Marco News, June 7, 2007

The first round of the Funniest Man Contest kicked off Wednesday night at Captain Brien’s Off the Hook Comedy Club with some pretty witty and truly tasteless jokes. The audience narrowed down the pool of eight contestants to two after the evening’s host comic Nery Saenz performed.

Jay Combs, Fibby the Comic Inventor, Gid Pool, Matt Harding, Dan Mahoney, Josh Pollock, Bryan Hamilton and Victor Guyton fought for the first prize of $100 and a chance to compete in the final round June 27.

Hamilton and Guyton won the top two spots and then competed in a final round of competition for audience applause with Guyton eeking out a win over Hamilton. Guyton worked the crowd with ethnic jokes. His opening line: “I was a little nervous when I got here, because I didn’t see the other black guy.”

Hamilton’s comedy was similar to that of a poor (and fat) man’s version of Steven Wright with a little slapstick thrown in. Hamilton’s opening line: “Did you all hear about the cell phones being linked to brain tumors? I just got my mother-in-law unlimited minutes.” Hamilton also threw in a full-fledged cartwheel in the middle of act despite being quite heavy set.

Josh Pollock called himself the tallest leprechaun you’ll ever see using an authentic Irish accent, then switched into an American accent to explain his Irish, Indian heritage: he was a member of a small tribe, the IRA.

Dan Mahoney used the recent instant- and and text- messaging craze as the basis for many of his jokes, and ended with a joke about ending up on Dateline for dating someone who was posing as a young woman.

Mahoney noted he had started out doing stand up four years ago to meet women, but found out that about 98 percent of comics are men.

Neapolitan Matt Hardy could have won the trophy for the dirtiest comic in the contest. Hardy’s closing joke poked fun at the master card commercials. He tallied cost of all the incidentals to attend his 25-year high school reunion: cost of air fare, cost of a new suit, then said, and the cost of being rejected by the same girls 25 years later, cueing the audience to answer, “priceless.” His retort: Well, I was going for pathetic, but priceless works, too.”

Guy Pool poked fun at the age of the “bagboys” at Publix, saying they probably forget where they work. Pool summed up daytime television talk shows with the phrase: “You are not the father of that child.” And finished with a joke for All My Children fans: Once he started watching some show called All My Illegitimate Children, and by the end of the hour he was calling out to his wife, “Tad’s the father of that child!”

Fibby the Comic Inventor’s opening line won laughs with the audience by attacking his old age: “Take a look at me ladies. This is the prototype of who you’ll be sleeping with in about 60 years.” And although Jay Combs suffered a little heckling for a war-protest joke, he received kudos from the headlining comic, Nery Saenz, for his first-time efforts.

If you think you can beat these jokes, its not too late to sign up for the next rounds of the Funniest Man Contest. Just visit offthehookcomedyclub.com or call Capt. Brien’s at 389-6900.