Note: As a warning, the following recap was written solely from memory. As such, factual inaccuracies are not only expected, but we’d be surprised if we got anything right.

Host Nick Kroll opened up the night with some crowd work regarding obtrusive earrings and a Steve Perry-looking, front-row-Indian-style-sitting unemployed actor named Sean. He went on to explain how dumb people are better at fucking than smart folk, told the story of an old Jew-hating Polish lady, and brought down the house with his improvised interpretation of shitty spoken word poetry.

Next up with Tom Rhodes, a classic set-up-punchline joketeller. We were skeptical at first of Rhodes because he came out with an almost Dice-esque hardass attitude, but he slowly, and surely, won us and most of the audience over with a story about his gays-in-the-military hating brother and his brief but disappointing rendevoux with Tom Waits.

The Bammer was next and started with a bunch of new stuff, maybe as a preview of her new CD. After working on a fantastic new comedy persona she wants to use in smaller, more rural, Larry the Cable Guy-friendly clubs, Maria went into some classic material about meeting her high school nemesis at the check-out line and talking to her hand-puppet God. The highlight for us, though, was watching the woman sitting across from us, eatin’ up everything The Bammer was dishin’ out. Not only were there visible tears streaming down her face for most of the set, but whenever Maria started an odd premise, her face contorted in a “I can’t believe she said that” face. A small thing for sure, but it really made our night.

Mary Lynn Rajskub was the second-half of the quirkily POV’d females, although her style was much more stream-of-consciousness than The Bammer. Her usual brand of tangental rants, annoyance with specific crowd members, stories from her celebrity life and general stage-fidgeting was on full display. Towards the end of the set, she used a fantastic phrase to relay her feelings of Golden Globe-related anxiety to heavyweight Hollywood producer Brian Grazer, (does anyone remember the phrase?) and the audience went into hysterics. For some reason, MLR thought the audience was simply laughing at the name-dropped Brian Grazer and she broke into an even more hilarious rant about how fake the audience was, and how all she had to do to get laughs in this town was say Brian Grazer’s name over and over. Brian Grazer, Brian Grazer, Brian Grazer!

Nick Kroll brought out an extra microphone, which meant it was time for The Brothers Sklar. They did a short set that started with Dueling Johnny Carsons and ended with Dueling Andrew Dice Clays. In between, they did an extended bit on how a suburban house in St. Louis was used for the opening montage in “Miami Vice”.

Nick Swardson was next up and impressed everyone with his odd story of losing $300 in Vegas to a monkey. We’re blanking on the rest of his set, but be assured that he received consistent laughs from everyone. Everyone except the mobster-looking fella who was seated next to the previously-mentioned teary-eyed gawking Bamford fan. The only one who got him to crack a smile was our next, and final, performer.

Paul F. Tompkins was the closer for the night, with great justification. He started with an aforementioned mis-read of the crowd’s feelings about Barbaro and a story about NOT snubbing Tom Rhodes in London a few years back. From there, PFT went into what has become his standard set in the past few weeks, which makes us wonder if he’s honing the material for another special or tour. The set included his experience with JetBlue, his problems with automatic sinks in public bathrooms, and his take on the great pie vs. cake debate.

All in all, it was one of the better, and more crowded, nights we can remember. The standing room only crowd - the show didn’t start until 9ish because so many damn people showed up - led to a steamy room, but luckily the air kicked in about halfway through PFT’s set, getting us all nice and chilly before we braved the misty rain outside.

In another update to our rapidly-expanding calendar section, we finally have something for you to do this Friday night, saving you from another lonely night of petting your three cats, taking a long bubble bath, plowing through a 1/2 gallon of ice cream and/or preparing your Super Bowl nacho dip. (And yes, those are all euphemisms for masturbation. Trust us.)

This Friday night, the comedy conglomerate Troop! - the only organization that not only boasts three members with first names starting with B, but also three members with last names starting with S! - will be kickin’ ass and takin’ names, not necessarily in that order, as special guests at the Comedy Cocktail at The Highlands.

Other performers include:

The 11th Hour
Sketch Armstrong
Mail Order Comedy

Tickets are $20, but according to the website, make those reservations two days before the event (today!) and drop that price down to $10. More FREE MONEY!!!!

Note: Don’t hold us to the above price-reducing method. Our math isn’t what it used to be.

