Have you ever heard the phrase, “You’ve got to laugh to keep from crying?” It sure does seem to be more true nowadays than ever, doesn’t it? What with the everyone-is-always-outraged-about-something world we live in, it’s nice to find distractions from scrolling through our mostly hate-filled social media timelines. My favorite distraction? Comedy. Particularly of the live-and-in-person variety. Luckily for us here in Sacramento, we’re sitting on a comedy goldmine. Week in and week out, there are great comedy shows in and around this city, so do yourself a favor and go laugh your face off at one of these upcoming comedy spectacles. As always, we here at Submerge encourage you to: Read. Learn. Do rad things.

Comedian, columnist, actor and author Will Durst, who has been described by the New York Times as “possibly the best political comic working today,” is bringing his Durst Case Scenario: Midterm Madness show through town on Saturday, July 21 to the The Sofia Tsakopoulos Center for the Arts (2700 Capitol Ave.), aka the new B Street Theatre. Doors at 6:30 p.m. and all ages are welcome. More info and tickets ($30) can be found at Bstreettheatre.org.

The Sacramento Comedy Spot (1050 20th St. #130) is known for hosting hilarious and off-the-wall improv shows and The Daddy House on Friday, July 27 at 10:30 p.m. should be no different. It’s a show in the style of a 1950s family sitcom (think Leave It to Beaver) about a family of—you guessed it—all dads. The dads (played by Nick Magavern, Ryan King and Court Hansen) will “get into a series of wacky mishaps and teach touching life lessons in this semi-improvised, semi-written extravaganza!” Tickets for The Daddy House are just $5, but it’s free if you buy a ticket for the 9 p.m. “YOU! The Musical” show ($12). More info at Saccomedyspot.com/calendar.

Stand-up comedian Jess Hilarious first found fame by posting hilarious short skits on her Instagram (where she has amassed 3.8 million followers!), and now she has appeared on VH1, BET and is selling out shows around the country. She will also be the female lead in an upcoming comedy pilot on Fox called Rel, with Lil Rel Howery, Jordan L. Jones, Sinbad and others. You can catch Jess at Tommy T’s (12401 Folsom Blvd., Rancho Cordova) where she’ll perform five sets between July 27 – 29. Hit up Tommytsrancho.com for more info and tickets.

On Saturday, July 28, the newly opened STAB! Comedy Theater (1710 Broadway) will host their First Annual Gallagher Tribute Show in honor of the great comedian’s birthday (which is July 24), and STAB!’s very own John Ross gave us the lowdown on this sure-to-be-weird-and-awesome show: “The event will consist of 10–15 comics doing their own original comedy while dressed as Gallagher and smashing shit during their acts,” he told Submerge (Gallagher is, of course, known for smashing watermelons and plenty of other stuff on stage as part of his act). “We will also be encouraging the audience to show up in their best Gallagher costume, as we will be having a Gallagher costume contest.” The show is all ages, starts at 7 p.m. and is $10 for adults and just $5 for kids. Learn more at Stabcomedytheater.com or Facebook.com/stabcomedytheater.

Creed Bratton is one of those guys where if you don’t recognize his name in writing, when you see his face, you’re like, “Ohhh, I know him!” Bratton played a fictional version of himself on nine seasons of the NBC hit comedy The Office, and on Sunday, July 29 you can catch An Evening of Music and Comedy with Creed Bratton at Holy Diver (1517 21st St.). Tickets are $20 in advance at Holydiversac.com, and the show is all ages, with doors at 7 p.m. Opening will be Control, Sam Jones and Amber DeLaRosa. A well-rounded night of live entertainment!

If you’re a fan of Cartoon Network’s late night programming block, Adult Swim, chances are you’re already a huge Eric Andre fan. He’s the creator, host, and co-writer of The Eric Andre Show, a parody of a low-budget public access show that features ridiculous interviews, sketches, pranks and more. Andre is making his way to Punch Line (2100 Arden Way) where he’ll perform five shows between Aug 2 – 4. These shows are pretty much guaranteed to sell out, so hit up Punchlinesac.com ASAP to secure your tickets. The shows are all 18-plus, and tickets start at $25.

Find more comedy shows, concerts and other regional events in our calendar section!

**This piece first appeared in print on page 6 of issue #270 (July 18 – Aug. 1, 2018)**

photo by Art Streiber

D.L. Hughley is one of those guys who can do a little bit of everything and pull it all off. Acting, stand-up comedy, political commentating, radio personality, the dude is everywhere. And he can get a laugh out of almost anyone talking on almost any subject. Catch him live in Rancho Cordova for three nights only, July 6—8, at Tommy T’s, located at 12401 Folsom Boulevard. Tommyts.com for more information and to buy tickets ahead of time.

