Near the end of our recent interview, I ask David Casas a question that, I think, most people would want to ask a professional magician who spends much of his time making doves appear and disappear: "Has anything really awful ever happened during your act?"
He smiles and replies: "The only thing that's really happened was at one of my first shows. Every time I used to produce a bird, I would always hold them close to me. So I was doing that at one show, and people started laughing, but I didn't know what they were laughing at. So I just kept going with my act, and they kept laughing, and I think I went to grab a silk or something ... . And then I see this big line of bird poop running down my coat.
"And I was like, 'Oh-h-h-h ... now I get it,'" says Casas. "I just shook my head and said, 'That'll happen with birds,' and kept going, you know? And I learned that when I produce the bird, I need to hold it out."
As emcee for the Bottoms Up Burlesque troupe and a former emcee for Burlesque Le' Moustache, Josh Kahn's formal responsibilities shouldn't include disrobing in public. But if you ask Kahn about his favorite experiences from years of hosting and providing comedic filler between striptease acts, don't be surprised if the first one he mentions involves the night he himself stripped on stage. Or rather, as Kahn refers to it, "the first night I stripped on stage.
"A guy once sent me this story," begins comedian Tim Bedore. "He had a great muscle car from the '60s, and he had it all waxed and polished to this beautiful shine, and he had it parked under a tree. And this squirrel started dropping nuts onto his hood, over and over again.
Two veterans of Comedy Central will perform in the Quad Cities this month, neither of whom, in separate interviews, had any trouble recalling his beginnings in professional stand-up.
At one point during my recent (and rather terse) phone interview with comedienne Grandma Lee, the performer explains her interest in stand-up by saying, "You gotta do somethin' you love. I'm 74 years old, but I'm not ready for the rocking chair."
For more than 30 years, Emmy-winning performer Vicki Lawrence has been best known for her signature character of Thelma "Mama" Harper, the snippy, drawling, and incredibly lovable matriarch she played opposite Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman, and Tim Conway on the long-running variety series The Carol Burnett Show. She subsequently revived the role for seven seasons on the sitcom Mama's Family, and both shows - to say nothing of the role itself - have proven so enduringly popular that Lawrence has a pretty fair idea of what age group Mama most appeals to nowadays: All of them.
C.J. Crawford, creator of the local YouTube series No Budget TV, has a lot of people to thank for his sketch comedy's burgeoning popularity: co-writer and collaborator Joe Lee; the friends and musicians who participate without pay; the 100-plus subscribers to the series' channel.
"I did a thing recently," says Saturday Night Live performer Darrell Hammond, "when I did Tony Soprano, and, like, a flat [a piece of scenery] fell on my head as I was walking out. And I got out there, and I discovered I didn't know the dialogue - the first 30 seconds were brand new.
Emmy-winning comedian Louis C.K. understands that some of the words he uses are offensive to many people, and that many people don't want to hear the things he talks about. His goal, he said, is to get beyond the offensive, and to find some truth. He wants people to laugh at things that might ordinarily make them wince.
