Jack Kukoda

Whoooooo! Oh boy, things have been busy! OhmygodwheredoIstart? It’s been an exciting week for me. And the news! Oh, the news! I’ll start at last Thursday. I did a show Thursday night at Mo Pitkin’s. I always like performing at that place. The crowds are usually pretty hip and they’re unfailingly positive. Usually a bunch of people who want to drink beer, eat fancy cheese fries, and watch whatever performance is taking place. What more could you ask for? How about Ukrainian teenagers taking their shirts off and yelling out bullshit throughout your set? What, you didn’t ask for that? Too bad, cause that’s what you’re getting. At least, that’s what I got last Thursday.

The show started at 10 and I arrived a little before then. I had just come from a barbecue and for one reason or another, I thought I was going to have a panic attack. Maybe it was because the barbecue was full of people from college who were talking about the difference between private equity management and investment banking, all of whom make more money in two months than I make in a year.(Yes, this is the part where you shed a single tear for me.) Or maybe it was because I had started a part time job doing a little graphic design and I had drank about 6 large ice coffees over the course of the day. Whatever the reason, I thought I was going to have a seizure before I even got onstage.

I could tell right away it was going to be an odd show. There were about 40 people crammed into a tiny upstairs room at Mo’s. And the room was strictly segregated. On the right side, there was a column of comedians. In the center, there was a table of thirty-something gay men. Packed around the sides were lots of normal people. And in the back corner, there was a booth of boys and girls who looked like they were about 18 years old.* The guys all had slicked back/spiked straight up hair and chains. The girls looked like they were about to go to the fanciest mall in the world. Right before the hosts introduced the first guest, they jokingly asked if anyone wanted to take their shirt off. I forget why they did this. I think it was hot and they were joking. Well, one of the young men from the back did not take it as a joke and he bolted to the front of the room, unbuttoned his skintight H & M number and displayed his hairless tween chest for the room. “Yes!” I thought to myself. “This is definitely my kind of audience. Hoo boy.”

I was the second comic on the bill. The room was a little loud for the first comic, the lovely and talented Michelle Collins, but she handled it admirably. I got on stage and instead of ingratiating myself to the crowd, I decided to insult the unruliest section of it. That’s called being a pro! I forget my exact words, but it was something along the lines of, “And I’d like to welcome the table in the back, who are here on a field trip from a day camp in New Jersey.” I thought it was a decent line. Some of the other comics laughed, too. But the table in the back wasn’t going to have it. They had their shirtless honor to defend, after all.

“We’re not from Jersey,” they seemed to yell in unison. “No?” I asked. “Where are you from?” A couple of them said Brooklyn. “Where in Brooklyn?” I asked. “From Russia,” one of them said. They then went on to explain, sometimes five of them at once, that they were all originally from the Ukraine, but they live in Brooklyn now. “Awesome,” I thought. “I managed to rile up the children of the Russian mafia.” Actually, they weren’t combative or mean or anything. They just seemed like young kids that wanted to see a comedy show and thought that the most appropriate behavior was just to yell shit out. A lot of people act this way at comedy shows. They operate under the assumption that it helps the comedian to shout things that they recognize, or to add their two cents. Whatever, this wasn’t the first time this has happened to me.

I joked around with them a little more, and went on with my set. I was telling a story about being in the airport(don’t worry, it wasn’t a what’s-the-deal-with-babies-on-planes joke) when one of Ukrainian girls yelled out, “You have to pay for it!” “What?” I said. “The food,” she said in her Ukrainian accent, “You have to pay for the food.” “Uh, yeah, that’s great,” was all I could manage. Unfortunately, the whole gist of my joke was that I didn’t want my story to turn into a joke about airline food. But now this girl had mentioned it, I had commented on it, and now it was too late to finish the joke. But rather than finishing the rest of the joke smoothly and moving along, I said, “So where was I? Oh, right, I was on a plane. Uh, the plane crashed and everyone died. But don’t worry, it was an Aeroflot plane.” For those unaware, Aeroflot is the national airline of Russia. Whoops! Not a classy move on my part. Most of the audience sat quietly in their chairs for that crackerjack and the Ukrainian kids in the back sort of looked at each other like, “Did he just say something about us dying in an airplane crash?”

Man, oh man, the rest of the set went even better than that. Afterwards, I felt so awkward I chugged the host’s beer on stage and muttered something about the kind of girls I bring home to my parents. All in all, the most rewarding and fulfilling moment I’ve ever had on stage.

But the next day, I did Hot Tub, which is my absolute favorite show in the city, and I did a character that made very little sense. But I got to wear a camouflage hat and yell “America!” a lot, so that was fun. I feel much better now.

P.S. This is a picture of a Ukrainian folk singer. If I ever find her, I’m going to heckle the shit out of her. Then vengeance will be mine. Passive-aggressive, roundabout vengeance!

*I’m not saying they were 18, they just looked young.