Damonde. He needs people to pay attention to him, listen to him...and laugh with him. Sure enough, when Damonde started--and he started by following the vibe left by Geoff's set, rather low energy--the audience fell into table conversations and inattentiveness.

It looked like this night could become everyone's nightmare scenario--until Damonde turned the audience around with his "harelip cop" joke--which, to be quite honest, is one of the weaker parts of his act. Still, it seemed to draw the audience back like a candle to a swarm of moths.

He got big laughs for his "extra cock" bit...but he then got big groans for his "RV in the Grand Canyon" bit--and seemed on the verge of freezing out the audience. He fumbled around as he started his comedians on acid versus heroin junkies bit...but he got back into the swing of things and closed it strong.

He managed to get a big encore cheer--not huge, like Rory, but definitely a strong response for a comedian who would benefit from the longer sets of the finals. The question became--could he get into the finals? Was what he did tonight to push up and past the lead that the performers in the top 5 had built up over the past few nights?

It would be up to the judges to determine that.

After a short break, where Kermet did some time so that the judges could do what they might need to do. The calm approach to comedy brilliance that Kermet displays on a regular basis just didn't seem to corral the attention and interest of this room...and that meant that it wasn't exactly a hot crowd when the show continued after the break.

And Tacoma's Debbie Wooten, picked up on that lukewarm vibe and held back on the full-on sassy attitude that is Debbie's best weapon. Debbie knew that she wasn't one of those fighting for the chance to move on to the finals--her scores were close but just not strong enough to give her a shot at moving on. Tonight, she was just trying to finish the week strongly.

Would she have been better off on this night to come out as Full-On Debbie? Hard to say. It was clear that a lower key approach tonight had her starting off her set with some groans...and you could tell from her attitude that this is not what she was hoping for...

She had to ask for applause on her "Am I looking ok?"-pimp--which normally a crowd would give her without any prompting. And material that I've seen roll audiences time and time again through the preliminary week and much of this semi-final week were getting minimal responses from this rather tight crowd.

Without momentum, the crowd was making every comedian go "station-to-station." They'd tell one joke, get one laugh...and then they'd have to start all over again...rather than, when it works right, telling a string of jokes that keep the laughs coming. It means that everyone, Debbie included, were having to work so much harder for so little. It can be rather discouraging.

I think she knew that she couldn't blast them with her full energy in the face of these reactions, but Debbie's strength is not when she gets softer or slower...the fun she exudes when she's up doesn't work the same magic at reduced energy. She lost the room's fading attention fully with her "date an ugly man" bit...and she'd have to work hard to bring them back.

Debbie chose that moment to ask for applause for her fellow competitors, saying that she "breast fed them all--well, all the men, that is...I'm strictly dickly, no licky licky..." I can't do any justice to how Debbie says this--but it gave her enough momentum to earn her an encore point.

It was great to see Debbie work on a regular basis. I remember seeing her perform at Thumper's on Seattle's Capitol Hill a couple of years ago while I was just starting out...and we don't get to see her as often as we'd like in Seattle (and I don't blame her, with the gauntlet of the Comedy Underground's stairs being a good reason to not be a regular.) She had great moments and she had some struggles...but nothing can take away the power she has to command a stage and truly entertain those who are willing to be entertained.

The third Canadian in this semi-final week was one of the five performers battling for the three open spots in the finals. Paul Myrehaug benefitted from having earned enough high scores to go into this night in third place--but, he has one of the lowest drop scores of the week...so, a poor performance tonight could leave him vulnerable to not making the finals.

Paul's low energy style would have been a bad fit if he'd followed the powerhouse high volume style that Debbie so often works with...but following a lower energy Debbie Wooten must have made Paul feel a bit more confident--even if this room wasn't being very effusive to some very talented comedians.

Paul started off by referring to Debbie as his wife--a callback that fell a bit flat with an audience that wasn't paying as much attention to Debbie as they should have...

He quickly went into one of his stronger bits--about how, if he would ever have a daughter, that he'd overfeed her so no one would ever have sex with her. He starts this with a polling of the audience to see if anyone has a daughter--it usually draws out one or two people and Paul can make this bit a little more personal by relating it to their own daughter. Only, tonight...he asked if anyone in the audience had a daughter...and got absolutely nothing.

