Monday, May 30, 2011

Help us reach over 500 Twitter followers and get a thank you gift!

UPDATE 6/10/11: We reached 500 Twitter followers! Thanks! Keep following us for show news, promos, contests, specials and other comedy-related stuff.

UPDATE 6/6/11: Please note Friday show schedules in June have changed. Beginning with Greg Warren on 6/17 there will be one show at 9pm. If you follow and retweet our message, you can get 2 free tickets to ANY Friday show in June.

We're offering two free tickets to any Friday show in June to any Twitter follower who re-tweets our special announcement!

Check out our Twitter profile (@RoosterTF), make sure you follow us, find one of the tweets about this promo and re-tweet it! We'll contact you about how to redeem your two free tickets.

Choose from Jimmy Dore of Comedy Central's Citizen Jimmy and Pop & Politics, John Henton from Living Single, Greg Warren from The Late Late Show, or Last Comic Standing's Chris Porter.

Click here to view our June calendar of shows. Limit 2 tickets per follower. 21 and over only.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

The Comedy Animal: A Primer

Animal from The Muppets
Last night and tonight we've got a special show at Roosters, Outsourced Comedy Tour, featuring Raj Sharma, Kabir Singh, Sammy Obeid, Shanti Charan and Imran G. I don't know all the comedians on the show, but I do know Kabir (winner of the 2009 Rooster T. Feathers Comedy Competition) and Sammy (winner of the 2008 competition) well enough to know that they are both a special breed of comedian--the Comedy Animal. That got me thinking...

Homo Standupus
In any comedy community, particularly any local comedy community, you've got Pros, Newbies, Dabblers, Hobbyists, the Forever Clueless and Animals. Everybody is a Newbie, or open micer, once, at least for a little while. Pros typically start out as Animals but lose some of their wilder attributes as regular work can be quite taming! Dabblers and Hobbyists have no intention of giving up their day jobs, and The Forever Clueless, well, they will always be with us.

How to Spot a Comedy Animal in the Wild
Here's a list of behaviors and traits of what I call a Comedy Animal.

1) A Comedy Animal seemingly lives on comedy alone. She has seen every stand up comedy special since Richard Pryor: Live in Concert. He talks about comedy constantly. That is, whenever he is not listening to a comedy podcast like Marc Maron's WTF, or Jimmy Dore's Comedy and Everything Else or Jimmy Pardo's Never Not Funny. He can't understand people who have never heard of Bill Hicks, and he really dislikes Dane Cook fans.

2) A Comedy Animal will kill for stage time. This means he or she is out there every night of the week, or as many nights as possible, driving long distances and making no money just to get five minutes on the mic. He will start his own room, a completely thankless job, just to get more stage time. She will use her vacation days to go on a Tribble Run. (If you don't know what that is, read this.) Why? Because the Animal instinctively knows that the only way to get to the top of the stand up comedy food chain is through stage time.

3) A Comedy Animal is a risk taker. She will take those gigs opening for a band from the 1960s with one still-living original member and one half-dead original member  at 4:00pm in the parking lot of a mall. Is she a glutton for punishment, or eternally optimistic? He might quit his day job long before it seems prudent to do so. But that means he also has the nerve to call that booker, agent, promoter, radio show host, etc. when chances are he'll never hear back. A Comedy Animal knows that rejection comes with the territory, and you can't fear it or it will eat you.

4) A Comedy Animal often judges non-Animals harshly. Comedy Animals usually look down on the Dabblers and Hobbyists or, even worse, resent them for taking valuable stage time away. If you're not willing to drive three hours to a backwater town to perform in front of toothless drunks for $25 and a drink ticket, you're not "serious about your art." Once I heard one comedian ask another, "You drove here from Sacramento?" The response to this innocuous-sounding question was a snide, "Yes, and you would too if you were a real comedian." Wow. Just trying to make conversation, dude.


I haven't said anything about how funny or talented the Comedy Animal is. Kabir Singh and Sammy Obeid are both very talented, likable, good writers and great performers. They are moving up very quickly in the comedy world and we expect to see great things from them. But what happens when a Comedy Animal is not funny, talented, likable, a good writer, etc.? Eventually they morph into The Forever Clueless.

Maybe we'll talk about care and feeding of the Comedy Animal in a future post. (It is OK to feed them after midnight, but whatever you do, don't get them wet!)

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Our New Web site!

Rooster T. Feathers – in the heart of Silicon Valley – has a NEW Web site! Check it out here at www.RoosterTFeathers.com. We are so excited about it – since it’s on the cutting edge of biting humor! Now there’s a metaphor for ya!

It wasn’t originally intended to have the color scheme of our new women’s bathroom paint, however it does kind of match. (If you haven't been to see a show lately, or aren't a woman, this is clearly news to you too!) Both needed a face lift and I guess we like purple. We’re hoping that our customers can find what their looking for on our site a lot easier now and with a lot more purple pizzazz!

Please tell us what you think in the comments section. Thanks!

Monday, May 9, 2011

Congratulations Shanti Charan, winner 9th Annual New Talent Comedy Competition

Photo by Imran G.
It started over two months ago with more than 100 competitors and has now come to a close with one winner. Shanti Charan becomes the second woman to take top honors in Rooster's annual contest. (Mari Magaloni, actress and acclaimed Palin impersonator, won the 5th Annual New Talent Competition in 2007.)

Shanti wins a cash prize and a week of paid emcee work at Roosters. Shanti happens to be part of an upcoming show, Outsourced Comedy, which features Raj Sharma, Kabir "Kabeezy" Singh (2009 Roosters New Talent Competition Winner), and Sammy Obeid (2008 Roosters New Talent Competition Winner). Outsourced Comedy plays Wednesday May 25 and Thursday May 26 at 8pm at Rooster T. Feathers. Tickets are available now at www.roostertfeathers.com.

Here's Shanti's winning set from the competition.



Congratulations to the other top finishers: Nick Aragon in 2nd Place and Duncan Riach in 3rd Place. Great job all!