Is the quality of the video a little pixellated? Sure. Does the fact that The Naked Trucker is wearing a robe ruin the effect a bit? Indeed. Despite these diminshed aspects, does Sam Rubin emit the same primitive sexual power he’s known for? You bet your sweet ass!

Usually when we get flyers outside of shows we take a quick glance at them, crumple them into our pockets, and forget about them until we see the soppy remnants again when we take our clothes out of the laundry, days after the event on the flyer actually occured. But last night, we received one that had something special on the back. Free money!

Well, not exactly free money. But it did have a $2-off sticker on back. And that’s kinda like free money.

The flyer was for a great Effinfunny.com live show this Saturday. The bonanza of talent on the list includes:

Jackie Kashian
Chris Fairbanks
Andy Ritchie
Nikki Glaser
Jim Coughlin
Hosted by: Sean Conroy

That lineup’s so good actually, that we went ahead and added it to our calendar, which is located down there on the left side of our site for your benefit. Please, check it often. In fact, if you wanted to keep a window open just so you could constantly refresh our page to see our calendar updates, we wouldn’t think any less of you.

Note: The EffinFunny.com website is pretty darn nice too. We make a point of recommending it today, if only because Ms. Jen Kirkman is today’s featured comedian over there. The clip is below for your viewing pleasure.

We have a few confessions to get off our chest before we continue as your all-seeing, all-knowing LA comedy webspace: (1) We’re unabashed sports fans (which accounts for our affinity to the Leitchian Royal We); (2) We’re from Chicago; (3) We love the Bears.

So if you’re coming to this site for an unbiased view on sports, you’ve come to the wrong place. Actually, if you’ve come to this site for ANY view on sports, you’ve come to the wrong place.

With that out of the way, here’s a crude photoshop job that found its way into our inbox this morning that pretty accurately reflects our sentiments for the big game this weekend:

To bring this back to comedy, at last night’s CDR there were a few Barbaro quips. The first being host Nick Kroll reading from his diary a letter he composed to Barbaro following his death. Needless to say, there was more than one reference to his “big horse cock”.

The second was Paul F. Tompkins, making his way to the stage immediately following Kroll’s reading. He asked the audience whether we, as a society, should have by now moved past the point where a broken leg means that a horse must be put down. To this, he was met with complete silence, at which point he replied “Or not? I guess I read this crowd wrong” and accused the audience of just looking for any excuse to put Barbaro down. “Any reason will do.”

Now, go say something nice about Barbaro.

Edit: Related hilarity.

From AST News we get word that Maria Bamford is celebrating this fantastic New Release Tuesday with a release of her CD own: How to Win!” (We’re pretty sure that all of these sensational releases are just folks trying to piggy-back on our own launch.)

The disc was recorded live in Cap City Comedy Club in Austin, TX and, if you order from her website, you get a “personalized signed headshot of Maria along with your copy of the CD, all carefully hand-packed and mailed by Maria herself!”

Celebrate the release like we are, by heading over to the UCB’s Comedy Death Ray tonight and watching her shine.

Much too late edit: Coincidentally enough, John Delery over at Punchline has a nice review of the CD. How do they get those so darn fast?

The Brothers Walsh have decided to pack up their wigs and spandex and take their unique comic sensibilities out to the City of Angels for a prolonged stay. Straight from the Brothers’ conjoined mouth:

we’re going to be moving
to los angeles in march
and we’re kicking it off with some shows

In order to hold you over, here’s your Walsh fix for the day: a video of them advertising their final show in Boston. Enjoy.

For the low-low price of a 20 dollar bill and some loose couch change, you can own the first - and unfortunately only - season of the hilarious HBO sitcom. Included in the set is:

- exclusive, unaired “Clowntime is Over” episode
- four commentary tracks
- 17-minute making-of documentary

Not included:
Louis CK’s appearance on The View.

Note: Any locks of red hair included in the DVD case are purely coincidental, and pretty disgusting.

We’re starting things off with a thundering whomp here at The Coming, and nothing says thunderous whomp like our first interview subject: Mr. Jimmy Pardo. Once referred to as “the youngest dirty old man”, Pardo took a break from hosting seemingly every LA area show to answer a few inquiries via Internet exchange.

