Stoner humor is an odd approach to making people laugh. Random giggling, neurotic behavior; all in all, it can be embarrassing to watch. Some people have found success digging into this genre, like Seth Rogen. Women, however have a difficult time developing good ‘stoner’ acts. This was not the problem Charlyne Yi had when she performed at the Arlington Cinema & Draft House last Friday.
Yi looks fragile – even seeing her in person, one would suspect that she could break at a moment’s notice. Yi’s performance consisted of almost no straightforward stand-up. Instead she relies on audience participation, music, and games. The response to a ‘knock knock’ joke opener from Yi would consist of “It’s me, I’ve been kicked out and I need a place to crash for the night.”
‘Surprising’ accurately reflects Yi’s punchlines. When pulling a female audience member on stage, the setup was to, “…meet someone who I haven’t seen in a long time.” After spending some time wandering, and staring at someone for a nervous minute, she selects someone, and tells them that they’ll know the words to the song – no problem right? Wrong.
The woman was jumped with a shocking, yet side-splitting funny twist into, “Why did you leave me, mom?”
Armen Weitzman accompanied the Arlington show w for the latter half of the act. Weitzman passed for a passive-aggressive, nervous, wanna-be. The pair felt inorganic – as though what they’ve rehearsed their bits ad nauseam. It came off more as routines that were calculated to be funny, but had not been trial run before. There was no true flow to the act, which at times left the audience wanting more.
If Yi’s stoner-like attributes were the product of a conditioned, confident person, Weitzman’s chunk of solo time was a wasteland of un-funny tripe. A bulk of the audience did not find Weitzman’s routine comical. With Yi, Weitzman plays an ok straight man at best. The house fell pretty silent over what should have been punchlines. It was disconcerting to hear someone else’s beer order over Weitzman’s jokes during part of the show.
Yi closed out the show with one of her easily-found songs “Coyote.” It consists of about 40 seconds of awkward singing, and yes, a twist at the end. The song was funny, but certainly did not make up for the awkward silences during Weitzman’s ‘unsupervised’ routine.
