By Angela Barbuti

“I want to have an apartment that’s near Carnegie Hall so when somebody asks how to get to my place, I can just say, ‘Practice, practice, practice then make a left,” said Demetri Martin when asked to showcase one of his New York-themed jokes. The city holds a special place in the 39-year-old’s heart since it was here that he began his career in standup. After spending two years at NYU Law on scholarship, he decided to forgo his education to grace the stage with his brainy style of comedy. He went on to build his resume by writing for Conan O’Brien, acting in movies like Taking Woodstock, and writing a bestseller. His second book, Point Your Face at This, out on March 19th, is comprised solely of line drawings which will undoubtedly make readers think and laugh out loud at the same time. Martin left his California home for his nationwide tour, and this week returns to New York, making stops at Gramercy Theatre and Barnes and Noble in Union Square. He remains true to his New York roots and credits “walking around Manhattan and brainstorming” for giving him inspiration.

What is your connection to New York?
My parents are from Brooklyn, but I grew up in New Jersey. I lived in New York for 14 years. I moved here to go to NYU Law and then dropped out after 2 years, then stayed here for another 12 years.

What are you favorite places in the city?
I love going to the Strand. I also like going to McNally Jackson. Other Music in the Village. I like to eat at Veselka in the East Village. Yaffa Café. Bar Pitti. Grey Dog. The Living Room — although I don’t know if it’s still open. I hangout at the Comedy Cellar.

Your first book, This is a Book, became a bestseller. Did you expect that?
No. I was really surprised and excited it did as well as it did, mostly because it gave me the opportunity to do some more books. One of which is this new one, and then I’ll do a book of short stories in a year or two.

How would you explain your new book?
It’s full of simple line drawings, and a lot of them are jokes. A lot of them have only a few lines in them. They’re really based on the idea of keeping things simple and seeing what kind of jokes you can get out of that.

You wrote for Late Night with Conan O’Brien. What was that like?
That was fun. Conan’s awesome. It was a great place to work and he’s a great boss. At that time, I was just emerging as a standup and I had done standup on the show so they knew about my comedy and writing style and asked me to apply. I applied a couple times before I got the job because it’s a really popular position. People want that job.

You went to Yale. What kind of extracurricular activities were you a part of during college?
I was in student government. I ran the soup kitchen in my residential college. I ran a youth group at the local Greek church.

Do you think being Greek affects your comedy?

Maybe indirectly. I don’t really do material about being Greek or my background. But growing up in the Greek church, my father was a priest and his sermons were funny. I think that’s probably the biggest influence that it had on me — being there seeing that kind of a performance each Sunday.

What’s the demographic at your standup shows?
It depends. If I’m near a college, they’ll be a lot more college students. It’s a pretty good range of everyone from 10 years old to older couples. There is a pretty even split between men and women, which is nice.

Do you have any funny stories to share from your comedic career?
One time I bombed in Mexico at this corporate gig. And the show was in a tent on the beach at night. The beach was kind of wild, so when it was really quiet, you could actually hear crickets.

Who are some present-day comedians you admire?
I really like Louis C.K. and Steven Wright. I think Chris Rock is really great.

I heard you are writing a movie. Can you tell us what it’s about?
I’m still trying to figure it out. I’m hoping it will be a romantic comedy of some kind, but not like a typical one. I’m writing it for me, so hopefully I’ll star in it. I’ll have to get financing for it to see if it will actually happen.

You can ask Conan to finance it.
[Laughs] Yeah.

Ang Lee directed you in Taking Woodstock. Did you congratulate him on his Oscar win?
No, I haven’t talked to him. It would kind of be weird if he was like, ‘Demetri? Oh, hey, what’s going on?’ That was pretty cool though; I saw when he won it.

You live in LA now. What’s the difference between living in New York versus California.
California, for me, is a place where it’s easier to be comfortable — which is good and bad. It’s good when you need to retreat and have a break. But sometimes you lose the energy that New York has. New York has a real vitality to it and is very stimulating.

Join Demetri at Barnes and Noble Union Square on March 21st at 7 p.m.
To learn more about Demetri’s work, visit www.demetrimartin.com

David Cross is a comedian known just as much for his off-color stand-up humor as he is for giving life to a television character who can never ever be nude and wears cut-off jean shorts under his clothes at all times. This May, the world will finally get to see more of Tobias Fünke, Cross’s character in Arrested Development, as the series’ long-awaited Season 4 will premiere on Netflix. The show originally aired on Fox and was cancelled in its third season in 2006, but sky-high DVD sales and a huge fan base prompted the show’s creators to bring it back for a brand-new season with all of the original cast members, a phenomenon previously unheard of for long-dead TV shows. On Wednesday, March 20, Cross will be reunited with Arrested Development cast mate Michael Cera at the 92 Y on the Upper East Side (92Y.org for tickets) as Cera moderates a conversation with Cross on his work and career. Cross, who lives with his wife, actress Amber Tamblyn, in Brooklyn, spoke to us about his comedy career and what it was like to get back into those cut-offs after a six-year hiatus.

