Every comic has had a performance that was so perfect, with dead-on timing, crisp jokes and a white-hot, responsive audience, that they wished it had been captured on videotape.
Mike MacDonald once saw Paula Poundstone get that lucky.
During a cable special, Poundstone was getting some feedback from someone in the audience. “She didn’t use a stock line” to shoot the offender down, MacDonald says. “And later on, somebody said something, and she dealt with that, and (again) she didn’t use any stock lines.”
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“And then she tied them both in,” snaring the two-in-one joke, he says.
That special was up against MacDonald’s “My House, My Rules” for a Cable ACE television award a few years ago. Poundstone won, but MacDonald wasn’t unhappy.
MacDonald felt Poundstone is probably the only one of the modern, cable special-taped standups that “had the cameras there to capture that special, non-scripted moment. And for that reason alone, she should have won.”
“It’s that thing when every comedian comes off the stage at some point and says, `Aw, (drat), I’d wish the cameras would have been there tonight, I’m better than anybody in this (stinking) world.’ And they never are,” says MacDonald, a comedian for 16 years.
MacDonald thinks he can be added to that short list of comics who were blessed to capture a moment of on-the-spot comedy, with his Showtime special, “Mike MacDonald: Happy as I Can Be,” premiering at 8:40 p.m. Saturday.
It happens about halfway through the hourlong show. A woman pipes up something along the lines of: “Men that aren’t afraid to be called what they eat.”
“I’ll be right back with my improv!” shouts MacDonald, before launching into a three- or four-minute routine that has nothing to do with his show. At one point the lady explains her comment, which can’t be printed here.
“Ten-foot pole, please!” MacDonald shoots back. “I’m not touching that line. Thank you for sharing . . . (This is) my last foray into the crowd.”
That routine was important to MacDonald, because it couldn’t deny that he had the comedy chops.
“When I came back to Showtime, I said, `Look, with all the stuff I wanna get in the show in a half-hour, all the important subject matter, I can’t fit in all that extra stuff with the woman.”‘
Showtime agreed.
“Not that I like to blow my own horn a lot, but,” MacDonald says laughing, “if I recall, I don’t think anybody’s been bumped from a half-hour to an hour. A lot of people have been bumped from an hour down to an half-hour, I know that for a fact.”
“Mike MacDonald: Happy as I Can Be,” premieres at 8:40 p.m. Saturday on Showtime, with repeats Feb. 21 and Feb. 27. Check local listings for times.
Here’s who’s working at the comedy clubs. Current sets are scheduled to run through Sunday; all new acts begin on Tuesday unless otherwise noted. Lineups are subject to change.
All Jokes Aside (1000 S. Wabash Ave.; 312-922-0577): Starring this weekend is David Edwards, who can be seen in “House Party 3.” Headlining beginning on Thursday is Andre Covington.
Zanies (1548 N. Wells St.; 312-337-4027): Turbo-charged Doug “Dougzilla” Ferrari shines this weekend. Tom Rhodes, the headliner beginning on Tuesday, is being called part of “the new breed of standup.” Darn, no more jokes about airline food and malls?