Hosting at Ian Atlas’ Comedy Brawl at Crown & Tiger wasn’t so bad after all
June 22, 2010 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
I just got back from a great night hosting Comedy Brawl at Crown & Tiger in Toronto. Ian Atlas runs a terrific room, and I was really happy to be apart of the show. The Comedy Brawl is basically a competition where the audience votes for their favourite comedian. The top comedian is awarded $50 for the night and the top four comedians move on to the following round. Tonight’s show was round one, so there were a lot of faces performing I didn’t recognize, but some of the comedians definitely had potential.
Tonight’s show was my second time hosting and the first time since my disastrous hosting debut a while back (when I overwhelmed myself by both producing and hosting a show for the first time). Tonight I was much more composed and prepared for the show, and I think it showed.
I’m not going to say that I love hosting or anything, but I’m definitely much more comfortable with it now.
My First Live Taping, One Night Stand Up for MTV’s Logo Network
March 6, 2010 by vongsundara · 1 Comment
Downlinke.com's One Night Stand at Great American Music Hall for MTV Logo Network
I’m super excited to announce that I am headed down to San Francisco on Thursday, April 8, 2010, to tape a live performance to apear on MTV Logo Network called Downlinke.com’s One Night Stand Up. This will be my very first American performance, and it’ll appear on television no less! The show will also feature Rebecca Donohue, Sapna Kumar, Cathy Lewis, Ali Mafi and D.J. Pierce.
It all started a few weeks back when I was surfing the internet on my computer while updating my website. I had been wanting to implement a contact me form on my website for a while to give people a way to contact me, and I was determined to finish the form before I went to bed. Thankfully I was able to finish on time and get a good night’s sleep.
The next day, I received my very first notification that someone had left me a message using my contact form. The person so happened to be Andrea Meyerson, President of All Out Films, the production company that had produced the memorable Laughing Matters documentary a few years back. I can’t believe the timing of it all; it was too good to be true. If I had waited another day to finish my contact form, who knows what would have happened or what opportunities would have passed me by.
The poster for the show is attached at the top of this post, and I’m trying my best to hold in my nervous excitement long enough to prepare for the show. I have 20 minutes on stage and haven’t decided on the material I will be performing. I’m sure I’ll include Super Power Bottoms as the central piece, but that leaves me with another 10 minutes of stage time. I have a few weeks to come up with the material, so I’m not too worried.
Another strange coincidence is that I downloaded Lonely Planet’s San Francisco Guide for my iPhone a few months back because they had a sale on it for just $1.99. I had no intention of going to San Francisco, but I thought it would be neat to check out what Lonely Planet’s applications had to offer before I bought one at full price for a city I would actually visit. Who knew that I would end up going to San Francisco a few months later.
I’ll definitely let you know how it all went, so stay tuned for updates!
Related Outbound Links
Great American Music Hall Ticket Purchase
All Out Films homepage
Thanks for sticking with me through a long and lazy summer of zero updates
September 7, 2009 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
Hello readers. Thanks for sticking with me through a lazy summer. This website actually still averaged over 100 visits a day despite my not updating in two months.
I just completed phase one of the upcoming updates: fixing broken links. All YouTube links across all stories are now working again. I started working on a discussion forum, though I don’t think I’ll be launching that anytime soon, as I need to set aside time to write a theme that matches the rest of this website.
I’ve taken away some old features like the photo section. I’ll be redesigning and upgrading this component with full Flickr integration (below is an example of some Flickr integration). In addition to that, I’ll be adding a Press Kit section that will include my bio, headshots and more for members of the press or for fans who are interested.
I’ve also added a Facebook Fan Box, which will hopefully help more people click on Become A Fan on my Facebook page. My goal before the end of the year is to reach 500 fans.
The biggest new addition is the More On This Topic widget at the bottom of this page. The content is syndicated from around the internet and will help add context to my blog posts.
The big decision for me coming up is my coverage of television shows. Last year I covered America’s Next Top Model and American Idol to great success. I just don’t think I have the time this year to cover serialized shows. I may switch to reviewing pilot episodes, as this will be on a case-by-case basis as opposed to a weekly commitment.
[flickr album=72157622295762084 num=5 size=Thumbnail]
Personal Performance Review and Recap: Homo Night in Canada 2009
July 2, 2009 by vongsundara · 1 Comment
I had a great time performing at Homo Night in Canada 2009 on Saturday night during Toronto Gay Pride Festival at Buddies in Bad Times theatre in the heart of Toronto’s gay village. I went to see the show last year when my friend and fellow comedian Julia Stretch was performing at the show, and I knew then and there that I wanted to be a part of the following year’s show. Luckily, I was able to secure a spot earlier in the year.