You started out doing standup. How do you think the comedy scene has changed since you started?

If you’re talking specifically standup, the biggest difference is that you used to really only be able to do sets at comedy clubs, which there weren’t that many of, and I cut my teeth during the 80s comedy boom. I happened to be in Boston, which was great for a person like me, who wasn’t particularly audience-friendly, because they just had to fill slots. There were so many: every country western bar and college and coffee house and Laundromat. There were standup gigs everywhere. Chinese restaurants, oddly enough, a lot of the time. But now, with the internet and the ability to get your shit shown potentially by a million people in a week, is the biggest difference. That certainly wasn’t the case when I was coming up.

When Arrested Development ended in 2006, did you or anyone working on it ever think you’d have the chance to revisit it?

No. Absolutely not. For us it was very unceremonious dropping. It was a relief, in a sense, because we lived week to week, day to day really, not knowing if it was going to be our last week. It’s a shitty way to do a show and a shitty way to do any job. The idea of grassroots saving the show was fairly new.

It was almost like you guys were making a show for rewatchability, before people were rewatching stuff in general.

I don’t know how much of an edict that was, but that was certainly something Mitch [Hurwitz, the show’s creator], and James Vallely [one of the head writers] thought about, and took pride in that there were all of these extra jokes in there that paid off on that second or third watching. But you certainly can’t pitch a show that way. “People won’t like it the first time, but by the second or third time they’re really gonna like it!”

So you come back to this character you essentially thought you were done with. Was it difficult to get back into playing Tobias?

No, no. All I did to prepare really – I needed to refresh my memory on certain little nuances and ticks that the character had. But I just watched like three episodes. I hadn’t seen any of them since we did the commentary for them. So it was kind of fun to watch, and I had never seen any of them with my wife. There were a couple of times on set [filming season four] where they would show you something – not that you weren’t matching it, but it was to show you “This thing happened. This scene is taking place 12 hours after this episode of the third season. So take a look at this.” But outside of that, it was a pretty easy character to slip into. The key to Tobias is not saying contractions, saying the whole word. Like instead of “can’t” saying, “cannot.” That’s pretty much it.

Did you have to get ready to wear those jean shorts again?

Well, I certainly gained a little weight since we stopped shooting in 2006 – that became apparent. You know, I look six years older.

That much time has passed for the characters, right?

Yes and no. There are flashbacks, flash-forwards. There are a couple of scenes that take place shortly after the last episode. But we travel quite a bit, through them.

The fact that you were shooting for Netflix – did that affect anything? For example, did you have to bleep curse words?

Oh no. Not at all. In fact, I think there was one joke for Tobias where I said one curse word – I think there’s two or three times I say it, which is kind of surprising. Yeah, you can say whatever you want.

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, a show that you co-wrote and starred in, also has a very well-planned narrative arc. Do you find yourself drawn to projects like that?

I’m definitely drawn towards storytelling. It’s harder work, but it’s more satisfying. It’s more of a challenge, but if you can make something funny within it, and make the whole greater than the sum of its parts, and if some of its parts are entertaining – I’m much more interested in that. It’s just where I am as a human and consumer of entertainment. I prefer the kind of story that has a beginning, middle, and an end, that’s not open-ended to something that’s just gags.

What was it like to work with Will Arnett on that show in this different character dynamic?

It was fine. Shaun Pye, the British co-writer of Todd Margaret, and I wrote with Will in mind. It was never going to be anyone else but Will. I love the British model. You do six [episodes] and that’s it. We got to write every episode before we shot anything and then shoot everything before we went into the edit so you really have more control. I think it’s a better way to work.

What are the things you love most about living in New York?

The tangible, moment-to-moment things I miss [when I’m away] more than anything, it’s walking. When I go to LA, my wife has an apartment on the West Side in Venice, and I stay there. You can walk for a while, but aesthetically, it’s not as pretty. Where I would walk a 3-mile circle in Los Angeles, you kind of see the same old shit. Jamba Juice and CVS, and some sushi place and one of those haircut barbershop things, and a tattoo parlor. In New York, when you walk three miles, you travel through all different kinds of neighborhoods. You see people, there’s everything happening on the street. There’s just an energy – the visuals are beautiful.

Is there any small tidbit you could share about the upcoming Arrested Development season?

I’m so sworn to secrecy on all of it.

All of the episodes are going to come out at once. Do you recommend people watch them in order, or out of order, or all in one day, or space them out?

The way it’s designed is, there’s a story being told. So if you watch it sequentially you’ll get that story – but you don’t have to. It is not paramount to your viewing experience. If you do watch it out of order, it’ll be interesting because there’s nothing detracting about that. But your experience will be different. You can’t make a mistake. The only thing you can do that’s dumb – some characters have two parts – is watch the second part first. Outside of that, you can watch George Sr.’s episodes, then you can click over and watch Lindsay. Everybody at some point interacts with the other people. It’s like a large venn diagram.

