Comedians (now authors) Robert Kelly and Joe DeRosa hosted a book release party/movie showing/stand-up show for 90-minutes for the packed audience at The Village Underground’s Comedy Cellar. Jumping up on stage to first jaw a bit (basically to crack one another up) Kelly and DeRosa showed their short movie Cheat-based on their book of the same name-which they wrote with comedian Bill Burr, not present-then introduced the cutting Rich Vos (my personal favorite of the night), Keith Robinson, and lastly Colin Quinn each for about ten minutes of stand-up. A spirited but slightly less effective Q&A followed, where the comedians basically again tried as best they could to sell the book, this time via questions from the audience and kept cracking one another up.
These kind of nights are hard to pull-off really. For one thing, promoter, club staff, and the stars are trying to keep things moving while keeping attention on the reason the night is occurring (in this case trying to bring awareness to and sell the book) and the acts who appear attempt to balance a strong ten minutes with the theme of the night. There is as much hustling of the product as there is an attempt to provide the audience with a good reason for coming out and managing a two drink minimum, and in the end, I think everyone-people on stage and off-had to be happy with the results.
