COMEDY CHALLENGE
By Bill Stewart

Improv comedy; to some comedians, those are the two most frightening words in the English language.

When it works, an improvisational act can be unbelievably hilarious. Since nothing is written down, bizarre things can and usually do, happen. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's not. It's like gambling, except comedians are putting their careers at risk. Also key is the audience, playing an integral role in most skits.

Now, imagine a night at the Improv and virtually no one shows up. That's what happened to Michael Jenkins and his Comedy Challenge group on Monday night last month at Bodacious Classics, located at 2433 S.E.Powell.

It was the fourth Monday in what has become a regular, onceaweek series at Bodacious. The first three Mondays were wellattended, but the fourth was mired by the competition of the Academy Awards and the beginning of spring break.

From the audience members, Jenkins chose three women to be contestants. Jenkins described the contestants as "mercenaries" who would participate in comedy gags, improv skits and useless trivia games. The three contestants competed against each other for a shot at winning as much as $54 in cash.

The contestants each teamed up with a comedian, whose acts were scored by three judges, who also were chosen from the depleted audience. The crowd was so small that Jenkins asked the comics to stay seated after being introduced "so it will look like the crowd is bigger."

Seated directly in front of them, at a table front row, center stage, were the three female contestants. Thanks to a few drinks from the bar, they were giggling among themselves even before the show started.

When Jenkins asked one of the women what she did for a living, the woman said she worked at Nordstrom's while attending nursing school. "Which is your career choice?" Jenkins asked. "Beer!" the contestant replied while holding up a glass of suds.

Before bringing the comedians up, Jenkins (who is black) got things rolling with a tongue-in-cheek ballad about what it might have been like to grow up white. "I used to be white....stogy and uptight," Jenkins sang to the music of "Scooby-doo-by-do. Something about white was really boring....Nothing worse than having no rhythm at all, can't play basketball. Then God answered by prayers....now I'm a soul man....and I throw rocks at the Klan....But now I see that black is not all it's cracked up to be....Maybe I'll try Chinese."

Then it was the comedians' turn and Keith Wallan wasted no time lamenting about the dumb presents people sometimes give to others. "Recently, a friend bought me a candle shaped like a monkey," Wallan says. "You should never buy a candle shaped like something, because it's no longer a candle. It's just a sculpture make of the cheapest shit in the world. And if you use it, you have something worse. You have a headless sculpture made out of the cheapest shit in the world. Then I notice a sticker that says 'Caution, candle becomes hot when use.' Well, duh!....That's like putting a warning label on a lighter that says, 'Don't get near a flame.'"

That bit netted Wallan a maximum score of nine from the judges, and the contestant doubled those points in the useless trivia section that followed.

The second comedian, Keith Woodring, got off to a good start when he recalled a good deed of his from a few days before. "I was helping an old lady across highway 217 the other day," he says. "You'd think she's be a little more thankful. But, no, she was bitchin' the whole way across. All she could say, 'please, please, let go of my ankles.'"

But Woodring ran into a stumbling block when he was interrupted several times by a man who looked like he would have fit right in with Jed Clampett and the Beverly Hillbillies. The comedian couldn't understand a word the guy was saying. Finally, Woodring blurted out, "Will somebody tell him to put his teeth back in." By then Woodring's time was up and his attempted dialog with "Jed" ended up costing him a couple points.

In the useless trivia session, one of the comedians was asked the length of Three Mile Island. After thinking about it for a while, the comedian answered, "Two and a half miles." His contestant agreed and they won! Go figure.

In the wackiest skit of the night, one of the contestants pretended to be a Chinese rice paddy inspector, who couldn't speak English. The comedian supposedly spoke both languages and translated the inspector's answers for the audience. After being asked the origin of the term rice paddy, the contestant gave a hilarious, long, drawn out answer in fake Chinese and got the biggest round of applause of the night. "Jed" was probably the only one who fully understood what the rice paddy inspector was saying. Even if he didn't, it was okay because at least he enjoyed the show. Then came the comic translation. "She said, 'I don't have the slightest idea.'"

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