What are some other projects you’ve got coming up?

I did two indie movies. One is out now on video-on-demand and iTunes, and it comes out in theatres April 12th. It’s called It’s a Disaster. It’s really good. I saw a screening with a real, actual audience at the LA film festival. And there’s another movie called Kill Your Darlings that I have not seen, – but I assume it’s good. It has a pretty killer cast, and just got picked up at Sundance.  I start work tomorrow on The Heart, She Holler, the PFFR [mini-series] production for Adult Swim.

Is there anything else you want our readers to know?

You know, just get checked for Hep C.

 OkCupid veterans flock to Housing Works Bookstore Cafe to swap horror stories

Studies everywhere are examining the same panic-inducing question—will online dating, with its guaranteed ability to let you endlessly shop around and tailor your perfect mate, ruin relationships forever?

Last week’s OkCupid Show (Stories of Love, Sex and the Internet) at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in Soho wasn’t able to answer that exact question, but it certainly offered up some interesting case studies and shed a little light on what it’s like to date in the OkCupid age.

Event co-host and comedian Adam Jacobson relayed to a packed house his own experience—an all-too-familiar scenario. At some point in your dating life you fall into a lull, he explained, one where you make a habit of going on two to three dates with friends-of-friends you meet at parties, only to watch things awkwardly peter out. You bump into them here or there, quickly accumulating a list of places you have to avoid for your own social and emotional well-being.

Eventually Jacobson, like millions of other Americans, joined the dating site OkCupid. Around this time he was approached by friends, each of whom had a barrage of stories to share about their own experiences. Dating sites, Jacobson learned, apparently make some people act a little cuckoo.

“Everyone had a crazy OkCupid story,” he said. “I decided we had to put together this show.” (Some of these stories, while entertaining, are not newspaper appropriate.)

Jacobson explained a phenomenon of online dating he saw emerge during the course of his site usage; it allows people to become less invested in their relationships. One woman he dated simply disappeared for four months, while another broke up with him via tersely worded text message.

Comedian Charla Lauriston said she’s been using online dating sites for the past five years.

“I assumed I was the kind of person who had to,” she said, explaining she had long been an identical twin to one of the “popular girls” in school, while her own memories involve time spent alone in the corner reading the sci-fi fantasy novel Ender’s Game. (On OkCupid, you have the option of searching for keywords, allowing you to find profiles of those who share your exact literary interests, for instance.)

Lauriston started out with the site eHarmony, but was humiliated when after a long dry stretch, a site representative called to inquire about the lack of activity on her account.

She then moved on to OkCupid, which offers its services for free and permits its users to slip through the cracks as they wish.

“If you’ve been on OkCupid, these are not weird at all,” Lauriston said, of her own dating escapades, which included a man who urinated in her Prius and another who “shamed her” for eating fried chicken in front of white people at a restaurant.

Surely these tales resonate with many; the evening brought to light several points about the online dating experience. First, a paradox: while in some ways online dating seems to force people to hold out longer with an incompatible match than they otherwise might, it also encourages less investment with the ability to peruse seemingly infinite other opportunities.

One storyteller speculated OkCupid actively tries to steer people away from their “best matches” because it would hurt the site’s membership. Ryan O’Connell, the editor of Thought Catalog, said OkCupid gives its users instant self-esteem boosts and makes people “immediately open.”

No matter what happens, one thing remains true: Using OkCupid guarantees there will be adventure.

Had it not been for OkCupid, Jacobson conceded he would not have had some of the most exciting times of his life, nor met his current long-term girlfriend.

Some discussed yet another phenomenon which arises with OkCupid use—small niches of people who have dated the same users will band together, hash things out, and often forge unforgettable friendships.

“You keep hoping it will work out,” explained comedy writer Michelle Markowitz, “but ultimately you do it for these weird experiences.”

Photo Courtesy of Dan Ewen

With less premeditation, impulse control and editing than a novel or essay, and more raw emotion, doesn’t a Twitter feed get pretty darn close to the accurate written aggregation of one’s lived experience?

I have a favorite Twitter, and while I discovered it only recently, I’ve read it just about as far back as it goes. All 7,000-some tweets. OK maybe not quite that far, but close. Not in short spurts either; I sat down and consumed this feed in one dedicated, middle-of-the-night Twitter binge. I laughed harder and harder as I scrolled, falling deeper into the rabbit hole.

An image of Dan Ewen (@VaguelyFunnyDan) began to form in my mind as I read his 14 months worth of tweets, not of his appearance, but of his life—who he is, what he loves, what he fears. I found more than Ewen in those condensed chunks of text though, I discovered a bit of myself too.

“Yes!” I found myself thinking, how has this man so astutely tapped in to the quintessential aspects of the human experience? How has he relayed them as though they were thoughts I had myself, but better, more eloquently, with greater acumen? Wait, isn’t that what authors do? Isn’t that what contributes to the success of the very best writers—their ability to perfectly mirror the triumphs and tribulations of existence in permutations of syntax and diction that make us believe we’re reading the truth for the very first time?