Comedian Ellis Rodriguez takes a yeoman’s approach to standup

It’s 10 p.m. on a Sunday and I’m in a bowling alley bar with the hottest girl in Elk Grove (her claim) and local comedian Ellis Rodriguez. The topic of discussion: who has the best life ever? The 22-year old Elk Grove girl swears up and down it’s her, since she coined the phrase “best life ever,” but her mom has to drive her home for political reasons. I feel as though I’m disqualified from the competition because I’m drinking in a bowling alley bar in South Sacramento. But Rodriguez is the closest to actually living it because, as he puts it, “I draw comic books and I tell dick jokes. That is the best life ever.”

I meet up with Rodriguez the next day at the Stoney Inn a couple hours prior to its open mic night, which is complemented by country karaoke night in the adjacent room. What type of crowd attends this open mic, I ask? “Random assortment of mostly urban comedy goers,” is his reply. This is the trenches for a comedian. In a night’s time I receive a crash course in one comedian’s regimen for sharpening his jokes just to squeeze one funny minute out of the week.

His first night up was an open mic at Old Ironsides. He says with conviction that he became a full-time comic the day he got on stage, but at the time he did not have a job standing in the way. Rodriguez was living out of his car, working comedy at night for three months before a friend got him a job as a branch manager selling wholesale toilets.

“I was branch manager/trainer/operations recruiter for the number one wholesaling plumbing company in the world,” he says. “Great company. Great people. Couldn’t fucking stand it.”

He gave his days to toilets, but the nights were long drives to San Francisco to wait around at open mics for opportunities to do five minutes on stage. Keep in mind it is comedy courtesy to stay until the end.

“Once I drove to Pleasanton for an open mic,” Rodriguez says. “Another comedian told me about it, and I looked forward to it all 12 hours of my shift that day. I got into work at 4:30 [a.m.] that day. At 5 [p.m.] I headed straight there after work only to arrive to an empty bar that wasn’t even open. I heard there was some stage time in San Francisco so I went to get some time only to arrive and be told that I ‘might be able’ to get some stage time. I stayed until the end that night, desperate for time. I was the last one called up at 11:14 p.m. I got home at 1 a.m. and it was inventory week. I had to pull a 12-hour shift again the next day. Par for the course.”

Now a full-time comic, Rodriguez employs a strict regimen that includes open mics Mondays through Wednesdays and paid gigs at clubs on the weekends. The drive I ride along for begins on Del Paso Boulevard, treks up to Folsom and then over to Roseville. He’s never alone, though. His 2-year old Italian Greyhound named Muñeca rides along. “Tonight I’ll do three [open mics], tomorrow I’ll do two, Wednesday I’ll do four or five and then work the weekend,” he says. “It’s one of the few things I’m actually regimented about. There’s no excuse. None of the mics start before 8 [p.m.]… you can get up by 8.”

Rodriguez goes up around 8:30 p.m. at Stoney Inn to the crowd he predicted. Minutes before he goes up, he’s in my ear scrolling through his cell phone notes, running jokes by me that he might try out. It’s a fleeting moment of meekness. The related fragments have potential, but it’s when he takes the stage, assuming a confident persona, that Rodriguez discovers exactly what it is about “testing out white slavery for a month” that makes people laugh. Rodriguez just secured another minute toward his full hour set.

“I write around five to 10 minutes every week,” he says. “If you write 10 minutes, then one minute is going to be good. You keep that minute. At the end of the year I’ve got another 52 minutes.”

Rodriguez is in his fifth year of standup, tirelessly logging hours and pages of notes. He records all his sets, reviewing the tape like a scouting coach hoping to find flaws and room for improvement. “I do black rooms, white rooms, alternative rooms,” he says. “I do every room I possibly can to get as good as I can be in that room. You have to be able to read an audience and know how to react to it, but not necessarily think that once you crush it for 10 minutes that you’ve conquered that room. Can you do it again with different material?”

An hour later we’re at Po Boyz Sports Bar & Grill in Folsom and, save for three 20-somethings having a night out and the owner’s friends, the room is littered with comedians waiting to get up. Cheryl the Soccer Mom from the Real Funny Housewives of Rio Linda is hosting, and a young comedian is on stage venting about being excluded from the News & Review’s comedian feature. It’s a hostage situation.

