This weekend I flew to Las Vegas to perform my act at Caesars Palace.

I know—it’s weird. And slightly implausible, but I will try to explain.

A couple of weeks ago, I was notified that I was a finalist for The Andy Kaufman Award. At Dyna’s urging, I had submitted the Kaufman-esque “Welcome to my Study” to the online competition and now I was told that I was going to be flown out to Vegas to perform it at The Comedy Festival along with 7 other finalists.

Hearing the news, I flew into a panic. I was pretty sure that “Study” would bomb big on stage, seeing that it was never intended for the stage and is funny largely because of its weird edits and intentionally flatfooted camera work. Me pulling stuff out of drawers on stage = loser.

So I quickly and nervously cobbled together an act that had a “Study” vibe to it, but was intended for the stage. I came up with a deadpan slide show with musical commentary called “A Catalogue of Fruits.”

So I was carrying a huge, heavy slide projector and carousel filled with generic pictures of fruit as Kaveri and I flew out of JFK on Thursday morning.

We touched down in Las Vegas and it was there I saw that Nick Gibbons—a Texas transplant to New York and creative force behind a lot of funny online videos (including some Channel 102 stuff)— was also a finalist. He was bummed that Dave Thunder wasn’t with us; I was bummed that Rob Lathan wasn’t with us. We were bummed—bummed, but happy to be in Vegas.

Vegas was great! Kaveri and I had an awesome mini-vacation. The room that they put us up in was gorgeous and huge—look at little me in the enormous bed!

Look at Kaveri!

Look at the ridiculously opulent lobby of Caesars Palace!

Las Vegas is like one big architectural joke—as artificial as Disney World, but for adults. Mister Glasses wouldn’t have liked it, but I thought it was great. The hotel New York, New York is particularly fascinating, with its crazy mashup of New York landmarks and vernacular styles.

Is the Whitney Museum really a landmark?

But just like with guilt-ridden sexual encounters, what happens architecturally in Vegas should really stay in Vegas—the architectural mess imposed upon the public spaces of America by the disciples of Robert Venturi and Michael Graves makes me very sad…

Sometimes in Vegas, architectural parody actually transforms magically into the real thing and you feel deeply moved. A case in point is the beautiful swimming pool area at Caesars Palace, with its Roman Villa and Temple to Apollo motif. Swimming in the three enormous pools, surrounded by mosaics, marble statuary and Cyprus trees, you somehow actually start to believe it. It’s great.

I didn’t get a picture of the huge pool area, so this photo from my hotel window (which was intended to show that there was a large construction area right near by) will have to suffice:

It was while swimming in one of these pools (not pictured in the photo), that Kaveri and I bumped into Seth Morris and Owen Burke. Somehow, Seth Morris looks like he was born to relax in a pool.

Here is a picture of the two of them drinking in the private lounge for performers:

Who else was wandering around the halls of Caesars Palace? Um, Nick Kroll was there. He directed a sketch show I was in a while back and now plays a caveman on a sitcom. Unlike a caveman, Nick Kroll seems to pop up everywhere you go. He must spend his time hopping from party to party.

Kurt Braunohler and Kristen Schaal were there. Yikes, they’re funny. I had seen them host the Hot Tub Variety show in New York before, but in Vegas I got to see them do a bunch more bits and they were amazing. Kaveri was crying.

I also bumped into Drew Droege who I know as LaShanda from the Channel 101 show “Classroom.” It turns out that he’s super nice. It also turns out he’s a teacher and performer at the Groundlings which is cool.

Andre Hyland, from “Cool José” and “Movin’ Moms” was there.

Maybe because the HBO folks didn’t want to pay to fly out a bunch of people from New York, the Andy Kaufman Award was a mostly LA affair—lots of people I didn’t know, but everyone basically tied to the same “alt comedy” circle of UCBT NY and LA. So I got to meet the very funny Paul Rust (who was a finalist):

Poor Paul—the tech guys missed one of the sound cues for his act, completely ruining one of his (two) bits. I think I heard him say onstage to the audience, “You know, it’s times like these when God seems to be telling you to quit the business.” Which was funny. He recovered really well.

Who else?…Chad Fogland. Um, there was the girl who was hanging out with Paul whose name I don’t remember right now. Shit. She was really good. She sang and did a puppet show.

Also, there was this woman named Mary Mack, who sang Eagles songs and had a thick Minnesotan accent. It was awesome.

The guy who won the whole thing was Brent Weinbach who was great and insane. Also, he made a point of telling me how much he liked my routine and we talked about how I made the “Why Fruits?” song. So that makes Brent cool.

So how did my routine go over?

It went over really well! I’m not joking—“A Catalogue of Fruits” was a hit. I had put it up at UCBT a week before and it went well, but it went over even bigger at the Andy Kaufman Awards. I played to a packed Ballroom of about 350 people. The lighting and sound system was frighteningly professional. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post a video soon.

Most touchingly, after the show was over, Andy Kaufman’s dad came up to tell me how much he liked my routine and that there was a lot of Andy in my performance. Wow. I was drunk at the time, but I nearly cried.

I saw Carrot Top in the flesh.

Everyone involved in the show—especially the HBO people who organized it—were staggeringly friendly. I don’t know. I have nothing bad to say.

The one thing that didn’t happen was that agents and producers didn’t surround me after the show and say, “Mitch—we really love the semi-autistic character you did up there and we want to put you in a show!” Oh well.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.