When he’s not tweeting, Ewen works as a screenwriter for feature films, arguably a far cry from his life on the Twitter circuit. Screenwriters are supposed to fake human experience (my words, not his).

Tweeters tell their stories in very different ways. Ewen’s Twitter does not bore with the mundanities of daily life nor does it artfully self-promote. It doesn’t boast cat pictures or tiny news-related rants. It’s all jokes, because Ewen is a joke man.

“When my brain plunks something out that isn’t usable [for a screenplay], but could work on the Twitter machine, I’ll jump over and give in a whirl,” he explains.

Not every tweet is a winner in and of itself, but for 140 characters, that’s not a lot of wasted time. It’s not like, say, reaching the end of a novel only to discover you hated it (which I would argue could still be a rewarding and valid experience). Plus, Twitter makes it easy to skip the boring, in-between stuff and get straight to the meat—the racy bits, the hilarious quips. Failed tweets are generally overlooked simply by the nature of Twitter’s platform. Furthermore, isn’t that life—not full of winners? Artists are often encouraged to mix less successful pieces into a series to make the extra-brilliant ones really pop.

 *  *  *

Twitter might as well be made for Ewen, who says he wants to show both high- and low-brow art have merit. “I didn’t know a whole lot about [Twitter]”, he explains, of getting his start. “I’d lived for many years imprisoned by a brain that already worked in semi-worthless, 140-character chunks…when I realized that this wasn’t just another social networking site, that it was a place where many souls were sharing actual ‘material,’ I wanted to to jump in there and mix it up.”

To apply a little Nietzschean post-structuralism to Twitter—let’s call it “Twitterary theory”—Ewen’s Twitter is arguably not the most “autobiographical,” but in some ways perhaps it’s more autobiographical than those which make a concerted effort to accurately reflect their subjects’ lives (consciously or not). Maybe by almost entirely avoiding the subject of the real “self,” Ewen gets closer to his lived existence than those who write about themselves exclusively but only offer us, the reader, a series of refractions due to the impossibility of defining the self’s lived experience to another in language. (How well do we truly know ourselves? [A nod to David Hume.] Ever tried writing an online dating profile that actually captured your essence?) Ewen, instead, inhabits a character, one I cannot talk about with any real certainty as I’ve never met Ewen in person.

With less premeditation, impulse control and editing than a novel or essay, and more raw emotion, doesn’t a Twitter feed get pretty darn close to the accurate written aggregation of one’s lived experience?

When we peruse Ewen’s timeline (TL), it’s a multi-layered experience, not merely one shallow laugh on top of another. When Ewen tweets something like, “Do these unresolved issues between me and my late father that I have to grapple with until the day I join him in oblivion make me look fat?” we have to wonder if this is purely humorous or if there’s something more, if through Ewen’s humor there’s a universality to his experience that we can ourselves access, in which we may find comfort.

Ewen confirms my suspicions. “I think I’ve tweeted a few serious things,” he says. “Generally I like to wrap things around a joke even if it reflects a genuine feeling.”

 *  *  *

I’m not the only diehard Ewen fan out there; he has 18,000 followers which is impressive for someone whose exact source of celebrity is hard to pin down.

To fully round out this column, it might make sense to talk about other Twitters and how they respectively reflect the personal narratives of their tweeters, as largely unedited, live-blogged “memoirs,” splayed out for some of the world to see, each demanding its own brand of literary analysis. Like Ewen’s, each Twitter feed has a sort of narrative in and of itself—some more moving than others. (I’m fairly certain entire novels have been tweeted as well.)

This theorizing, and praise of one particular Twittering genius, is all to say: Twitter is one more means of influencing how we will continue to tell—and take in—stories, especially those of our own lives, which is after all what all stories in some way reflect.

For Ewen, his goals are simpler and more shortsighted. He’s not looking to start a revolution or launch a new school of literary criticism. “My mission is to hopefully make a few folks laugh,” he says. “Twitter came along and was kind of a second chance at performing some more lunchroom comedy, only this lunchroom has 175 million people in it.”

(Since The Protagonist is a literary column, and Twitter is pretty experimental as far as literature is concerned, it’s worth mentioning poet Patricia Lockwood [@TriciaLockwood] has a pretty fascinating Twitter as well.)

