Tag Archives: comedians

GIVEAWAY: Tickets to Stand Up Proud comedy show at the Improv on Wednesday

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On Friday, you may have read about comedian Shawn Pelofsky who may be a Jewish straight girl, but will out gay “the gayest man in the room.” She and queer comedian Thai Rivera come to yuk it up at the Addison Improv on Wednesday with trans comic Dina Martinez as the MC for the night. Pelofsky was even kind enough to offer up a pair of tickets to one lucky Dallas Voice reader.

Just email us here with Make Me Laugh in the subject line and your name and number in the body and one winner will be selected to head north for some major hump day laughs.

 

 

—  Rich Lopez

QLive’s Open Mic Night tonight in Fort Worth

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Step on up to the microphone

You should be well aware of QCinema and their LGBT film festival out in Fort Worth. Well they’ve started an offshoot dedicated to live performances with QLive! And for the funny folk, tonight is all about them.

QLive’s Open Mic Night is for budding comedians and each one has five minutes to make an impression. It’s not like open mike for all kinds of entertainment, so don’t head there with your guitar, tambourine and dreams of becoming Bob Dylan. Not gonna happen this evening.

DEETS: Percussions,426 S. Jennings Ave., Fort Worth. 10 p.m. QCinema.org.

—  Rich Lopez

Get your gay Pride on early — and often

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The parade and festival aren’t until Sunday, but gay Pride-related festivities in Dallas have already begun and continue every day this week. The Dallas Tavern Guild has posted a full schedule of Pride-related events on its website (the schedule can also be found in DTG’s annual Pride guide distributed inside Dallas Voice on Sept. 3 and 17). But for your convenience, here’s a look of what’s happening today, Monday, Sept. 13:

JR’s Bar & Grill
Sushi, Sake, and Sapporo
Sake & Sapporo all day all night – Sushi 6:00 to 9:00
3923 Cedar Springs Road
Dallas, Texas 75219
www.caven.com

Service Industry Night
Round Up Saloon
Join us as we salute the service industry with Happy Hour prices all Day and all Night.
3912 Cedar Springs Road
Dallas, TX 75219
www.roundupsaloon.com

Step Up To The Mic For Pride
The Brick/Joe’s
Give us your best Pride Performance at OPEN MIC NIGHT
Poets, Comedians, Spoken Word
Enter for your chance to Win up to $300
9pm
2525 Wycliff
Dallas, Texas 75219
www.brickdallas.com

Koko Chanel Show at midnight (12am)
Kaliente
Karaoke starts at 9pm
Drink Specials – $2 wells / $2 domestic from 9pm – 11pm
No Cover
4350 Maple Avenue
Dallas, Texas 75219
www.kaliente.cc

—  John Wright

An inconvenient woman

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Rivers leaves no turn unstoned in frank, funny but standard-issue doc

ARNOLD WAYNE JONES | Life+Style Editor jones@dallasvoice.com

JOAN DARK | Rivers does wrestle with demons; she just turns them into jokes in her act.

3 out of 5 Stars
JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK
Joan Rivers. Rated R. 90 mins. Opens today at the
Magnolia Theater and the
Angelika Film Center Plano.

Joan Rivers is both an enigma and exactly what she seems: A foul-mouthed comedian who has made a career pushing buttons and causing controversy without consideration for decorum. But then again, what drives her to “be that guy”? Is there something deeper, other than the quest for immortality and applause and approval?

We never quite learn the answer to that in Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, a documentary culled from following Rivers around for a year or so around the time she won Celebrity Apprentice. Sure, we learn of the pain of her rift with Johnny Carson and the suicide of her husband and her fragile ego and her feelings about never being a critics’ darling.

But how did she make the leap to her brand of truth-telling? Does she have limits? Like getting to the center of a Tootsie Pop, we may never know.

What we do know from the documentary, though, can be fabulously entertaining. Rivers is upfront about her addiction to plastic surgery (although she avoids talking about her now-catlike appearance); she walks us through her joke file (and shares crass ones about Michelle Obama and Nazis); she tells us what current comedians she considers “brilliant” (Maher, Shandling, Tomlin); explains why she loves anal; and how she gives Kathy competition as champion of the gays. (“What’s the gay community like here?” she asks a cabbie in rural Wisconsin. “I don’t know,” responds her driver suspiciously. “Ask your wife’s brother,” she snaps back.)

There’s also the curiosity of seeing classic video of Rivers doing standup 40 years ago … and realizing that what was considered racy then seems Disney Channel tame by today’s standards.

Yet Joan remains endlessly fascinating. She’s a money, fame and attention whore who shouts down hecklers and takes no prisoners. “Can we talk?” she used to ask rhetorically.

I don’t know about “we.” But can she ever.

This article appeared in the National Pride edition in the Dallas Voice print edition June 18, 2010

—  Dallasvoice