Hermosa Beach Comedy and Magic Club

For Fathers Day (June 18) Lou took me to the Hermosa Beach Comedy and Magic Club where Jay Leno performs most Sundays.  Lou called a few weeks ahead of time and tickets were still available.  We got to the show early because parking can be difficult.  We pulled into the lot, and they checked our name.  I noticed we were listed under the VIP section.  As in, the section for normal people below the VIPs.  Ba-da-bump!

Except for the VIPs, it's first come, first seated.  We were escorted up to a small table right at the stage. 

You can kind-of see, we're about 8 feet from the stool and mic.

The menu

We had a leisurely dinner, which wasn't bad, then spent about an hour reading Jay's wiki site and looking at his collection of cars and aircraft as the house filled up.

I didn't catch the name of the first comic.  He seemed like an established comic who knew Leno fairly well.  He went through his act, then did the standard thing of interacting with a few audience members, asking questions, making jokes and teasing the target.  The table behind us held three people, one of whom was visiting from Australia.  The comic tried to do an Aussie accent, but the woman said he was doing British, not Australian.  They interacted for awhile as we all learned what she did for a living, where she lived, what she was doing in the US, etc.

He introduced the second guy, Jim Brogan.  Jim was pretty funny, but quickly shifted into the same shtick of talking to the audience members.  He too was pretty witty, and we had a good laugh.  The host of the Australian woman drew Jim's attention to her, and Jim started asking the standard questions.  After a few of the same questions and answers we heard before, the audience started answering for her.  It took a few moments for the comic to figure out that we'd already heard all about her.  Near the end of his routine I started thinking this guy doesn't really tell jokes, he just interacts with audience members.  When he was wrapping up, he made a joke about getting offstage before we noticed he didn't have a routine.

The original comic came back and introduced Jay.  Leno's routine had three phases.  First he does a routine of rapid fire, well practiced jokes.  They were on all kinds of topics, and some of them appeared a bit dated.  For a short period, he did the same audience interaction thing.  The entire audience groaned when he got to the Aussie.  At the end, he brings out his glasses (making jokes about the glass case held together by a rubber band), and old hand tape-recorder (I think he said it was 17 years old), and a bunch of note cards. 

He explained that he likes to run through some of the jokes planned for the next week on the Tonight Show.  Over the next 10 or 15 minutes he read about 40 jokes off the cards.  Sometimes he stumbled a bit.  Sometimes he made editorial comments about a joke ("going to have to work on that one").  Some went over well, others not as well.  He wrapped up by inviting all of us to watch the show this week where we might hear some of the jokes told again.  He listed one or two of the planned guests, and that was the end.

A nice evening!  Thanks Lou!