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

How does one do—notoriously pessimistic and humorously insightful essayist— David Rakoff’s work justice? How does one begin to fumble for the words to embody his literary range? Rakoff, who just passed away at the age of 47, wrote and spoke in a way that so remarkably reflected our uncertain collective reality—in his profundity, in his candidness, and in analogies so apt and relevant they surely required years of careful research into our human minutiae. In Rakoff’s essays, there’s deep pain, there’s sardonic humor, there’s desperate hatred, there’s even rhyme (sometimes). In reading Rakoff’s essays, you find yourself wondering over and over, how did he know? How did he so scrupulously pinpoint the intricacies of the human psyche? Below are just a few surface-scratching must-read hits from Rakoff’s prolific career:

In “The Waiting,” an essay which appeared last year in the New York Times Magazine, Rakoff describes the process of battling a long illness, while the greatest struggle at times seems resisting the urge to overanalyze his caregivers‘ words and demeanors as significant, as a predictor of outcomes. Rakoff writes, of the encouraging and empathetic feedback we are programmed to deliver to one another, “…as an anticipatory tool, it does not soften the blow, indeed it does the opposite. It leaves you exposed, like grabbing onto the trunk of a tree for support in a storm only to find the wood soaked through and punky and coming apart in your hands.” Undeniably, anyone who is human comprehends the feeling Rakoff captures, remembers the exact moment even, when plumbing the depths of desperation he loaded undue significance on the words of another. Anyone who is human recalls the moment in which he became—however fleetingly—superstitious.

In the essay “Stiff as a Board, Light as a Feather,” which Rakoff recited on This American Life earlier this year, he describes the experience of having a nerve in his left arm severed, causing him to have the occasional “gesture of someone who danced…which is very different,” he says, “from having been a dancer.” During the show, Rakoff elucidates the processes our bodies undergo, which we rarely question until they manifest as physical abnormalities. “There are some questions in life the very speaking of which are their own undoing,” he explains, for instance, “is this real?” It is the question, ultimately, which awakens him to the reality of his situation. Rakoff manages to take his ravaging sickness, and not only approach it with objectivity, but extrapolate to some wider, more philosophical meaning about the nature of consciousness. Whether or not he fully intends to, Rakoff can scarcely avoid offering us an outstretched hand, a gateway toward common identification. It’s never merely his experience, but what his tells us about all our own.

In 1996, on This American Life, Rakoff described his time spent dressed as Sigmund Freud in Barney’s department store Christmas window display in “Christmas Freud.” A version of the essay also appears in his collection, Fraud. “In the window I fantasize about starting an entire Christmas Freud movement,” says Rakoff, waxing on the complex relationship between psychoanalysis, spirituality and commerce across generations. “In department stores across America, people leave display window couches snifflingly and meaningfully whispering, ‘Thank you, Christmas Freud,’” he writes. Not afraid to go over the top, Rakoff undauntedly appropriated the situations which befell him with the mastery and dexterity of a world-class storyteller.

Rakoff writes in “All The Time We Have,” in his collection Half-Empty, of the death of his therapist of ten years (Rakoff was something of a self-professed therapy junkie over the years). The tribute is poignant and heart-wrenching, as he explores the complex relationship with a man who, in all his human vulnerability, ultimately required Rakoff’s approval just as badly. Rakoff writes so acutely of the push-and-pull struggle for approval, the hunger that reveals itself to be quite insatiable, the games we humans play, the waters we test, only to discover we are insatiable. Rakoff writes of this challenge we do not want to win because we fear its results: “this confirmation that you have triumphed again and managed to gull yet another mark, except this time it was the one person you’d hoped might be immune to your ever-creakier, puddle-shallow, sideshow-barker variation on “adorable,” even though you’d been launching this campaign weekly with single-minded concentration from day one.”

Finally, but by no means least or remotely comprehensively, Rakoff writes of attending a Tibetan Buddhist retreat led by Steven Seagal in an essay also appearing in Fraud. Portraying this outlandish, over-the-top New Age-y, self-help ritual, Rakoff is at his most poetic: “Twenty years ago we would have been readers of Robert Persig. Now we own well-thumbed copies of The Jew in the Lotus. We’ve done yoga. We’ve been lactose intolerant.” His fresh, concise commentary, which easily disavows the usual stereotypes—while marrying the expected with the uncanny and cynical—is so slick, so layered, there’s something new and potent to unearth on every read.

Rakoff published three books of essays and contributed widely to anthologies, newspapers and magazines. He was a regular on the radio show This American Life. All Rakoff’s contributions to This American Life can be found here.

Wellness for Seniors

The elder support organization DOROT offers inexpensive wellness classes for seniors on the Upper West Side. This May and June, they will be holding regular sessions as well as one-time workshops to promote mental and physical health. On Tuesdays from 10–11 a.m., a licensed social worker facilitates a group chat to discuss memories and life experiences; from 12:15–2 p.m. on Tuesdays there is a “senior café” with coffee, tea and cookies on the 7th floor. On Tuesdays and Fridays from 11:30 a.m.–12:10 p.m., a martial arts instructor leads gentle exercise classes that focus on increasing immunity and spinal flexibility. There are also tai chi, stretching, Zumba chair and yoga classes available on a weekly basis. Other sessions and workshop topics include singing, meditation, movement, comedy, heart health, gardening and chats with doctors from Weill Cornell Medical Center. The wellness classes are $5 per class, with scholarships available. Participants should arrive 15 minutes before class starts and wear sneakers or flat rubber-soled shoes. All sessions take place at 171 W. 85th St., second floor. For more information and a complete schedule, call Katie Girardi at 917-441-3743. Homebound seniors can participate in many classes via phone.

