The Business October 31st 2012, The "BOOsiness SPOOKtacular Edition of the Damned" Edition

How could there be a better place to spend Halloween than a theatre called the DARK ROOM? The Business is ready for the holiday, we have our candy, our costumes and our post victory parade riot gear all set.

Come one, come all, and bring the spirits of your ancestors with you. Don’t worry, if you get a case of the SPOOKIES, our guest this week will hold your hand.

Claudia Cogan will be joining us on this unholy night. She’s top notch. She's been on Last Comic Standing 7 as a semi-finalist, been nomi

nated three times for an Excellence in Comedy in New York (ECNY) award and won the first ever Time Out New York Joke of the Year nod. Claudia is an alum of UCB Theater improv school and played on several house teams. She has performed at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival and at clubs and colleges around the country.

Come join Claudia and your regulars Sean “Spooky” Keane, Bucky “Puts the SIN in” Sinister, “Maniacal” Mike Drucker and Caitlin “GILLotine” for a night of good Halloween fun*.

*”good Halloween fun” may include getting possessed by Halloween demongoblins. The Business is not responsible for any damage to your soul incurred during “fun”.

The Business October 24th 2012, The "Home Game Before The BIG AWAY GAME" Edition

Before The Business hits the BIG STAGE at Cobb’s Comedy Club this Saturday night the 27th at 8pm, we wanted to enjoy a night at our Dark Room home with a perfectly delightful guest. In fact, if you’ve had the pleasure of meeting her personally or have just googled the meaning of her name, you know she is a calm and powerful goddess.

Shanti Charan is a winner. She won 1st place in the 2011 Rooster T Feather’s Comedy Competition and participated in the 2011 San Francisco International Comedy Competition

where she advanced to the semi-finals. Charan was recently awarded SF Weekly’s 2012 Best Stand-Up on the Way Up. SF Weekly says Charan’s writing “is clever and confident beyond her years.”

She will join your Business regulars Alex Koll, Sean Keane, Bucky Sinister and Caitlin Gill for an adventure 65 million years in the making*.

BYOBurrito and BYO$5. If you want to bring a friend, that’s FREE! Just grab a 2-for-1 coupon here, which is also where you can learn all about our show THIS SATURDAY, 8pm AT COBB’S COMEDY CLUB!!

*actually a stolen tagline from Jurassic Park. We cannot promise Spielbergian thrills, but there will be a dilophosaurus hidden under someone’s seat. WHO WILL SIT ON A DINOSAUR, WILL IT BE YOU?!?

The Business, "BIG BIRTHDAY ON THE COBB" Edition

The Business likes things big. Big guests, big theatres, big ol birthday parties. Big gets bigger when you do all the big things together. That’s why we are bringing big guests to a big theatre to have a big ol birthday party!!!!! Big!

Our guests know all about big. Jamie and Sis DeWolf produce Tourettes Without Regrets, a showcase of the best cutting edge underground talent with the longest running freestyle battle and the largest slam on the West Coast. The fight club of underground art, SF Guardian named Tourettes the “Best in the Bay” in 2012.

They are both guests we’ve wanted on The Business for some time, but when we heard that their birthdays are just days apart and fast approaching, we knew what had to be done. BIG BIRTHDAY SHOW.

 

This one is TOO BIG to hold at our home office at the Dark Room. Come join your Business regulars Alex Koll, Sean Keane, Bucky Sinister, Chris Thayer, Caitlin Gill and Mike Drucker at Cobb's Comedy Club, which should be ALMOST big enough for this show. Chris Garcia can't make it, but will be represented by friend of the Buisness Kevin Camia.

Come at us, bro.

About the Birthday Boy and Girl:

Jamie DeWolf is a slam poet, stand up comedian, teaching artist and filmmaker from Oakland, CA. Since his first slam in 1999, DeWolf (formerly known as Jamie Kennedy) won his way onto seven slam teams every year he’s competed and has since become a National Poetry Slam Champion, the Oakland and Berkeley Grand Slam Champion, a YouthSpeaks Mentor, and a featured performer on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. His full-length feature film, SMOKED, premeried at the Oakland Underground Film Festival in 2012 and is currently in talks with distributors.

As the great grandson of the cult of Scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard, he remains a vocal critic of the cult in the public eye, and was the host of the first anti-Scientology summit in Clearwater, Florida, widely considered to be the “Mecca” for the Church.

Natasia Schibinger, aka “Sis”, is a film-maker, visual artist, and performer from Oakland, CA. After writing and directing her own short films which included dark humor and puppetry, she collaborated with Jen Gigantino. Together they created No-Penis Productions, an all female production company, producing shorts that favor beautiful women and pleasant violence.

As a performer, she’s well known to Bay Area audiences as the “evil Vanna White” of the infamous underground variety show Tourettes Without Regrets and performs disturbing vaudeville and crazed crowd contests. When she’s not shooting films, she performs at children’s princess parties and is professionally trained at face-painting, balloon animals and magic tricks. She’s currently in pre-production on a featurette about a swearing contest, hand drawing her own fairy tale, and planning her next short film.


Don’t miss this one! THIS IS BIG BUSINESS.

Speaking of BIG BUSINESS, those are the magic words to get yourself a $5 ticket to this show (regular ticket price is $20). Use the code “BIG BUSINESS” when buying your tix on the phone or at the door to get the super-discounted, bargain-basement ticket price of $5!

http://cobbscomedyclub.com/event/1C004942EB1D8A1A

The Business October 17th 2012, The "Heart of Romane" Edition

He’s the Cesar of our salad, he’s our iceberg breaker, he’s all heart and has very little E.coli, The Business welcomes the founder and host of The Romane Event, Paco Romane!