A couple of thoughts on this--one, DON'T DO RHETORICALS. OK, that's a personal preference...but any time you open it up for the audience to help you move on to your next thought, you leave open room for all sorts of needless mayhem. Two, this room...especially on this night...is extremely young--not college/under age young (which is why his comment about how someone in the audience was attractive--"statuatory rape attractive" worked so much better in Ellensburg than it did here) but young enough to still think of THEMSELVES as a daughter, not having their own. Three, something that Paul couldn't possibly know about...but this room is used to having frustrated comics try to win the room back by doing angry crowd work. There's a combative element to comedy in some rooms, where the audience is expecting to talk at the comedian to "help" (trust me, audience members who might be reading this--it doesn't help for you to yell stuff...it really doesn't) or is expecting to get picked on...like a magic show, or telling the server that it's your birthday at TGIFridays or Red Robin.

In this case, either no one in the room had daughters...or no one wanted to chime in, fearing that they (like the guy in the front row who had Debbie tell him that he must like going out with skinny girls because they make his dick look bigger--a gambit that gave Debbie one of her biggest laughs of the night...but at the expense of having that table really enjoy any of her non-crowd work material) would become the focus for ridicule. I worry that we're training comedy audiences to think of comedy shows as something you do "on a dare."

But, I digress--the only thing important to Paul is that he had to chuckle his way out of the failed attempt to connect with the audience and do what Geoff Brousseau did--which was to trust in the strength of his material. And, just like for Geoff, the audience was resisting reacting to some great stuff...including most of Paul's Happy Meals bit.

He started to get some traction on the Beavertoothing bit--but it was nowhere near as strong as it had rocked other rooms on other nights.

Paul fell right back into the "inadvertant discussion with the audience" when he tried to draw out an answer to the "in Canada, we call them cougars...what do you call them here?" tangent--which really doesn't lead towards where the joke is going. From time to time, you'll get a good and funny example...but usually, you needlessly run the risk of losing control in the room. Tonight, a drunk woman near the kitchen yelled out 'We call 'em hookers.'"

Paul, to his credit, turned this into a couple of little jokes about waking up without his money...and continued with his bit...but, for a couple of lines, there were other people shouting out things THEY wanted Paul to react to...which is a chronic trait and an ongoing problem in this room.

The Petrified Seagull did well...and the "shit on the windshield" closer did fine...but I think even Paul realized that somehow he'd raced through this set...and he wasn't certain if he'd done enough time. Paul closed...and hoped for the best. Paul got a big encore cheer--probably as big as Damonde got...and he managed to do 8:52 seconds of time on stage...which was enough for him not to get a time penalty.

Would that be enough to keep him in the top five for the week? Would the judges agree with the audience that he'd done well? I'd have to think that Paul felt better about things than Geoff did...but there was still show left, performances to judge and scores to tally before anyone would know for sure.

Next up would be Tyler Boeh--the only person other than Dylan Mandlsohn who knew that their future plans would definitely include performing in the finals of the competition. He was in second place and could finish no lower than third place no matter what he might do.

So, what might he do? He might do the exact same competition-10 than had earned him his ticket to the finals. However the FIRST thing he would do was to totally shut the room down and piss away whatever momentum Paul had given him--although, I'm certain that's not what he was trying to do.

Tyler came on stage to a weak and indifferent response from the audience. The level of table conversation went way up...and Tyler, whose strength is not his opening joke, made the mistake of encouraging the talkers...one of whom heard his joke about the "cellphone in the cleavage" and NEEDED to shout out the phrase "motor boat" to describe the act out that Tyler ends that bit with.

Tyler then slammed her--and the audience reacted badly to him slamming "one of them" and got as silent as the grave. Not silent as in "OK, now we'll listen to you" but silent as "you went too far and we're seething with rage."

That's a tough crowd to win over.

It didn't look very good for him to go into his "R&B songs used to be more romantic" bit--but it does have the benefit of a fun sound-based act out...one that would connect with a crowd raised on pop R&B songs just like he's describing. In fact, Tyler came across as the performer who seemed to be part of this audience more than anyone else--but that still wouldn't keep this crowd from kicking his ass if he didn't get really funny, really fast. And it sounded like Tyler, who had admitted feeling a little less than 100% for the Ellensburg show, might have been struggling with a sore throat or other voice related trouble.