West Side School Gets Grant for Arts

The Adolph Ochs School, P.S. 111M, was recently awarded a $50,000 grant to establish an educational theater and literacy program. The school, on West 53rd Street, is a federally designated Title I school, and 91 percent of the students’ families live below the poverty line. The grant from the Leonore Annenberg School Fund for Children will be used to implement a theater curriculum and drama studies in the early grades, in collaboration with the group Story Pirates, which uses kids’ ideas to create and perform skits and plays. The school is committed to using drama education to strengthen literacy and engagement in the classroom.

UWS Graduate on Olympic Team

Last month, the U.S. Olympic Fencing Team announced its new lineup, and a recent graduate of the Dwight School on the Upper West Side was among them. Race Imboden, who graduated in 2011 and took a year off to focus on fencing before attending Notre Dame, will be joining the team for the 2012 Summer Games in London. He qualified for the team after his fourth World Cup event in the Men’s Foil division. Imboden began fencing at age 9, after a stranger saw him playing with toy swords in the park and suggested the sport to his parents. He qualified for his first major international team by age 16 and earned a bronze medal in the 2012 Cadet World Championships. He’s won many competitions since, and earlier this year he was one of the youngest competitors to medal in the Senior World Cup competition. Imboden said that he’s thrilled to compete in England, his mother’s home country, and credits his parents’ support and sacrifice as well as The Dwight School’s flexibility for helping him achieve his Olympic dream.

Local School Fair

P.S. 9, at 100 W. 84th St. between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, will be holding its annual Spring Fair on Saturday, May 19, from 11 a.m.–4 p.m. There will be rides and games for kids, crafts, science activities and a variety of food for sale. Proceeds from the fair support school programs.

Pesky Insects Topic of Town Hall

In some pockets of the Upper West Side, residents have been plagued by mosquito infestations in recent years, despite the city’s attempts to eradicate the populations by flushing the sewers and encouraging landlords to eliminate sources of standing water. Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, who said that she hears about this issue continuously from her constituents, will be hosting a town hall meeting on Thursday, May 17, from 7–9 p.m. at the Goddard Riverside Community Center, at 593 Columbus Ave., to address this problem as mosquito breeding season approaches. Pest management specialists and representatives from city and state agencies will be available to answer questions and share what they are doing as well as how residents can combat the itch-inducing insects. For more information, call Rosenthal’s office 212-873-6368 or email rosenthall@assembly.state.ny.us.

Brewer Intros Safety and Transit Bills

Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer introduced three new bills to the council last week, all focused on public safety and transportation. Addressing the recently renewed concern for the safety of hotel staff members, one bill would require hotel owners and proprietors to equip their staff with silent alarms. The two other bills are aimed at accommodating electric vehicles: One would make the installation of electric charging stands eligible for revocable consent from the city, intended to streamline the process and encourage investment in these structures; and the other would establish a pilot program to install 10 vehicle charging stations throughout the city. This would be followed by an analysis of their use to determine whether more charging stations would be utilized.

For many people, the term Due Date means expiration for library books. For Todd Phillips and Robert Downey, it means car crashes, scatology and homo-nuttiness. The plot, in which Downey plays tetchy California architect Peter Highman, awaiting the fulfillment of his wife’s pregnancy, barely uses the term’s adult natal significance; it’s strictly juvenile.

Shut your face.

Peter gets stuck with Zack Galifianakis as Ethan Tremblay, a bulbous yet effete Hollywood-bound actor he meets when flying out of Atlanta’s airport. This obnoxious odd couple is forced together on a cross-country road trip that’s actually nothing more than a desperate re-working of Martin Brest’s 1985 Midnight Run, where Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin played mismatched traveling companions. It’s also a poor imitation of John Hughes’ 1989 Planes, Trains and Automobiles, in which Steve Martin and John Candy fleshed out a similar premise, comically illustrating the tension of American male class differences.

Due Date disregards what made those films interesting. It takes a sitcom approach to male class differences and flatters the juvenile behavior that’s become the favorite, indulged subject of comedians and TV writers. Phillips developed his frat-boy, sitcom specialty in Old School, Road Trip and the aggressively foul The Hangover, an unfortunate hit that lowered audience’s perception of social and psychological behavior, reducing Brest and Hughes’ perceptions to rude, gross slapstick. Key moments include: a masturbating bulldog, always reliable Danny McBride as a crippled, angry war vet and Jamie Foxx provid-
ing racial comic relief as Peter’s black best friend.

Foxx’s scenes are never as funny as the ludicrous, unintentionally hilarious The Soloist, his maudlin brotherhood movie co-starring Downey. Phillips misses the opportunity to satirize that film’s screwed-up treatment of racial tension and middle-class guilt. Instead, Due Date goes for absurdity: with white buffoon Galifianakis as Downey’s foil, Phillips uses slob humor to sentimentalize brotherhood and infantilize manhood. Downey displays great vocal precision and physical grace in Peter’s silly exasperation with Ethan, but the supposed teamwork is off—there’s no Oscar/Felix rhythm, just annoyance.

