Jonas Polsky

by Jonas Polsky

A friend of mine told me today that he is going to perform stand up with Maria Bamford this weekend. I remarked that just a few years ago we watched her from the audience at this show, and now he shares the stage with her. Time flies.

I went to the very last Comedians of Comedy show in 2008 with the hopes of seeing Zach Galifianakis live. Unfortunately, Zach was already off becoming a superstar and couldn’t attend. It was Comic-Con weekend, and the audience was subjected to a lot of half-baked material about the convention that people had made up that day.

There was a running joke that Patton Oswalt wasn’t there, because he had gotten a screener for the then-unreleased “Watchmen” movie. I thought pretending that two of the shows headliners weren’t in attendance to an already disappointed crowd was a bad idea.

It was the very last Comedians of Comedy because everyone that had started it had burgeoning careers, and they wanted to put on one last show and say farewell. I’m not sure how I heard about this show, but I think that was why I decided to attend, because it was somewhat historic.

The show had lots of surprise guest appearances like a relatively unknown Aziz Ansari performing a not-very-good “Illusionators” sketch with Paul Scheer that featured an audience member “giving birth” and a missed lighting cue. A recently single Sarah Silverman took the stage who had been dating Jimmy Kimmel until just a few weeks prior and was the subject of great sympathy.

The person who stole the show was Maria “Bammer” Bamford, who absolutely destroyed, and put everyone else to shame. She did a bit where she said something about every state in the United States, and was often unintelligible, but still got laughs.

Patton came out and did his great bit about comic fans having to dress exactly like their heroes, even if it’s at the expense of their own dignity. I also remember a screamingly funny version of the bit where he sees a rat in his backyard that is grabbed by a hawk which he was working on for “My Weakness is Strong.” The version he did at this show, I think is superior to the one on the album. Something about how the rat thudded on the shed next door, or how they covered up the sound, I don’t remember which.

Aside from hanging out at comedy clubs, I’ve probably only been to about three “real” comedy shows in my life. This was one of them.