Unfortunately it creates discomfort in the room that seems impenetrable as several comedians to follow struggle with the sound of silence. Rodriguez embraces the awkwardness and begins riffing hard on his friend Samm Hickey, who’s in the room. He tries out an AIDS joke we’ve discussed a few times that has yet to reach its full potential. We step outside to smoke a cigarette after his set and casually discuss the dos and don’ts of STD jokes. To him there’s something undeniably funny about saying his friend, who was recently diagnosed with AIDS, having “double AIDS,” even if it didn’t go over well the previous night in Elk Grove.

“I think I did all the herpes things,” he says. “I did most of the crabs thing, but they were really uncomfortable. I think there were a couple people that had that shit. I wanted to write another STD joke, but I’ve found that nobody knows enough about gonorrhea or syphilis for it to be funny. It’s just gross.”

Throughout the night I gather insider knowledge about the ideal crowd from Rodriguez and overhearing other comedians relate stories. Rodriguez tells me it was not the crowd itself, and never should be blamed, that made his Elk Grove show difficult, nor is it the presence of a bowling alley in the next room. An ideal room is dark, slightly chilly and compact. One comedian stressed the importance of seating the audience in order to prevent a scattered crowd.

“The crowd was too spread out so they are able to form a consensus of what’s funny within their little groups,” Rodriguez says of the Elk Grove gig. “They didn’t have to worry about what the people around them were feeling. That contagiousness of laughter is what makes it easy. But, if you can kill that crowd, then you’re going to destroy whatever show is set up properly.”

It is nearing midnight and we’ve arrived at the Boxing Donkey, a narrow Irish Pub in Roseville, for our final open mic. The bouncer asks that Rodriguez, a former Marine, tuck in his tags and Jesus piece–apparently they’ve had chain issues previously.

I ask Rodriguez about his time in the military, considering he was always a jokester growing up. “I was not a good Marine, at first,” he says. He was 19 and distracted with partying instead of attending his college courses when he decided to join the military.

“I’ll join the Marine Corps because they’ll make a man out of me,” he says. “I realized very quickly that Marine Corps does not make a man out of you. It gives you the opportunity to be a man. It puts you in situations where you’re pushed and strained. You’re constantly being tested and the choices you make, make you a man or a Marine.”

The Marine Corps wasn’t all precision posture, firm salutes and combat training, though. Rodriguez says there was still room for humor. “One of the things we did was send a person to retrieve an ID10Tango form on the other side of the base. They’d show up and the people there would say, ‘what are you doing here, you get that from ADMIN first, then ADMIN would say, ‘you need an ID10Tango release from your unit.’ They would come back and someone would finally tell them to write down ID10Tango. I. D. 10. T.”

It is nearing 1 a.m. when Rodriguez seizes the mic at Boxing Donkey. The room is brightly lit, less than ideal, but it gives him a visual on the room’s reaction. By now he’s told the bit about being so drunk at a Halloween party that he actually thought he was Superman for the third time in the night, but he is orating with the proper emphasis and pauses to make absurd glances to pull the most laughter. He takes notice of a group of black men not laughing much by the bar. “I’ve got one for you guys,” he says and launches into the white slavery bit, winning over the doubters with a blindside punch line.

I don’t get back to my Malibu parked on Del Paso Boulevard until 1:40 a.m. The Stoney Inn is long closed, I’ve got a burger in my hand from Jack in the Box and a guy on a bicycle is circling Rodriguez’s car giving us weird looks before pedaling off. He tells me he’ll wait until I get in my car before he drives off. It’s par for the course for Rodriguez, but for me it’s damn exhausting.

“I’ve got hours to log,” he says. “You keep coming back until you get a nice easy room at The Improv opening for Bruce Bruce and you’ve only got to do 25 minutes, but you’re going to kill because you did all these gigs at crappy open mics working out new material in bars and bowling alleys.”

Ellis Rodriguez will perform at Tommy T’s in Rancho Cordova on April 28, 2011. This will be a live DVD taping. Also performing are Dennis Martinez and Hunter Hill. This 17-and-over show starts at 8 p.m.

Veteran funnyman Kevin Nealon strives to keep current

Many experts argue that laughter is good for you. They say it’s therapeutic to the mind, body and soul, that it relaxes the whole body and even boosts the immune system. If this is the case, comedian/actor Kevin Nealon has been healing millions of people worldwide for decades. From 1986 to 1995, Nealon was hilarious on Saturday Night Live (remember The Subliminal Man? How about Hanz and Franz?); he also had us rolling on the floor with his appearances in such films as Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer and Grandma’s Boy, and he’s currently keeping the laughs going as Doug Wilson, the stoner city councilman, accountant and part-time pot dealer on the hit Showtime series Weeds and as the lead in Glenn Martin, DDS, a stop-motion animated series on Nick at Nite.