It’s not too soon to address the Galifianakis problem: He lacks John Candy’s exuberance and John Belushi’s impish twinkle. He makes Ethan’s swishy, self-absorbed foolishness unappealing and depressing. Galifianakis acts like Phillips directs—crude and obvious. He represents the further decline of comedy in this Apatow era. Ending with a scene involving TV’s Two and a Half Men is too apt. In Due Date, maturity and intelligence have expired.
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Due Date
Directed by Todd Phillips
Runtime: 95 min.

Conan O’Brien comes to Radio City for some high quality NBC bashing.

Jim Breuer
He was Brian in Half Baked, but now he’s got three kids. He’s probably still as crazy, though. If you’re baked, you’ll have a good time.
June 11 through 13, Gotham Comedy Club, 208 W. 23rd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-367-9000, www.gothamcomedyclub.com; $30.

Michael Ian Black
Michael Ian Black is one of the two Michaels from Stella and the only Ian Black to write for McSweeney’s. His stand up is also pretty good.
June 24 through 27, Comix, 353 W. 14th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-524-2500, www.comixny.com; $28.

Comedy Central Park: The Daily Show and Friends
Lewis Black, our favorite angry, ranting comic, will host the fourth free comedy show in Central Park, featuring Daily Show regulars John Oliver and Rob Riggle.
July 21, Central Park SummerStage, enter park at East 63rd Street & 5th Avenue, 212-360-2756, www.summerstage.org; 8, Free.

Punch Up Your Life!
Joe Derosa and Pete Holmes host a weekly stand-up show in the stacks of Housing Works. Alright, maybe it’s not in the stacks, but I’m sure you can still grab ahold of that totally underappreciated Beat writer’s first novel to impress the girl standing next to you.
Tuesdays, Housing Works Bookstore, 126 Crosby St. (betw. E. Houston & Prince Sts.), 212-334-3324, www.housingworksbookstore.com; 8:30, $3.

Comedy Night with Victoria Well
Nirvana isn’t just the best band ever, it’s also the name of a nice Indian restaurant. Above the door, the sign reads “Indian Culinary Bliss.” So you probably don’t know on Tuesday nights you can watch people do stand-up while you scarf down some samosas and curry.
Wednesdays, Nirvana, 346 Lexington Ave. (betw. E. 39th & E. 40th Sts.), 212-983-0000, www.nirvanany.com; 7, Free.

No Name… & A Bag O’ Chips
Enjoy a famous Volcano Bowl at the bar while you sit back and enjoy comedy that’s as funny as a shrunken head or that episode of The Brady Bunch where Bobby finds an idol in Hawaii. Alright, maybe it’s just funnier than that first thing.
Second and Third Fridays, Otto’s Shrunken Head, 538 E. 14th St. (betw. Aves. A & B), 212-228-2240, www.ottosshrunkenhead.com; 8, Free.

Reuben Williams Attacks!
One of the premier improv troupes in New York and still cheaper than a movie. Prepare to have your head blown, your ass kicked, your neck broken and maybe something happen with your fingernails.
Saturdays, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, 307 W. 26th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-366-9176, www.ucbtheatre.com; 10:30, $10.

Doug Benson
Doug Benson is a Stoner of the Year winner from High Times, the star of Super High Me and one of the writers/performers of the hit off-Broadway show The Marijuana-Logues. To prepare for his stand-up show, you should, well, I think you get the point.
May 28-31, Caroline’s on Broadway, 1626 Broadway (betw. 49th & 50th Sts.), 212-757-4100, www.carolines.com, $26.75

Freestyle Love Supreme
From the minds that brought you the Grammy- and Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights comes an improvised blend of music, comedy and freestyle rap.
June 1, July 6, Aug. 3, Comix, 353 W. 14th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-524-2500, www.comixny.com, 9, $20/$25

Monday Evening Stand-Up
Every other Monday, head over to Greenpoint to stuff your face with free candy while you laugh at some new comics. I can’t promise the candy or the jokes will be as good as Laffy Taffy, but it’s worth a gamble. Hosted by Jennifer Dziura of the Williamsburg Spelling Bee.
June 1, 15, 29, July 13, 27, Aug. 10, 24, Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer St. (betw. Richardson & Frost Sts.), Brooklyn; 7:30, FREE

Sketchfest NYC
Forget watching reruns from when SNL was funny, get over to UCB to see three days of the country’s best sketch comedy. Some highlights include Kevin McDonald (Kids in the Hall), Kristen Schaal (Flight of the Conchords), Chicago’s Steve & Jordan and L.A.’s Summer of Tears.
June 11-13, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, 307 W. 26th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-366-9176, www.sketchfestnyc.com