But then he got them with the "Girl, I Want To Do You In the Butt" line from the R&B bit. He deflated the issue at hand...but he wasn't completely safe yet. He got some women yelling at him when he did a joke combining bad hair days with low rise jeans...so, he wasn't totally home free. He even got some groans when he started the cancer kazoo bit--which normally kills from the get go. And, in the beat box closing, he added a line I hadn't heard him say before where he went a little bit too "on the nose" by saying "Yeah, I was really beating the box that night" which earned him some groans (groans, though, that a cheeky smile could turn to laughs--as Tyler managed on this night.)

Other than that, however, it was smooth sailing on auto pilot...the cancer kazoo sex sounds got huge response, the beat box...huge response. The encore point...huge response.

The question that Tyler can't escape is--can his material be strong enough to match the strength of his closer. So far, the answer to that question is "yes." He proved that it was strong enough to get him through the semi-finals. Now, he'll get the chance to show what he can do over the course of fifteen to twenty minutes of time in the finals.

He is, by virtue of the crowd popping ability of that closing bit, a hard performer to follow--Dylan Mandlsohn found a way to follow Tyler...and someone else whose energy level and connection with a young audience would give him a good chance to ride that momentum would be Seattle's Jeff Dye--and he'd have to do just that tonight.

Jeff wasn't in the top five for the week--he was in sixth. To his benefit, he did have a high drop score...putting him in good position to make a move up into the top five--but he would need to have a good score tonight to make that possible.

Jeff did an excellent job of picking up on the vibe left by Tyler--and, for the first time this entire night, it seemed like this room had momentum. Jeff then ran full speed into this crowd's reluctance to give ANY answer to a comedian asking them anything... It proved to be a mild speed bump before Jeff started rocking the room with his exercise chunk--but it did seem to put a thought into the back of Jeff's mind that this crowd was going to fight him.

That thought came seeping out in a couple of little asides about the "drink spiller" in the front row--nothing too mean...but this audience got to see the free-wheeling stage style of Jeff Dye (the style he learned by performing most often at Giggles in Seattle) in these slices, something that he had been very disciplined against showing off for most of this competition. He handled this potential distraction well, and went on with the VagFlex bit...

Something interesting happened next. The middle part of Jeff's act has been his weakest section of his act all week--the chunk he does about the restaurant that he worked at was never strong, until he got to the "He could hit you for talking like that" part...but TONIGHT, this was the part that this audience loved. Dick on the bread?--killed. IHOP--killed. And "Celebrate progress"--killed, as it has done most nights.

Other than creating a new word ("Pictation"?--I think he meant to say "depiction"--but whatever he said, the audience figured out what he meant), Jeff cleanly launched into his "creepy clay baby" story. The length of time it takes to go through the description of the real ad...and then the pause before the "I doubt it" punchline...was a risk, especially here at The Fairhaven where they can lose interest in what's happening on stage quickly and go to talking at full volume at their tables while you're in the middle of a joke.

Yes, there were some people talking--but the story is just so weird, disgusting and compelling as to hold their interest right through the end. When he closed his set, the room was filled with the cheering of every girl in the room. When Kermet asked for his encore point, he got as big as this tired and fading audience could manage.

Again--the question became...would it be enough? How would the judges rate him...and would their scores, compared to the scores of those ahead of him going in...and behind him, trying to climb past him...be enough to send him on for five more nights of competition?

We'd know soon enough--but we all could sense it was going to be close.

One more performer to go in this semi-finals week and that would be Natalie Gray...and no one envied her having to follow Tyler and Jeff at the end of a long night in front of a flagging and often disinterested room. Natalie's strengths, so clear in Ellensburg, is about calmly relating to an attentive audience...and tonight would not be an opportunity to play to her strengths.

She started her set by pointing out that she accidentally tripped Jeff as he left the stage. She then went on to do callbacks to many of the other performer's material...which is something she's been doing the past couple of nights. Tonight, she got to these callbacks as part of her explanation for her "very versatile hair" bit (and I have to say that I loved the Oliver Twist accent for her looking destitute part of this bit) but, by this time of the night, people's attention had waned to the point where only a few of these callbacks drew blood.