One thing that’s stayed consistent throughout his lengthy career is his love for doing stand-up. He says that stand-up came first and then the acting gigs flowed. “That’s what I really wanted to do was stand-up comedy,” Nealon says of his early years. “The acting came secondary. Stand-up was what I loved and then I got on talk shows and then I was in that Roxanne movie with Steve Martin and I got on SNL in 1986, but I never stopped doing stand-up.”

Lucky for us he still hasn’t stopped, and on Jan. 14 and 15, 2011 he’ll bring his act to Tommy T’s Comedy Club in Rancho Cordova. Nealon was gracious enough to take some time to chat with Submerge while in Hawaii on vacation, sort of.

How’s Hawaii? Are you there for fun time or work time?
Well, it’s rest time to be ready for work. Or, you know, to recover from work I guess [laughs]. I don’t know. I had an interesting morning, though. I was at breakfast and this guy starting choking and a friend of mine did the Heimlich maneuver on him. I’d never saw that in person. He saved the guy’s life.

So you were just sitting there watching it all?
I was there just watching and enjoying my breakfast. I didn’t know that there was entertainment with the breakfast.

Talk about all-inclusive.
Yeah, but I’d never seen that actually happen in real life.

I’ve never seen that happen in real life either, but it’s one of those situations that’s depicted in so many movies and TV shows that you feel like you’ve seen it happen, you know?
Yeah and It’s usually in comedies where you see it, you know, where the thing pops out of the person’s mouth and goes flying across the room [laughs].

Probably wasn’t so funny in real life.
No, it was funny.

You’re going to appear in a ton of films this year. For example, Just Go With It, the Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston flick. You play a character called Adon, right? What can you tell us about that?
Well, Adon is Middle Eastern, and he’s a plastic surgery junky. He can’t get enough and he’s fairly persuasive to the people around him. He just likes to have a good time and likes to look good.

I saw something on your website about that role that said, “You might not even recognize me.” Was there major makeup involved?
Oh yeah, it was six hours in the makeup chair. I think we shot like three or four days and they only used one scene. That’s the way movies are. It was fun doing the movie though, it was fun hanging out with Jennifer and Sandler and I think it’s going to be a funny movie.

Heidi Montag plays your wife, right? That seems kind of fitting considering she’s a real-life plastic surgery addict. How was it working with her?
It was nice. She was very sweet. It couldn’t have been more pleasant. She was very eager.

How about the Nick Swardson and Christina Ricci porn-tinged comedy called Born to Be a Star. Who do you play in that?
That’s a fun one; I can’t wait until that one comes out! That’s a really funny film. I play Nick Swardson’s character’s abusive roommate trying to connect with Christina Ricci’s character. Nick’s character becomes my roommate because she asks my character to take him in and I’m just totally abusive to him. I don’t think you’ve seen anything more abusive.

Couple more. How about Jack and Jill, the one where Adam Sandler plays, well, Jack and Jill. How do you fit into that one?
Well I just play a doctor at the beginning of that film delivering two kids. And that’s actually Sandler’s sister who’s giving the baby in real life and his brother plays her husband [laughs].

Keeping it in the fam! Finally, there’s And They’re Off with Martin Mull and Sean Astin. Who do you play in that one?
That was a fun movie. My wife and I did that together. It’s more of an improv scene, which was really fun. Martin Mull and Sean Astin were great to work with. It was just a great day, one of those days where it clicks and it just goes by in an instant.

You thrive in improv situations, don’t you?
Yeah, we had a good time doing it. My wife was in The Groundlings for a while, the comedy company, so she loves improv too and she’s a great actress. It was kind of like playing all day, you know, and when you work with Martin Mull and Sean Astin it’s just a real heyday.

You’re a really busy guy! How do you shuffle all your projects?
Well, you know, it sounds like I’m busy, but for example I did that Swardson film over a year ago I think.

So on paper you’re busy?
Yeah, on paper it looks like I’m really busy and people tell me, “You got to slow down,” but really I have so much free time, it’s crazy.

As far as work ethic goes, whom do you look up to in the comedy world?
Well first and foremost Adam Sandler, that guy is a workhorse. He’s constantly working and looking forward to the next project. Sarah Silverman, Gary Shandling was also a big influence for me. If you go back a little bit, Albert Brooks. Steve Martin of course–he’s a genius.

You had a stand-up DVD out a while back called Now Hear Me Out. When can we expect another one?
I am actually working on one, yeah, that’s one of the reasons I’m doing so much stand-up is to come up with another special. That was my first one-hour special after all those years of doing stand-up. I figured it was time to do one. I’m such a perfectionist in a lot of ways, and I keep waiting to come up with better material, but you know what, that may never happen [laughs].