Comedy Central Park
If you’re tired from chasing around girls in bikinis on the Great Lawn with a bottle of sunscreen in your hands, laugh it off over at Summer Stage at the third annual stand-up show. This year, they’ve got two insanely energetic comics: Gabriel Iglesias and Pablo Francisco.
June 19, Central Park Summer Stage (at 63rd St.), 212-360-2756, www.summerstage.org, 8, FREE

Channel 101
If you thought there was nothing new on TV in the summer, think again. At every show, Channel 101 presents five prime time shows and new pilot submissions. Show up and vote for your favorite show you want to see again, or the worst show you want cancelled. If only it were that easy on real TV.
July 1 & Aug. 5, 92YTribeca, 200 Hudson St. (at Canal St.), 212-601-1000, ny.channel101.com, 8:30 p.m., $6

All Points West Comedy Tent
Before you cry when My Bloody Valentine leaves the stage because Tool’s up next, laugh it up with the new comedy tent at APW. The Liberty State Park fest expands into comedy with an impressive three-day lineup featuring Arj Barker, Eugene Mirman, Tim & Eric, Michael Showalter, Judah Friedlander, Jim Jeffries, Todd Barry, Janeane Garofalo and CollegeHumor Live.
July 31- Aug. 2, Liberty State Park, Jersey City, N.J., 201-915-3440, www. libertystatepark.org, $89 a day

Kristin Schaal
One of the funniest New Yorkers you still don’t know, Kristin Schaal (Flight of the Conchords and  The Daily Show) has four nights at Caroline’s so you can check her out.
Aug. 6-9, Caroline’s on Broadway, 1626 Broadway (betw. 49th & 50th Sts.), 212-757-4100, www.carolines.com, $26.75

Del Close Marathon
Cheap beer and 150 shows. Non-stop improv for three days straight. Is there anything better in the world? No. Damn, I just broke an improv rule. UCB’s marathon, celebrating the life of improv pioneer Del Close, is the best improv comedy festival in the world. Expect to see Amy Poehler, Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts, Matt Besser, Horatio Sanz and other comedians from SNL, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, 30 Rock and more.
Aug. 14-16, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, 307 W. 26th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-366-9176, www.ucbtheatre.com

UG! Comedy Show!
Leave your Law and Order reruns and six-pack of Coors Light (tall) and spend a Tuesday night in Murray Hill at the new UG! Comedy Show.
Every Tuesday, Underground Lounge, 613 2nd Ave. (betw. 33rd and 34th Sts.), 212-683-3000, www.undergroundny.com, FREE

Wrong Side of the Head with Colin Kane
Come on, what else are you doing on a Tuesday night? Get your ass over to Caroline’s, sit up front and get insulted by the baddest comic in the city, Colin Kane.
Every Tuesday, May through June, Caroline’s on Broadway, 1626 Broadway (betw. 49th & 50th Sts.), 212-757-4100, www.carolines.com, 9:30 p.m., $18

Megawatt at Magnet
Reward yourself for surviving hump day with a cheap improv show in Chelsea. Every week, you’ll get a different show of Magnet regulars from groups such as the Boss, Hello Laser, Junior Varsity, Moxie, Team X, Dynasty, Crush, Phooka, Featherweight, Harlequin and Chet Watkins.
Every Wednesday, Magnet Theater, 254 W. 29th St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-244-8824, www.magnettheater.com, 7, 8:30, 10, $5

Shrink
“When you shrink, you come closer together.” I think that works with drinking, too. Every Wednesday, erase the work day with a few $2 PBRs ‘til 8 and stick around for a free stand-up/variety show ‘til 9:30. Hosted by Sharon “Mama” Spell.
Every Wednesday, Otto’s Shrunken Head, 538 E. 14th St. (betw. Aves. A & B), 212-228-2240, www.ottosshrunkenhead.com, 8, FREE

ASSSSCAT 3000
If you wanted to go back to being religious this summer, get over to UCB every Sunday for the long running crazy improv show Asssscat. You’ll get a warm sense of community standing in line for hours to get front-row seats. You’ll get bread and wine (Goldfish from Gristedes and yes, UCB’s got wine). You’ll also get worship, only substitute Horatio Sanz for that long-haired Galilean.
Every Sunday, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, 307 W. 26th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-366-9176, www.ucbtheatre.com, 7:30, $10, 9:30, FREE

Sunday Night Live
Live from New York it’s Sunday night?! That’s right. Screw Saturday. Go check out some up-and-comers in stand-up every week. You can learn the names of the faces you see on VH1 and Comedy Central. Hosted by Jamie Roberts.
Every Sunday, New York Comedy Club, 241 E. 24th St., (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), 212-696-5233, www.newyorkcomedyclub.com, 8 p.m., $5/$10

Rodeo’s New Weekly Stand-Up
Manhattan’s popular honky-tonk music joint takes a stab at comedy with a free lineup of stand-ups every week this summer. If the comedy matches the environment, expect some of the best roadkill and redneck jokes the city can offer.
Every Wednesday, Rodeo Bar, 375 3rd Ave. (at 27th St.), 212-683-6500, www.rodeobar.com, 7:30, FREE