Now that's funny: Boston Comedy Festival Semi-Finals

After being practically strip-searched and hassled (no, we don't mean hustled) to our seats by an unsmiling security guard, we got to breathe (choke?) in the ambiance of UFO-shaped lights, precarious columns seemingly made of stacked boxes (can those really hold up a ceiling? can shoddy jokes really hold up an act?), chipped tables, and couches upholstered in industrial strength anti-vomit material. A waitress (we got the normal one, not the one dressed like a mermaid in a green sequined top) arrived to take our order of Sam Adams, only to return to tell us they were out of Sam Adams. A Boston bar out of Sam Adams? The evening was unsettlingly hilarious from the start.

After opening commentary from a the host, who likes to wear jeans from Sears and pretend his cell phone ring is a Middle Eastern friend (don't ask), the contest began. Tom Dustin, who was up first (definitely a tough spot), joked about flirting with waitresses when he worked in the food industry and being the object of lesbians' affection (apparently he's "close enough" to a female for some of them). Dustin's best joke involved misinterpreting an STD as a SUV--when a girl tells him she's just got HPV, he thinks she means a CRV and asks, “Was it expensive?” He also touched on the rabbit vibrator phenomenon, but took it to a place nobody really wants to go (we’ll leave that to your imagination...).

Brian Longwell had perhaps the most unique approach of the night. Longwell brought an overhead projector and transparencies on stage and used them to prove the evilness of Dick Cheney, producing perhaps the only entertaining overhead lesson in the history of the world. His comparison of the voting process to pizza-making should definitely be taught in high school civics classes: voters call in an order, lobbyists ignore it and load the pizza with crap, it gets delivered slowly because congressmen are partying with hot lobby girls, and in the end you get the opposite of whatever you ordered. Success!

The festival likes to pair up people with the same name, so obviously Bryan Hamilton needed to to follow Brian Longwell. Fortunately these Bri/Bryans were easy to tell apart. Longwell’s projector was the heftiest thing he brought on stage, while Hamilton’s most prominent prop was his giant stomach, with his crazed-looking bug eyes and bedraggled hair tying for second. Despite the paunch, Hamilton is able to cartwheel, have sex, and be caught by his children having sex: it's the holy trinity of life skills, you might say. Hamilton also has a brilliant approach to getting free fencing: stand in your neighbor's backyard and stare at them menacingly. If Hamilton doesn't succeed as a comic, he can surely sell his fencing/staring services to earn the big bucks (we suspect Hamilton's stares will prompt fence-building more quickly than the stares of most folks, however suspicious they might seem).

Baratunde Thurston is funny, but he looks so much like Cornell West that we kept expecting the humor to end and the sociological analysis to start. Still, his confident spoken-word-style delivery was a definite innovation in the mostly mumbly, self-deprecating world of comedy. Additionally, the world would surely be a better--or at least more hilarious--place if we all drove around with messages like “Baby in Trunk” emblazoned around our license plates as Thurston suggests.

Jim Tews' baloney tastes like broken dreams, and he has no sailing skills to speak of despite a long stint in the Coast Guard--but he may be able to type you to safety thanks to his office experience. He also had an amusing take on divorce, in which the product of a broken family yells “Who’s your mom’s boyfriend?” instead of the traditional “Who’s your daddy?” during intercourse, and offers up his aunt’s former husband’s beers (still cold in the fridge) to the brand new husband. Tews also recommends the X-Box as an ideal engagement ring replacement, since it can be enjoyed by more than one person. We wish him the best of luck with his proposal--he'll need it.

Victor Varnado is a black albino. If that weren’t unexpected enough, he’s also got bits that tear apart your childhood superheroes for failing to realize that Apache Chief was actually Cherokee, and really wanted to wear a shirt the whole time. He’s also unafraid to admit that he might consider dating a female bodybuilder for her unique, er, "lifting" skills. We'd better leave it at that.

Myq Kaplan thinks women are as ownable as furniture, dogs should do shrooms, and it's cool to have sex with dead people. Or maybe we missed some of the punchlines in there. Regardless, he also has an "open relationship" (read: divorce) with his gay wife, which his parents are okay with because at least the wife is half Jewish. He combats Christians' confusion about Jews not eating pork by wondering why the Jesus fans drink their savior's blood. All this and his name has a hilarious spelling, too! We know you never would have guessed a "Myq" to be a vegetarian who makes out with men. Never.

After Myq, we were treated to Mike (a normal spelling, whew) Whitman, who borrows tartar sauce from his Asian neighbors in an attempt to make Rachael Ray's "Asian" fish sauce. He's also great at covering for friends who puke in cabs--the cabbie will never know--so definitely take him along on your all-night binges. Just be sure to bring cab fare, since Whitman tends to watch the meter, pay in spare change, and walk the rest of the way if he has to. His riff on meeting high school classmates at the Coinstar in Star Market is everyone's worst nightmare: running into your past without the aid of a law degree and a medical license to boost your status. He also laments the all-too-common practice of supportively laughing ("like a drunk hyena") at someone's endlessly rambling joke or tale, only to ultimately discover that it has racist or otherwise unsavory overtones. Awwwwkwarrrrd.

Dan Sally is from Dedham, Mass., and after visiting Paul Bunyan's "hometown" in Minnesota, he has begun to lobby for Dedham to get the recognition it deserves as Aquaman’s boyhood home and the Ghostbusters World Headquarters. He sleeps like a baby in that he soils himself, cries, and pees on people who attempt to clean him. Sally also makes the excellent point that one must be rich, not poor, in order to have pots to piss in--especially if they're All-Clad pots. And instead of proposing with an Xbox, Sally suggests concealing your ring inside a bat that you must kill to protect your future fiancee. It's romantic.

After all that hilarity, the judges decided that Mike, er, Myq Kaplan, Victor Varnado, Jim Tews, and Dan Sally will advance to the finals on Saturday. They'll be in the good company of Lewis Black, and having survived two rounds of drunk audiences (one member helpfully described a comedian in a suit at "HEY THAT'S THE GUY IN THE SUIT") and harsh judges to get there, they've clearly earned the success. Check out the second round of semi-finals tonight and/or the finals tomorrow to witness some pretty original comedy from local and faraway folks alike.

Zombie image from Victor Varnado's MySpace page. Pizza image from Harris Graber on flickr. Xbox controller image from Bouzz on flickr. Kosher symbols from http://israeliwinedirect.terapad.com/. Aquaman image from goateecrazy on flickr.