Natalie was obviously working hard to find the right tone--the right energy level for her material to work...but, like Debbie earlier in the night, she was forced to go station-to-station, never getting the momentum she'd need to help some of her cheesier bits to fly. When her bit about paparrazi/school pictures only got a couple of laughs, she called the moment with a quiet aside where she gave herself credit because "that was a bit funny, yes."

Tonight, Natalie was damned if she did and damned if she didn't--her smaller jokes weren't getting much love...and her bigger act-outs made the crowd look at her like she was weird. (True story, when she did her "Death Metal Lullaby" bit, I turned and saw a guy near the kitchen who had been very attentive to the show all night, sitting their with his jaw open...nearly all the way to the table. He wasn't laughing, he was stunned into open mouthed paralysis. He simply had no idea what this crazy woman was doing.)

That same reaction ended her Monica Lewinsky song...to which the ever buoyant Natalie commented "Well, THAT was fun."

It wasn't until her end run...the material about being single and then the material about her "girl exam" that she really connected with the women in the audience. This whole show, which reeked of boyishness, was being performed in front of a bunch of females who were ready to laugh...and no one got that until just then, at the end of Natalie's set...that there were enough women in the audience to deliver the laughs that any performer would need.

(And possibly this explains why Geoff Brousseau got so frozen out in HIS set, earlier in the night...as some of his material clearly expresses some of his frustration with women over the years.)

Natalie closed with laughs...but when it came time for Kermet to count her encore score, the response was admittedly tepid. Kermet, hearing enough cheering to grade her on a scale befitting the flagging interest of this room, gave her the encore point--meaning that every performer got the encore point on every night of the semi-finals...and, for the most part, they almost always deserved it.

While the numbers were being crunched, Geoff Lott took the stage for the stall set. As much as I didn't envy Natalie Gray for going up last, I lacked even more envy for Geoff in having to continue to do comedy in front of a "comedy'd out" audience...but Geoff, with lots of Laughs and Pegasus Pizza experience under his belt, held his own for as long as it took to count the scores.

And the scores were interesting...one judge was generous to everyone, one judge was very hard to please, and the other judges had their own favorites. As the numbers were added up and read off...everyone on the production crew recognized that this was going to be dramatic...and it was.

So...first, after Geoff discussed his dream of a real sports riot in Seattle, Kermet would read off who was in the top five for the night...

Fifth place--Jeff Dye (Which must have seemed like a good sign to for him to get a place on the podium for tonight...but his continued good mood would depend on who showed up ahead of him and how close the scores were.)

Fourth place--Paul Myrehaug (Who was probably feeling safe at the moment...and it must have made Jeff realize that he was probably fighting for either Rory Scovel or Geoff Brousseau's spot in the top five for the week.)

Third place--Tyler Boeh (Which might have surprised some people, as his response was definitely one of the two biggest of the night...and the wheels in every competitors head must have been spinning with their own personal calculators.)

Second place--Damonde Tschritter (And that's when everyone started to get a big knot forming in their stomachs. Was a second place enough to push Damonde up from seventh place?)

...and, the top performer for the night...

First place--Rory Scovel (Which must have made Jeff Dye, Damonde Tschritter and Geoff Brousseau realize that they were all probably going to have to try to squeeze into that one remaining spot to get them into the finals)

Kermet wasted little time in announcing the big news...the five performers who would be making their way into the finals (and I keep thinking that the real drama is in announcing who number five is...since everyone knew who would be first and second...but I was overruled):

Fifth place--Damonde Tschritter (Yes, he did it again. He went into the last night in seventh place and ended up making the semi-finals.)

Fourth place--Rory Scovel (And that pretty much sealed the deal for the hopes of Jeff or Geoff...and that's when the joy left Mudville.)

Third place--Paul Myrehaug.

Second place--Tyler Boeh.

...and, the top performer for the week...who, upon taking the stage to less than enthusiastic applause, whispered in the mic "That guy...oh, I didn't like him at ALL..."

First place--Dylan Mandlsohn.

Those five performers get two days off before the mad rush of the finals begins. The shows will be closer to Seattle, the audiences bigger...but just as challenging...and it all comes to a head on the last show of the competition--Sunday, November 26th at the Comedy Underground in Seattle.