This year’s show was hosted by the always hilarious Richard Ryder, gay comedian extraordinaire. He did a wonderful job of running the show and keeping the energy of the crowd high. I was up first and was definitely nervous. I don’t get so much nervous for the occasion as much as I get nervous for the material I am performing.
The general rule in stand-up comedy is to start with your second-best joke and end with your best and never never never start with new material. Well, I don’t have much choice in the matter since my comedy style is storytelling. I can’t start with something old since all my sets are minimum five minutes long. The set I performed at Homo Night in Canada 2009 was basically ten minutes of all-new material from beginning to end (barring the last 30 seconds of the set, which I borrowed the ending from my Ugly People set).
Anyhow, here’s the video clip, so you can judge for yourselves:
Vong Sundara performs Super Power Bottoms during Homo Night in Canada 2009 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13sBHm6M4Og
The crowd as absolutely amazing. The crowd's reactions definitely added to the performance and helped me feel a rhythm. Overall, I was very happy with the performance. A bigger surprise to me is that the performance taped even better than it played live. After reviewing the tape, I was pleasantly surprised at some of what I missed while on the stage. Sometimes you never know unless you review the tape. I had the reverse happen when reviewing the tape for my performance of The Ghetto Truth at Spirits a few weeks back, so it was good to see the opposite happen with this performance.
I had a couple of audience members come up to me after to mention that they thought I had crossed the line a couple of times during the performance. I wasn't too upset, though, because it's always my goal to offend five percent of the crowd. Any more than five per cent means that I probably went too far, but anything less than five per cent usually means that I didn't say anything with substance that was worth thinking about.
Another quick note before I go: Mae Martin. Last year, Mae absolutely came away as the breakout star of Homo Night in Canada 2008 (at least for me anyways). I was really excited that she came back this year and performed, this time closing the show. Below is a clip of her song Showers:
Mae Martin performs Showers during Homo Night in Canada 2009 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXhrr2txcog
Learning the comedy business is starting to get very expensive
June 19, 2009 by vongsundara · 1 Comment
I’m very fortunate to be living in Toronto right now. There are so many resources available here that were not available to me in either Calgary or Winnipeg. Because of this, I have concentrated on getting better at my craft rather than trying to propel my career forward before I am ready. The only trouble I’m running into right now are expenses.
There are many, many great classes and courses to take in Toronto, especially with Second City in town along with many great acting studios like Sears and Switzer. I definitely believe in taking classes, and I have gotten a lot out of each and every class I have taken, though I do have to watch out for how much money I have been spending lately. It’s definitely a difficult balance at times.
The Second City classes have definitely helped me improve my comedic range. Coming from a stand-up background, my character skills were definitely lacking. At least now I feel more comfortable going forward with different types of comedy outside of stand-up such as improv and sketch, making me much more well rounded and marketable.
My next seminar revolves around personal publicity. This is definitely the most important seminar for me in a while. If there’s one thing I need to learn before opening my one-man show early next year, it’s going to be how to promote the show and get people in the seats. Otherwise, I’ll just be performing in front of an empty audience.
I think I can manage my expenses for the time being, and hopefully the dollars coming in from performing will start to balance the expenses going out. Luckily for me, I’ve kept my day job, which is allowing me to overspend a little bit on the comedy side.
Supercute.ca blazes passed 10,000+ pageviews a month
April 18, 2009 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
When I relaunched supercute.ca at the start of November 2008, I was mainly hoping to recapture some of my past readership. The original version of supercute.ca launched at the start of my comedy career back in 2006 and became a fairly popular blog among the stand-up comedy community. In fact, it became maybe a little too popular, as I didn’t realize that there were some industry professionals reading my intimate thoughts, leading me into some hot water, but that’s a story for another day.
Ricky Gervais in HBO Out of England The Stand-Up Special, Review and Analysis
April 3, 2009 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
Official Poster: Ricky Gervais in HBO Out of London The Stand-Up Comedy Special
It’s interesting to note that Ricky Gervais did not start out as a stand-up comedian. In fact, he considers stand-up as the final frontier to his comedy. It’s kind of like me in reverse, where stand-up was my first style and I’m venturing into improv. Because Ricky Gervais comes more from a writing background, his style of comedy is very different from most stand-up comedians. I definitely relate to Ricky’s style, as I come from a writing background as well.
Ricky is definitely brilliant, and I can learn a lot from his style. Let’s delve into what I feel makes Ricky Gervais a great stand-up comedian beginning with his stage attire and then going deeper into his mechanics.
