Marcella Arguello and the Miserable Men of Comedy

You've gotta love it when an ambitious crew brings comedy to a Valley hamlet. For my money, you can't beat barbecue, brews, and belly laughs. And for a ten dollar ticket, this night brought all that and more to the Clubhouse Theater at the French Camp Golf Course.

The evening was arranged and hosted by one Chris Teicheira, the tallest Portugese man I've ever met. He started with material on his marriage, and how he made it to his first anniversary this summer, but that the marriage itself did not. Then it was on to strippers, tattoos and Ed Hardy t-shirt wearers.

Chris showed the same easy comfort level on stage that I've seen him display before, and it's a big part of his affable charm. But as much as he can be a friend to the audience, he knows how to keep a show on track. His best work was with a noisy, disruptive group in the back of the house, when he paused to ask caringly if they could hear all right back there. "Because it would be hard to hear with your f**king big mouths going back there, why don't you shut the fuck up?? There's plenty of room outside – there's a pool, you could go drown yourself!" It sounds harsh here in print, but in the moment it was genuine and necessary and very funny.

The first of the “Miserable Men of Comedy” was El Roberto. He fits the “miserable” moniker as well as anyone, as his demeanor can be enjoyably cranky and irritable. He took the stage to the Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up," in what I suspect was a low-profile practical joke by Teicheira. Roberto opened with material on stupid people, which is a natural for his style. Watching him bust on stupid people is like watching LeBron James in a dunking contest: he's good at it, and you know somebody's gonna get hurt.

He continued with some smart, new material about Michael Jackson's candidacy for sainthood that made me laugh out loud. He discussed the difference between players and lovers, stupid little kids and closed with a strong chunk about honesty in marketing, daring companies like Domino's Pizza and Trojan condoms to accept the negative and accentuate the positive.

Josh Hollinger was up next, and opened by shining a light on the awkwardness of race, especially from Whitey's point of view. Hollinger's comedy has a style that challenges an audience to tune in to his wavelength. When he switched to compact one-liners, I thought of Mitch Hedberg: “nicotine eye patches” and “it would be weird to be blind and scared of the dark.” Josh managed to embrace alt-comedy weirdness without leaving the funny behind.

Josh capped his set by taking a bite out of the unruly group at the back of the house, railing against their disruption and screaming into the mike that “I was one of the Jonas Brothers! I could have been getting twelve year-old pussy, but NO!” and then calmly laying the mike down and exiting the stage. I found Josh to be a sleeper hit of this Miserable Men run, taking the setup/punch rhythm and turning it on its head with creative, bizarre twists built in to the jokes.

Techeira interjected between sets with his musings on the state of methamphetamine. His take on this topic has turned out to be one of my favorites. His writhing, twitching performance of “Tweeky Johnson, gold-medalist in the copper wire-stripping event of the Meth-tathalon" is dead-on.

Kevin Albritton followed, opening by cracking on his appearance and his poverty. Throw in his bits about his racist grandparents and the effects of steroids on his balls, and you've got the ladies in the crowd hot and bothered, Kev!

He went on to skewer friends who talk to their dogs, old people and the romantic technique of wishing on shooting stars that turned out to be the “disintegrating remnants of the space shuttle Columbia as it re-entered our atmosphere.”

In all seriousness, Albritton looked better tonight than I've ever seen him. He exhibited a relaxed ease on stage that gave his timing a smooth flow, letting his punchlines land with more weight.

Anthony Krayenhagen started his set by greeting the crowd: “Hello stupids.” He continued to establish a love/hate dynamic by congratulating the drunks in the audience, and then inviting them to roll their cars on the freeway. He continued by weaving relationship issues and children into a larger piece about his enjoyment of human breast milk. The crowd was with him as he educated them on how sugary-delicious breast milk is, and by the end of the bit there seemed to be several converts who were ready to put a little squirt of 'somethin' momma made' into their coffee.

A.K. had a terrific bit on one-armed women that had the crowd's approval. Funny topics included vampires and zombies and women and mice and drunk drivers and when he closed it was with a big send-off from the crowd.

Headliner Marcella Arguello took to the stage and kept the energy moving with a brief dance that only a woman of her lanky, Amazonian stature can pull off, juking fluidly before the intro music died down.

Marcella wasted no time in addressing her appearance, assuring the crowd that she is “not a tranny.” With the relative height of a giraffe with a hyperactive thyroid, it's no surprise that Marcella had an extended bit about the challenges of being a woman of height. From acting out her difficulties in a human-sized shower to the short men who always seem to want her, she spent several minutes hilariously expounding on the pitfalls of being super tall.

Denial of a transsexual lifestyle aside, it was encouraging to see that Marcella's appeal crossed gender lines. About ten minutes into her set, she took a moment to call out a disorderly patron, who then took it upon herself to join Marcella on stage. This liberated heckler bumped the stakes up a notch when she enthusiastically offered oral sex to Marcella before dismounting the stage.

One of my favorite pieces of hers was when she pointed out how much more rude it is to fart silently than to burp loudly. Ms. Arguello mined some comedy gold when she described life in customer service, including a man named “Rape,” and an Hispanic customer who mistakenly assumed Marcella wouldn't understand a hateful rant just because it was in Spanish. She closed with a chunk about the racial ambiguity of her appearance, culminating satisfyingly in an energetic mini-crescendo, tying together several elements of the bit with some verbal gunfire and a nod to the Wu-Tang clan.

With so many performers on the line up, the show's distribution was less top-heavy than the typical  host/feature/headliner arrangement, with Marcella's piece clocking in at about 22 minutes. Although the crowd was a little too rowdy to fully appreciate it, Marcella's set was a solid end to a satisfying show. Marcella Arguello and the Miserable Men gave French Camp a strong performance, delivering more than the ticket-buyer's money's worth.