Come on BillBell, you definitely have the rump to pull this off.
Tonight’s opening montage features more than one ventriloquist. This promises to be a good time and by “good time”, I mean “enhanced by over-the-counter medications”. We’re kicking off the komedy in Minneapolis with judges Kate Flannery and Brian Baumgartner who you may recognize as the rabid woman and the guy with the tiny eyes from NBC’s The Office.
There may be a precipitous drop in my snark level for this post, since–in my head, at least–the Minny crowd was the best audition group of the year. The comics that made it to the p.m. show were:
Pete Lee: He is adorable. Seriously, I want to have adopt his children. His audition set was about his lack of tough guy qualities, a bit that got a guffaw from Brian. During the late show he riffed on the Snopes-ish myth that you could crush a car by dropping pennies from the Eiffel tower, then suggested we drop coins instead of bombs during our wars because we’d be “bringing change to the middle east”. I adore him. Confidential to Pete Lee: Call me. I like to snuggle.
How can you not love a man who can make this hoodie work for him? It’s rare, people. RARE.
Alex Thomas: He has a solid audition about clubbers who keep dancing until time for work, getting a full snicker out of me when he says that he sees the Fed Ex guy “who has to be at work in ten minutes” dancing behind him. Unfortunately, his second set seemed flat, with some lamery about giving three parts to your address when you live in New York. Meh.
Dan Cummins: He gets his own feature segment about his Scandinavian heritage. He also wears a Viking helmet, like Flava Flav with 90% less crazy. His audition was great. He said his wife is a real vegetarian, not a vegetarian who says they also eat chicken. If that’s you, he said, “you’re not a vegetarian. You’re a liar”. I like him so much, and not just because he has such shiny hair. At the showcase, he invents his dream pet, the Squirrelador, combining the best traits of both squirrels and Labrador retrievers. Loved it enough that I flapped my hands and squealed.
Doug Mellard: He goes to gay bars and tells people how gay they look. He also has some kind of weeping skin rash, although that wasn’t considered during the audition. His nighttime set was about people who own those “Wipe your paws” door mats. He wasn’t bad… he just picked the wrong city for his audition.
But he doesn’t look gay, so good for him.
Dave Landau: How can his wife get him to run? By telling him she’s pregnant. What a coincidence. How can he get me to run? By telling me he’d like to have sex.
Tim Harmston: This guy has a really unique style. He set up a bit about online dating services by explaining that they matched him with someone who likes horses but he likes to punch horses at the fair. During round 2, he made one of the most awkward “I’m trying to save this joke even though it was met with crickets and tumbleweeds” expressions I’ve ever seen. Here’s guessing that bit about the guy with a beard made of bees is never spoken of again. Still, I’d like to see more of him. Same for Doug Mellard.