Shooting video is very much different than performing stand-up comedy
March 26, 2009 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment
I went into the studio to tape my first video production today, and oh boy did it not go as well as I expected. Luckily, we had a number of takes, so once they are spliced together, there should be one good performance.
Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. I’m used to single takes being perfect, because in stand-up comedy you only get one take. You can’t hit rewind when you’re on stage.
At first I thought it should be easy to record a video since I should be able to do single takes the entire way through the same way I do it on stage. I even resisted using the teleprompter for the first few takes because I didn’t know if I would come off as too robotic. Strangely, the opposite happened.
Minus the teleprompter, I had zero personality as I was trying to remember my lines. Once we switched over to the teleprompter, I at least showed some signs of life. Hopefully it was enough.
The other trouble I felt now that I think about it, is that I didn’t have the right timing on my delivery. I spoke quite a bit quicker than I normally do in stand-up. I haven’t watched the video back yet, so I’m not sure how easily my words will be understood.
I’m not really sure why I had so much trouble today, but I’ll chalk it down as a learning experience. Hopefully next time, I can be a little bit smoother.
Now comes the second part of the video, the actual production. I’ve got to decide how I want to take the video footage and make it into a complete package with sound and images. I went with my video producer because I believe in his talent, so I don’t want to step on his creativity too much, but I think he may be looking for some direction given the subject matter is a bit specific to me.
I’m really excited to show everyone the video once it’s ready, so please stay tuned.
I’m not sure if this comedy is allowed, but I’m going to try it anyway
March 24, 2009 by vongsundara · 1 Comment
One more day before I film my first video production. On the great advice of a great friend, I have decided to film my comedy set about the SuperPowerBottoms, my gay volleyball team and not-so-subtle stab at promoting rights for bottoms everywhere. Haha, talk about the opposite of mainstream. The video will be targeted to a very specific demographic, but I’m hoping that that demographic will really appreciate it.
The big news of the week, though, is that I have found my own comedy muse: hot blonde actress and improv student Holly. While doing improv, I discovered how much I love collaboration which isn’t something I get to do at all in stand-up. While brainstorming with my muse, I’ve decided to try something off-the-wall and maybe even against the rules.
I’m going to write a stand-up for someone else. I will be the Tina Fey to her Amy Poehler (check Saturday Night Live). Writing stand-up for Holly is actually kind of exciting because of her great acting ability. She has a uniqueness to her look and great timing on her delivery, but at this point in time she is more of a performance artist than a writer. Writing for Holly will allow me to really push myself creatively. I’ve written for my own stand-up persona for so long, that I think writing from the perspective of a young, hot blonde will be very interesting.
The end goal for this writing project is to have Holly perform her material as an opening act when my one-man show debuts (now with a bonus woman!) at the end of this year or early next year. The fact that I’ll be writing both acts will lend itself to some great continuity and some comedy tricks that I’ve been meaning to try and which I don’t think have been done before, as a headliner generally doesn’t write material for their opening act.
Anyhow, with my two current projects progressing well, I’m getting excited and more inspired than ever. It feels great to be pushing the boundaries of an art form that I love so dearly.
Deciding which set will work best on video is more difficult than I thought
March 22, 2009 by vongsundara · 2 Comments
My spring and summer comedy schedule is starting to get really full, which is a great thing and not something I could have said about my comedy life last year. I end each of April, May and June off with a relatively big show and I have a bunch of off-stage projects on the go, the biggest of which is my comedy video production starting this week.
I have studio time booked with my video producer for this Thursday. The final video will consist of me performing one of my stand-up sets that will then be enhanced with animation and sound effects. It’s difficult to describe, but I’m excited that the project is moving forward.
The biggest difficulty for me is deciding which set will work best in a video format accompanied by graphics and sound effects. Some of my sets definitely lend themselves more to a visual format but may not be the best for a debut video, as I’d like the first video to skew more mainstream (otherwise I’d start the first video off on a skit about the SuperPowerBottoms volleyball team).
I think I’m down to two choices: the set about my sister Anne, which has never yet been performed, and the set about my time as an obituary writer, which has never been filmed or uploaded online. Both sets of their merit for sure.
The set about my sister Anne would probably be the clear choice in terms of what would work for this project, but it is in an unfinished state and hasn’t really been tested for kinks. The obituary skit works well too but isn’t as representative of my comedy style as a whole.
I’ll think about it some more tonight, and I’ll have to make up my mind by Tuesday, as I’ll need all of Wednesday to rehearse and memorise.
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