One of the highlights of your act is your crowdwork. In fact, a lot of the times it seems like you just throw away your pre-written jokes because talking with an audience member is more interesting to you. Do you pre-plan big chunks of time for crowdwork? Or is that all off-the-cuff?
Talking with the crowd is far more interesting to me and I’d have to assume for the crowd as well. If I’m doing a short set here in L.A., I pretty much assume I’m going to do 95% crowd stuff going in. When I’m doing an hour on the road, it’s a different story. I have to do more planned stuff and weave in the crowd work. Even then, it ends up being 70% improvised.

You’ve become the go-to host whenever there’s a big show to be handled, whether it’s the premiere show of “You’re Welcome” or the 2nd half of the 4th anniversary CDR all-nighter. What makes you the host with the most? Do you have any tips for folks thinking of hosting their own Super Bowl party or ice cream social?
Years of doing it. I’ve always wanted to host a talk show, so thought the best way to get good at that was to emcee as many shows as possible.
To seriously answer, I know when the crowd needs more of me between acts or when to just move it along. It’s a fine line and when it’s done right, it’s a great show. I love hearing people say they are coming out to a show because I am hosting.

As for hosting sports parties or any social gathering, always have enough pizza. I learned one night in 2002 that if you run out of pizza, you will never hear the end of it. EVER!

You’re 3 months away from the one-year anniversary of the highly successful “Never Not Funny” podcast, which has been rolling on a weekly basis through more than 40 shows now. What’s the most rewarding part of doing the podcast? Where does NNF go from here? When are you finally going to give the fans what they want and just hold up in some bunker in Colorado (with your co-hosts Mike Schmidt and Matt Belknap) and record the show 24-hours-a-day?
Meeting folks on the road who are fans of the ‘cast and receiving e-mails from people all over the world telling us that they make asses out of themselves on the bus every week laughing at our show is by far the best part.

I will bunker up when some sponsor pays me enough to do so. Until then, I’ll keep buying dinner weekly for Mike and Matt before we record.

What’s the biggest problem you’ve ever been able to talk your way out of?
I was a junior in High School and this bully named “Barry” wanted to kick my ass for no other reason than he didn’t “get me”. Didn’t know why people found me funny or girls found me interesting. He was the size of a truck and he came up to me and said it was “Go Time!” and I convinced him that since we both knew he could take me, why go through the motions. He knows he can, I know he can… so let’s just agree it could be done. He fell for this and I continued my streak of never being in a physical altercation.

You’re originally from Chicago and a pretty big sports fan. Can you take your emotions out of the equation and make a Super Bowl pick? What’s the bigger deal for you: The 2005 White Sox championship, or a Bears Super Bowl victory?
Not only can I take my emotions out of it… I can tell you I don’t care. I’m not a football guy. Never was. I will root for the Bears in a city pride way, so I pick the Bears in 9 rounds by a TKO!

And that should answer your follow up. White Sox by a mile!!! I thought being at Comiskey Park and seeing them clinch in 1993 was exciting… well nothing compared to seeing them clinch in Anaheim. I’m not ashamed to say my eyes welled up like some cliche in a movie.

Where can Pardheads get their Pardfix in 2007?
I will continue to tour the country, put out the podcast, host my monthly show “Running Your Trap” and we’ve just agreed to doing “Match Game Live!” twice a month now at the UCB Theatre in Los Angeles.

The dear reader of this site can catch up on all things Pardo at www.jimmypardo.com

Forget, for a moment, about the grammatical confusion of the above title. (How something can be coming and yet already here sounds too much like quantum physics for us to wrap our feeble minds around.) What’s important is that The Apiary - the place to go for any NYC comedy related news - done got themselves knocked up and had another kid.

As our siblings, The Bastion, have been reporting on the underground comedic workings of the Windy City, the West Coast will be our territory. We’ll be here, keeping you informed of the goings-on in the LA underground comedy scene with the latest news, interviews, show recaps and, heck, this being LA and all, we’ll probably even have a celebrity sighting or two. At the very least, there’s bound to be some mention on the Santa Monica tranny hookers. And if that’s not worth the price of admission (free), we don’t know what is.

Please, feel free to email us with any tips, show recaps, link suggestions, or just overall fun stuff. We like fun. You like fun. Now let’s get together and use that fun.

(And with a firm smack of the tuckus by the delivery room nurse, The Coming was welcomed into the world …)