How tough is it for comedians to compile an hour’s worth of solid material to do a full-on special like that? It seems like it’s the equivalent of writing an album for a musician, or a screenplay for a writer, or a book for a novelist or something like that.
It is intense depending on the comic and how often they try their new material and write. Some of these comics come out with a new special every year, and they’re kind of not as good as their first special, because that’s when they had all of their material. Unlike musicians. I was just reading “The Beatles: 100 Greatest Songs” in Rolling Stone, and they had deadlines when they had to come up with songs, so they were kind of like forced to write songs by a certain time. Sometimes they came up with a great song, sometimes not so great, but they had record deadlines. But comedy has to be a little more organic, you know? You have to really find the material and hone it down. I’ve done stuff on talk shows, and I look back on it now and I think, “What happened to that hunk?” but I didn’t have the other half of that bit at that point.

When it comes to writing new material for your stand-up routine, where do you usually find your inspiration?
A lot of it is based on my life, you know, an exaggeration of my life. Or you know it’s me sitting with friends, talking and me coming up with something funny because I’m relaxed and loose. Like I was thinking about how people meditate, and I was thinking my New Year’s resolution would be to relax more, so I thought, “Maybe I should start meditating.” I tried that, but it becomes more of a worrying thing for me, I just start worrying. Then I thought maybe that’s because my mantra is, “Ohhhhh noooooo.”

Did becoming a father change the way you write your stand-up material?
Well, he’ll [Gable, Nealon’s son] be 4 at the end of January. Anytime you have a big life change like that, it kind of shifts your thinking pattern. It really was an influence on my writing, but I don’t have a lot of material about being a father. I had a lot of material about going through the pregnancy, in fact I wrote a book about it. As far as being a father, I haven’t really dissected that too much. I’m just kind of enjoying it. Some club owner told me once, “The best way to kill your career is just to do stuff about being a father.”

So that’s really stuck with you?
It has stuck a little, but I don’t know if it’s always true. I haven’t seen Seinfeld’s act lately, but I’m sure even he’s doing stuff about being a Dad. I mean Bill Cosby based his whole career on it.

Have you showed your son any of your movies or your stand-up DVD yet? If so, how did he react?
Oh yeah, he’s seen me in a few things. He’s watched Glen Martin, DDS and he heard my voice and recognized it. He points and he laughs and he goes, “Look it’s Daddy.” I think he thinks I go down to a Walmart or something and just put myself in a movie [laughs].

Weeds has had a ton of success; and in my opinion, your character, Doug Wilson, is one of the funnier ones on the show. How do you prepare for that sort of “stoner-ish” role? Because contrary to popular belief, you don’t smoke pot, do you?
That’s right. I think I go in with the attitude of a friend of mine who smokes a lot of pot, in that he basically doesn’t really have any concerns about the rest of the world. It’s kind of like he’s just looking out for what he enjoys doing, and if he has to make a decision between what’s right and what’s good for him, he’ll usually pick what’s good for him [laughs]. So I think it’s that kind of mental attitude that my character assumes, and he’s basically just out to have fun.

I bet you get people coming up to you all the time like, “You’re on Weeds, let’s go smoke a doobie!” That’s probably annoying, huh?
[Laughs] We went to Haight-Ashbury about a year ago, and you wouldn’t believe the amount people gave us. We were walking around, my wife and I, and I just had a hand full of pot.

I’m always curious about this with comedians: what makes you laugh?
Um, usually the Heimlich maneuver.

So this morning you were set, then huh?
Yeah, I fell off my chair. Real people doing unpredictable things makes me laugh. You know, Candid Camera used to be one of my favorite shows. You know what I mean, though, people not trying to be funny and it just happens. Or kids–kids are really funny. Just their rationale and thinking is just so funny because they are just so innocent. I like dry humor, you know, like Flight of the Concords and Eastbound and Down.

You just seem to be getting funnier with age. You’re like a fine wine or something. How much longer do you see yourself making people laugh?
Well yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever retire because I enjoy doing this. But you know, I start thinking about that as I get older. I think the most important thing is to kind of stay connected and relevant and to stay on top of things, so you can kind of relate to people that are younger than you.

With close to 1.3 million Twitter followers, I’d say you’re pretty on top of things.
[Laughs] Yeah, I guess so. Anyways, that’s my objective: stay current as much as possible.

If you missed Kevin Nealon when he was in Sacramento you can see him on Feb. 26, 2011 at Montbleu in South Lake Tahoe.