"As Phoenix Turns" A soap opera!

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on September 8th, 2005

The article in the Phoenix New Times (“Making it big in the valley’s comedy scene is no laughing matter” by Jimmy Magahern) is amazing! We just performed in PHX this past June. The Comedy Spot crowds were rabid, the room ran like a top and the whole experience was positive. And the comics we encountered were all very funny, hard-working people. The Phoenix depicted in Magahern’s gargantuan piece on that city’s comedy scene contains every cliche in the book.

The owner of the “A-club” who views all the comics in his backyard as insufferable hacks. (“What we’ve got here is all these frustrated comics around town… they’re just filthy, and they’re unfunny. They’re unwatchable.”)

The frustrated comic who teaches comedy to others for exorbitant fees– whom the A-club owner describes as “little more than a snake-oil salesman.”

The comic who runs a comedy room but in so doing incurs the wrath of all the comics who desparately need stage time.

The frustrated local comics who covet the stage time at both the A-club and the B-club and have nothing nice to say about the proprietors of either.

Of course, the truth lies somewhere in there, but the vicious, nightmarish portrayal of the Valley of the Sun is so bleak that it might result in a couple corpses turning up in the city morgue! It’s unrelentingly downbeat! And, to top it all off, local comic Nick Tarr comes off sounding the most reasonable out of all them. (We know Tarr from way back! Hey, Nick!)

We were contacted by Magahern for some quotes, but we never hooked up after several rounds of phone tag. We doubt anything we might have contributed would have brought any calm to the proceedings. Read the whole thing if you dare.

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