I don’t live in Los Angeles. I don’t even live in California anymore, but that’s not really the point. I have been there, walked around, clubbed on occasion, kicked homeless people in the face, but nothing beyond that. During my two week vacation back to California, I decided to head into Los Angeles and do stand up.
I’ve been trying to get my foot in the stand up comedy door, so I looked up a few places in LA to go and rock the house. I came across a place called IO WEST; their website said every Sunday night is open mic night, so I went down there to try out some material.
Disclaimer: The rest of this article is going to be just a pure hatred rant about this “comedy” club. I will be throwing out most spelling and grammatical lessons I have learned and perfected over the years, because my hatred is too much to worry about little shit like that.
FUCK YOU, IO WEST!
This place was the biggest croc of shit I had ever seen in my entire life. When I got there, I got in line to what I thought was the sign up sheet. Usually, as far as open mic nights go, you go and sign up and they limit the amount of performers to how much time they have. But at IO WEST, you write your name down on a slip of paper and put it into a sombrero, they draw names out randomly like a retirement home bingo game. I should’ve been alarmed at this, but I was optimistic and just took my seat while the show began.
The “MC” was this hippie asshole girl named Drew, I wish I remembered her last name so I could publicly call her out, but all I know was that she was wearing a horrible array of thrift clothes and yellow tights. She started talking about the Clippers game she went to the night before. I laughed, but only at her disgusting outfit and Spongebob tights.
She calls up a guy who proceeded to tell a story about how he steals 3 ring binders from his work… Seriously. That was his whole 5 minute act. First of all, who the fuck steals 3 ring binders? What are you 7? Were you tired of putting your Spanish homework directly in your backpack?
Spongebob comes back on and starts talking, not telling jokes, not telling stories, but just talking, about how she doesn’t own a TV. Big shock douche, you’re wearing yellow tights, I’m pretty sure the only thing you do own is a Sarah Mclachlan album and a package of veggie burgers. She also talked about how she went to a Clippers game the night before.
This went on for well over 5 minutes, until she called up a comic who, I shit you not, brought up a notepad and began reading his jokes off of it.
Let me reiterate: HE WAS READING HIS JOKES OFF OF A NOTEBOOK!
Not a little slip of paper, but a big ass notebook. I thought to myself “Are you kidding me? Is this guy serious?” Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, the girl introduces another comic. This girl comes up wearing the standard Artsy asshole, “I love pita bread and hummus” outfit of, a rainbow scarf, a brown pea coat on top of a red hoodie on top of a thermal; all complete with a Che Gueverra hat. She too brought up flash cards like she was studying for her chemistry final, and read directly off of those.
The next 4 comics after that had a ton of things in common:
They too didn’t bother to memorize their material, and just read off of a notepad.
They all told a joke about Valkyrie. And not just a joke, but the SAME joke, something about Tom Cruise killing Jews I don’t know…
They all told a joke about porn. Every single one of them kept talking about porn; stealing material from the comic who performed prior to them.
Lastly, they were all best friends with the girl running this shit show.
The stupid whore came back on and then proceeded to tell us she was married to a comedian in the room. While she’s saying this she’s pulling out names from the sombrero, looking at them and putting them back in the hat. I’m sorry? Can you not see us all watching you pull names out and putting them back in? Did you think we all had cerebral palsy and weren’t going to see this? I was livid at this point. But just then, once again IO WEST reaches another level of fuck-face, and guess who coincidentally gets called next…
You guessed it, Spongebob’s fucking husband.
I remember his name vividly, but I’m not going to say it due to the fact I don’t want to give this douche bag any hits on google or MySpace or whatever. Let’s just say he is bald, racist, he dresses like Eminem, and he is the definition of unfunny. His final joke was how he drew some sort of cross, swastika looking symbol on his chest at the clippers game because he wanted to get on TV.
Usually, when I want to get on TV, I try and stay away from drawing Nazi, satanic symbols all over my chest. I’m more of a GO TEAM, kind of guy… Call me crazy.
He went well over the allotted 5 minute time talking about his pet turtle, porn, Valkyrie and a Clippers game he went to the night before with his wife.
Wait… Didn’t every other comic already-let me stop you right there. YES! He re-told all the jokes every other comic told before him. No shit, his set went like this:
“What was Jim talking about earlier? Racism? That was funny, let me talk about that…”
“What was my wife talking about before? Clippers game? Let me just engrave it in your heads that we went to a clippers game, and drank chamomile tea.”
On and on and on.
Fast forward past 3 more people going up there and winging stories they told at a party the night before and Spongebob going in between them to rant about nothing. She gets on again:
“Ok we only have time for 2 more comics.”
What?!
My anger quickly turned to shock. What kind of venue in LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA, just takes all names, no matter what, let’s them go up and rant for however long and not even take into consideration that MAYBE you should look at how many people signed up, how much time you have and do the math accordingly.
Obviously, I wasn’t the last two picked, and then: “Ok well, that’s it bye.”
FUCK YOU IO WEST!
I could go on and on about this, but I’m already shaking from anger, and stunned at how poorly run this place was. If you live in LA, go by this place make sure all of your litter and garbage gets tossed out directly outside their door. If you just so happened to be at that place on the particular Sunday of January 4th, and you disagree with any of this, you can look at the same above sign I have reserved for Spongebob’s husband.
IO WEST CAN SUCK IT.
Author: John MacGregor
