Todd Barry booed, Yo La Tengo harassed, David Cross & more @ night 4 of the Eugene Mirman Comedy Fest (pics & review)

September 21, 2010

“Boo Todd relentlessly. Throw shit at him. When Jon (Benjamin) and I tell you to stop, ignore us and boo louder.” – David Cross‘s instructions to the audience just before Todd Barry‘s “surprise” appearance.

The Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival came to a close on Sunday, its fourth and final day, at The Bell House with two sold out shows. There was the early show billed as “Wes and Eugene’s Cabinet of Wonders”, and the late show “A Toddless Tinkle.”

Friend and frequent collaborator of Eugene, John Wesley Harding, hosted the early show along with Eugene. The show featured performances by Yo La Tengo, John Oliver, Colson Whitehead, Darin Strauss, and Scott McCaughey.

Darin Strauss, the Brooklyn based author of “Half a Life” read a recently written piece entitled “Puberty”, which was an autobiographical story set in the mid 1980s that involved gaining entrance to a much cooler high school classmate’s party. Scott McCaughey, touring member of REM, performed two songs backed by Harding and his backing band The English UK including a 5 minute tribute to the 1986 Mets.

Eugene Mirman made a brief appearance with his newly purchased $380 Theremin and also returned to the stage to “sing” a cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.” Colson Whitehead, the New York based author, read a chapter from his best selling 2009 book, Sag Harbor. “John Wesley Harding’s favorite comedian”, John Oliver, from The Daily Show and the upcoming “Smurfs” movie followed with a set that featured a particularly interesting story about a gig in the remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Yo La Tengo closed the show with a five song set that featured both Harding and McCaughey and included covers of “I’m A Believer” and The Kinks’ “All That Will.”

Between the shows Eugene made his way out to the dunk tank in front of The Bell House as John Oliver and Daniel Kitson threw balls at the target and were cheered on by the long line of fans waiting for the 2nd show.

Tinkle

The 2nd show, “A Toddless Tinkle”, was hosted by Tinkle founders David Cross and Jon Benjamin. Todd Barry, the other member of the Tinkle crew was at the Music Hall of Williamsburg as an opening act for Superchunk. From the beginning of the show Cross and Benjamin let the crowd in on the fact that Todd would be making a “surprise” walk on sometime between 10 and 11PM. Both agreed that the proper greeting for Todd would be for the audience to boo him off stage. Throughout the evening random audience members were brought onstage to audition to fill the role of “Todd.” “Todd #2”, an audience member named Andy ventured out into the audience to attempt to do some of Todd’s famous crowd work. Andy failed miserably but did offer some unintentional comedy when he approached (and didn’t recognize) Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo and mocked him for his orange shirt and told him that he looked like Gilbert Gotfried. Cross quickly jumped in and saved Kaplan from being mocked by the auditioning “Todd”.

Todd Barry made his way to The Bell House shortly after 11PM and was greeted by the aforementioned boos as well as cups, beer cans and hundreds of expletives. He attempted to win the crowd over but ended up quickly leaving the stage and the venue.

The nearly 3 hour show featured short sets from John Mulaney, Kristen Schaal, Eugene Mirman, and Karen Kilgariff. Festival favorite Daniel Kitson was the final performer of the evening with a 12 minute set that saw him chastise the audience over their reaction to Todd Barry’s appearance and pointed out that everyone went along with the “mean boys” (Cross and Benjamin). The show ended with the 2nd ever screening of Cross and Bejamin’s “Paid Programming”, a mock informercial that aired a handful of times on Adult Swim last fall. The 11 minute short was meant to be aired at 4AM and didn’t have any mention of the creators. And with that the 3rd Annual Festival came to a close. 9 shows, 3 venues, 25 velvet paintings of Eugene and 1 angry Todd Barry.

Check out the pictures and reviews from previous nights: NIGHT 1, NIGHT 2 and NIGHT 3. NIGHT 4 continued below…