Paco Romane, is an award-winning stand up comedian (voted “Best Comedian” in the San Francisco Weekly and San Francisco Bay Guardian), and actor. He has established himself as one of the funniest new comedians on the comedy scene and his energetic, self-deprecating comedic style is a hit with audiences across the country. He is also

a long time company member of Killing My obster, the Bay Area’s premier Sketch Comedy group. He uses his work with Killing My Lobster to create routines and characters that are inventive, funny, spontaneous, and utterly unique. The Haight-Ashbury said "Paco Romane is a genius when it comes to developing characters.

After last week’s burrito frenzy, super stuffed with guests , we take it easy this week go with just fresh, filling Romane. Business regulars Sean Keane, Bucky Sinister, Mike Drucker and Caitlin Gill will be there, and you can be too, for just $5!

WE SELL OUT, so get there early to get a seat.

As always, BYOBurrito and share your chips and salsa, it’s the decent thing to do.

The Business October 10th 2012, The "SUPER BURRITO" Edition

The San Francisco Comedy and Burrito Festival is NOW! We plan to spend the weekend celebrating our two favorite things to indulge in late at night in the dark, COMEDY AND BURRITOS. This week, The Business has wrapped up some of the best guests of the fest into a super warm, spicy, delicious comedy experience.
 

From Seattle, Wash., Barbara Holm has performed at the San Francisco Sketchfest, the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, Bumbershoot Arts festival, and the Women in Comedy Festival in Boston. Her comedy has been described as clever, unique, idiosyncratic, and exuberant. Seattle City Arts Magazine called her a “comedy wizard.” The Bay Area’s Spinning Platters says, “She’s noted for her wit, one-liners and off-center humor.” Seattle Stranger newspaper described her as an “adorable wunderkind” and Barbara describes herself as “running away from this question to hide under the desk right now.”

Andy Haynes was raised on salmon and caffeine, in the shadows of Mt. Rainier in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest. He now lives in Los Angeles, where he is a comedian, though he looks like he should be skippering a sailing regatta. With performances on Conan, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and the New Faces showcase at the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival, Andy is becoming a must see performer.

 

George Peyton Gordon III (yes that is his real name) is a comedian from Dale City, VA, (or as he likes to call it, the great state of Virginia). He currently lives in New York City where you can see his stand-up almost every night, then argue with him about things like which is the better Weezer album—Pinkerton or Blue (definitely Pinkerton)—or why Alien is better than Aliens (because it just is). He has been in the New York Underground Festival, The Bridgetown Comedy Festival in Portland, OR, The Out of Bounds Comedy Festival in Austin, TX and his writing has been included in the blog Rock Bottom. (Read it.) He has an unhealthy obsession with using parentheses.

For 3 years and counting, Alice “Pretty-in-a-Not-Shitty-Way” Wetterlund has performed her non-yelling brand of comedy all over, at such clubs as Comix and Broadway Comedy Club, UCBNY and San Francisco’s Punchline, and on such critically-acclaimed shows as College Humor Live, Big Terrific, and Tigerlily, as well as at Bridgetown and Women in Comedy Festivals. She’s appeared in numerous sketches for shows like “Meatsteak is Dead” at Webster Hall, “Mad Men Jumps the Shark” for Landline TV, and the web series “It Gets Betterish” from Eliot Glazer and Brent Sullivan. She’s also starred in TV commercials for AT&T, Budweiser, BMW and Maxwell House, because she’s a real artist! She’s written for Slate Magazine and Night Of The Living with Kurth Braunholer, and the rest of the time she was caring for her special-needs cat, Sparkles (R.I.P.)
We miss you, Sparkles.

As always, it’s a $5 show, and you can bring a friend for FREE!!! if you bring one of our 2-for-1 coupons. That’s $5 more you have to spend on burritos.

The Business has always been BYOBurrito, but this time, WE MEAN IT. BRING BURRITOS. EAT DELICIOUS BURRITOS AND WATCH COMEDY. YOLO BITCHES.

The Business October 3rd 2012, The "Cool Hand Joe" Edition

Though The Business does not endorse any criminal act, we definitely endorse badass stories about robbing banks.

The truly thrilling part about Joe Loya’s story is his own transformation, but along the way… he robs banks. ROBS BANKS. I mean, we’ve all thought about it if we get into a bank line too soon after seeing Point Break, but this guy DID IT. A BUNCH. It’s a pleasure to welcome him to The Business.

Joe’s essays and book reviews have been published in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, UTNE Reader, Washington Post and other national newspapers and magazines. In 2002 he wrote and performed his one-man show, The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell, at the Thick House in San Francisco. He has appeared on CBS News, CNN, MSNBC, FOX’s O’Relly Factor, and other TV shows to comment on cultural events. In 2007 the documentary Protagonist featured the story of his radical life change. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell: Confessions of a Bank Robber (the New Yorker called it “…genuinely thrilling…”). He regularly speaks at universities, conferences, and to business groups, to talk about the creative power we can unleash in our lives when we own our story. In 2009, with national award-winning editor and writer Kerry Tremain, he co-founded Own Your Story to help folks find illumination and change in their lives through the transformative power of writing one’s life story.

We are also pleased to have friend of The Business, Kevin O’Shea joining us this week.

Kevin O’Shea is a comedian. He is large and covered in hair. He no longer wears glasses. He has been described as dark, dry, sharp, oaky and full of tannins. He might have read that off a bottle of wine. He has been featured on IFC and Comedycentral.com. He has appeared at the 2010 & 2011 SF Sketchfest and the 2010 Bridgetown Comedy Festival.

We SELL OUT! So if you want a seat, make sure you’re there before 8. BYOBurrito and remember, mild salsa is for sissies.