And for everyone else...they leave this competition after tonight with their Comedy Time t-shirt and semi-finalist money. For Natalie, Myq and Debbie...they knew going into tonight that's what was going to happen to them. But, for the two young Seattle performers--Jeff Dye in his first SICC, Geoff Brousseau in his second--the disappointment of going into the last night with a chance to go on and being victims of the cruelty of math must have been hard to take.

Geoff Brousseau promised that he would never perform at The Fairhaven again...and I don't doubt his conviction. Still, he's got nothing to be ashamed of...as he did an excellent job every night he performed in this competition--including this night. The fact that this crowd didn't respond as well to him as he would have liked says nothing about him as a performer or as a person. This just wasn't his night...and it wouldn't be his year.

Jeff Dye, who made the podium for the night...only to watch someone leap frog him into the finals, leaving him in sixth place for the week, should know that he's done an excellent job for a performer so young. His talent is obvious...and he's got every opportunity to continue to improve--which is a scary thought for those of us watching him do so well already.

I told all of the performers in this amazing semi-final week before this night's show began that this has been one of my favorite weeks of comedy ever...that every performer is incredibly good and so much fun to watch... We all joked that we should just rent a bus and take this ten person show across the country--that it would be amazing every night...but at some level, that's not really a joke. This was one of the strongest semi-finals weeks of this competition ever, I'm sure...and I hope that everyone looks back on this week with the same fondness...although, admittedly, it'll take some people a little bit of time to gain perspective on what must be tough to take.

Thanks to Kermet Apio, too...for really enjoying the role of host for the semi-finals...and drawing out positive responses for nearly everyone on nearly every night.

The finals begin on Wednesday, November 22nd at the historic Vashon Island Theatre...with host Brad Upton--and I'd recommend this show to ANYONE.


CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS:
SEMI-FINALS WEEK:

1) Dylan Mandlsohn
Tacoma: 10.75
Puyallup: 11.00
Bow: 10.98
Rochester: 11.00
Ellensburg: 10.55
Bellingham: 9.27
----------
Total: 63.56
Drop: 9.27
Score: 54.28

2) Tyler Boeh
Tacoma: 9.91
Puyallup: 10.48
Bow: 11.00
Rochester: 10.88
Ellensburg: 10.69
Bellingham: 10.29
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Total: 63.26
Drop: 9.91
Score: 53.35

3) Paul Myrehaug
Tacoma: 10.91
Puyallup: 7.75
Bow: 10.05
Rochester: 10.19
Ellensburg: 11.00
Bellingham: 10.11
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Total: 60.02
Drop: 7.75
Score: 52.26

4) Rory Scovel
Tacoma: 10.38
Puyallup: 9.98
Bow: 10.34
Rochester: 10.52
Ellensburg: 9.30
Bellingham: 11.00
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Total: 61.53
Drop: 9.30
Score: 52.23

5) Damonde Tschritter
Tacoma: 11.00
Puyallup: 9.32
Bow: 9.60
Rochester: 10.14
Ellensburg: 9.69
Bellingham: 10.75
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Total: 60.51
Drop: 9.32
Score: 51.19

================

6) Jeff Dye
Tacoma: 10.24
Puyallup: 9.15
Bow: 9.48
Rochester: 10.79
Ellensburg: 10.46
Bellingham: 9.68
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Total: 59.79
Drop: 9.15
Score: 50.65

7) Geoff Brousseau
Tacoma: 10.68
Puyallup: 8.40
Bow: 10.36
Rochester: 11.00
Ellensburg: 9.14
Bellingham: 7.97
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Total: 57.55
Drop: 7.97
Score: 49.58

8) Debbie Wooten
Tacoma: 10.17
Puyallup: 7.59
Bow: 9.65
Rochester: 10.48
Ellensburg: 8.53
Bellingham: 9.38
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Total: 55.79
Drop: 7.59
Score: 48.20

9) Natalie Gray
Tacoma: 9.08
Puyallup: 7.59
Bow: 9.39
Rochester: 10.26
Ellensburg: 10.00
Bellingham: 8.49
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Total: 54.80
Drop: 7.59
Score: 47.21

10) Myq Kaplan
Tacoma: 10.05
Puyallup: 8.25
Bow: 8.98
Rochester: 9.36
Ellensburg: 8.96
Bellingham: 9.58
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Total: 55.18
Drop: 8.25
Score: 46.93