Active Kiwanis member Lt. Col. Patrick Nary served as emcee for Saturday night’s Comedy Bash under the stars at The Winery outdoor theater, located aside the grape orchard and behind Symphony’s restaurant on Winery Road.
Reva Braun, Kiwanis vice-president for events, welcomed guests at the gate. She was pleased with many aspects of the event, saying, “It all worked out in the end.”
The fundraiser earned approximately $1,800 from admission sales and raffle ticket sales, she reported.
Raffle tickets during the event were popular, she said, and winning patrons walked away with generous baskets donated by so many local businesses, including G.I. USA, Saitta Trudeau Chrysler Jeep Dodge, Symphony’s Restaurant, Southpoint Casino, Aquarius Casino Resort, Riverside Resort, and Valley Electric.
Shelly “Bagel Lady” Fisher, opened the comedy event with practical advice about dating, and life in general.
She showed off her new trophy collection purchased from Goodwill and pointed out that all of us can save so much time, money, and effort excelling in sports by buying donated trophies at Goodwill for 75 cents each.
“Put these babies on your mantel, and you’re an instant success. Why knock yourself out?”
Michelle, another comedian at the event, made the crowd laugh speaking to the challenges of customer service.
Andrew Feldman took his turn at the microphone. He started out poking fun at himself within the context of incest, and then Alzheimer’s. Then he closed with an interpretation of the stand-off between Adam and Eve, Couple Zero, in the Garden of Eden.
Comedian Rick Pulido also touched on the Garden of Eden allegory with Adam and Eve, including God and the serpent, with his unique perspective. The audience laughed again imagining contemporary celebrities as the players. It was the same Eden scene, but from different perspectives with differing details.
Headliner Dwayne Perkins took the stage around 8 p.m. He spent almost an hour, garnering audience laughter with topics such as people who don’t do their jobs, cringy elevator situations, questionable names for newborns, and Dollar Store vs. Whole Foods shopping attitudes.
He wrapped up by directly engaging the audience, asking who had been married for a long time, and what their advice might be for newlyweds. He was surprised by an elderly barefooted widow in the audience who shouted unexpected answers from the floor, and within a short time proceeded to the center of the stage and actually climbed up the 3-foot platform to join Perkins, saying, “I really love you.”
Perkins demonstrated his expertise with improvisation, and let her speak into his microphone.
Perkins pointed out that “Mo-Mo” was certainly inebriated.
She rambled about marrying, divorcing, and remarrying the same man, then buying the “cadaver van” in which he was carried to his final destination “so no one else could ever use it.”
Perkins engaged her, let her speak her peace, then escorted her to the steps stage-left. Perkins finished his dialogue as planned, explaining that the secret to a successfully long marriage was the willingness of a man to listen to the stories of his woman in excruciating, digressing detail.
Fisher stepped up to coordinate the comics for the show.
“I have wonderful comics. All I have to do is call and ask, ‘Will you be there?’” she said.
Fisher became hooked on being a comic years ago. When she first started comedy, she assumed everyone saw things the same way she did.
“We would laugh, but I didn’t really think I was funny,” she said. “I thought the situations were funny. But people started pointing out, ‘I never saw it that way. You make it funny.’”
Michelle started three years ago on a whim.
“Comedy is an incredible art form, and I’m a fan of art,” she said.
Rick Pulido is from Orange County and Sacramento. He was a studio artist, and gravitated to comedy. He worked open mic events to develop himself and often jokes about his Mexican heritage.
“My second comedy gig was at a strip joint; I had to balance where I was,” he said.
About a year later, he felt like he had nailed it.
Dwayne Perkins hails from Brooklyn, New York, and currently lives in Los Angeles. He aspired to be a comedian back around 2000.
“I was funny in school, and in college. Not so much at home,” he said.
He enjoyed comedians on TV, but he did not assume he knew how it worked.
“When I first started, this older comic called me to check in – make sure I was doing alright – and he gave me my marching orders: make sure you go to a comedy club four nights per week,” he said. “It was kind of like a job. So for the next 15 years, I was going to a comedy club four nights per week. It was my university. Now I don’t do the open mic, but I do shows like this.”
He looked about our venue at the mountain ranges surrounding the Pahrump Valley.
“I have mountains at home to look at, but not everywhere I can see, all around, like here. You get to see this every day.”
The Kiwanis Club works tirelessly to support the local community. Their next event will center around the Independence Day Parade. At their upcoming meeting this Thursday evening at 6 p.m., they will be solidifying their summer meeting schedule, and launching ideas for future fundraisers. Join them at the Pour House (at the Best Western) in the meeting room behind miniature bowling. 1101 S. Highway 160. Call Kiwanis of Pahrump Valley at 775-727-0911 for more information.