Scheduled for 8 o'clock, a packed crowd awaits silently in a courtyard at Humphrey's By The Bay in Point Loma. The hotel courtyard is packed, with a small crowd of people in the nearby harbor filling up a few docked sailboats and several inflatable rafts. Fifteen minutes go by and the lights are still dim. Suddenly, an announcer's voice breaks the silence. A long introduction follows, and then before long, the lights go on, and it's...comedian Mark Pitta, doing his own intro in an announcer's voice. After a short 20-minute standup routine, he introduces Dana Carvey-for real this time.
From that moment on, he's rapid fire. He makes jokes ranging from the boat crowd that was too cheap to buy tickets to pretty much all the former presidents, as well as possible future ones such as Sen. Barack Obama.
"Barack Hussein Obama … who's running next? Charles Manson Hitler?" as for Sen. John McCain, "He's like a little albino chipmunk." He jokes about politics, his failed river rafting trip leading to a near death experience for him and his family, the quirkiness of his aging parents and the tricky task of explaining what a bisexual is to a child, "A bisexual is someone who can stick their hands down someone's pants, and be happy with whatever they find." He even reuses some old jokes from previous standup routines, which are nevertheless still funny, including his Aer Lingus Irish Airline bit.
About halfway through his routine, he introduces a Q&A session, having Mark Pitta go through the audience and choosing people to ask him a question. Most of the questions from the audience consist of things such as "Who cut your hair?" referring to his incredibly wavy, slightly bowl-cut looking haircut.
"It's a place called bowl-cuts-r-us…why, jealous?" he replies. He even answers a popular question people ask him about him and his wife "doing it" when he stayed a night in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House.
"I won't tell you if we did it or not, but I will say that our son's middle name is Abe," he replies to the audience.
He closes the show with his famous "Chopping Broccoli" routine on the guitar, admitting happily to the crowd that "out of all the motel patios, you were the very best."
Unlike Mike Myers and the rest of the SNL staff for the most part, Dana has mainly stuck to standup comedy instead of going on to "the big screen." Besides his most memorable role as the blonde, thick-rimmed glasses wearing drummer in "Wayne's World" and a few other movies in the early '90's, he has had only one starring role lately in "The Master of Disguise" in 2002.
This isn't to say that he isn't any less funny than his former SNL peers, though. Even in a small hotel courtyard in Point Loma, Dana Carvey was able to show us that he sticks to standup for a reason: simply because it's what he's best at.
For more information on upcoming stand-up by Dana Carvey go to: www.danacarvey.net.
And for more upcoming comedy at Humphrey's go to: www.humphreysconcerts.com.
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