Sara Schaefer

A little late on this part 2 part! But I don't care. Let's give 2007 one last fight. After that,
if you ever mention 2007 to me again I will cut you.

More of my favorites from that-year-which-shall-never-be-mentioned-again:

Anthony Bourdain

There's not much to say about him other than he ate the still-beating heart of a cobra. What I like about this guy is that he's definitely trying really hard to be cool 90% of the time, and about 90% of the time, he manages to succeed. Which is really hard to do if you think about it, because part of the concept of cool is for it to be effortless and not-giving-a-shit. Bit of a paradox there but he's managed to figure it out. In the delusional corners of my mind I like to think that I am like him in that way, but I have a feeling that most of my obvious, desperate attempts at being cool result in monumental uncoolness.


Popogigo

This cat was our neighbor's cat for many years. He was an indoor/outdoor cat and would often come by our back door for some petting. Suddenly one day, they got a dog, and locked their cat out. I guess they were tired of him and needed to make room for their trendy puggle. We gave them the benefit of the doubt though, and we left them a note asking them if they were aware that their gray cat had been locked out in the freezing cold. They called us and said "we don't have a cat." REALLY? Because that's weird, I've seen that cat going in and out of your apartment window for the past four years with a flea collar and everything. So we took him in and named him Popogigo (Popo for short). I wasn't all for it at first, but it turns out, he's damn a fine cat. His paws are just so small. Anyway, I guess one day when the neighbors get a pet monkey, there's gonna be one sad-lookin puggle staring into my back window.


Local Comedy

Some of my favorite moments:

- MILFZ (Adira Amram & Becky Yamamoto's genius mom duo.) MILFZ stands for something like 'Mothers, Inspiration, Love, Fun...I'm not sure I remember it, but I know for SURE that the Z stands for "zip zap zippity doo!"

- Jenny Rubin's stand-up during the last week at Mo Pitkin's. There's nothing like compounded tragedy in your life to really bring it to a whole new level.

- Wendy Ho's song about the ghetto set to Beauty & The Beast's "Bonjour!"

- Matt Ruby's joke about Jerry Orbach's eyes. I had the opportunity to see this guy for the first time at Sven Wechsler's fun show at Bowery Poetry Club. He's damn funny.

- Vampire Weekend performing at the last Video Gaga. Just a couple months later they're getting featured in Rolling Stone and blogged by David Byrne. Hello, they don't call my Sara "big-break-giver" Schaefer for nothing!

- The guys from College Humor showing extremely inappropriate material to a crowd filled mostly with high schoolers on a field trip at The Rejection Show.

- Vince Averill telling a rude audience member that Mike Burns had earlier called her a plain jane with hog tits.

- Showing Patrick Borelli's music video in which a dog sits on a pillow for more than 5 minutes, and that's it. Playing this for a live audience is not wise. They become very angry. Patrick told me that he had started adding a twist ending where he lets the music keep playing, and brings the actual dog out on the pillow and carries her slowly up and down the aisles for people to look at her. I think this kind of torture is hilarious.

- Not "favorite" but definitely something I'll never forget: racial tensions exploded at a Beauty Bar show, when this god awful comedian (I have no idea who he was, but he was RIDICULOUS) made a terrible joke about a lynching, and an African American audience member responded by splashing his drink over the entire audience, throwing the glass down, and stomping out.

- Performing at The Shark Show for an audience that was perfectly split down the middle in terms of laughter: one side was laughing, and one side was DEAD silent. Beforehand, the Shark Show guys had been notified that a group of "comedy school" students were coming to the show. And sure enough, this big group of kids comes in. But they were not making a NOISE. It was really weird...what kind of comedy school was this? Finally when I got on stage I asked the dead side where they were from. Someone in the group managed to say "we don't understand english. We're from Turkey." I don't know what was more amazing, the fact that we had all these kids from Turkey in the audience, or that somehow, their "comedy" school thought it would be educational to come see a NYC underground comedy show in a language they could not understand.

- There are so so many other fun memories, and doing this list made me realize (a) that I was absent from a lot of awesome stuff for much of the year, and (b) Sara Jo Alloco and Brandy Barber know how to make fun holiday videos. Exhibit A: St. Patrick's Day. Exhibit B: Christmas.

I'll stop now.