Comedy night returns to the Crystal Bay Casino Crown Room on Tuesday, July 10 as headliner Barry Friedman, featured comedian D. C. Malone and host Adam Stone promise to keep you laughing as Tahoe Comedy North once again brings top notch comedy to the North Shore.

Barry Friedman

A comedian, born in 1957, Barry started performing in Oklahoma in the late 80s — shrewdly deducing that Tulsa, not New York City, was the place to launch his comedy career. And he’s flourished. All right, maybe not flourished flourished, but once, performing at the old Maxim Hotel in Las Vegas, Buddy Hackett’s son, Sandy, bought him breakfast. You’ve heard of “Six Degrees of Separation”? Barry was only two away.

Barry performs in Las Vegas, Reno, Atlantic City, on cruise ships, and in the Bahamas, where he once met a cabin girl named Inga who, disappointingly, didn’t know Swedish. He has appeared in national commercials and the breathtakingly forgettable “UHF” with “Weird Al” Yankovic, which still provides him with $12 residual checks everytime some Lithuanian cinema owner thinks he’s securing an American comedy classic.

Barry looks best in black, grays, olive greens and teal and was once told that he was “the best looking Jewish man I’ve ever seen” by a drunk girl in Jacksonville, who then clarified, “Oh, don’t get me wrong, you’re a good-looking guy, but for a Jewish guy, wow!”

In May of 2002, his first book, Road Comic (Hawk Publishing), was released. An autobiographical look at his life on the comedy circuit, it was a raw, funny, pathetic, relentless, and self-glorifying look at how a man shouldn’t spend his 30s and 40s. In his second book, Funny You Should Mention It (Hawk), a collection of essays, Barry continues to explore the cultural zeitgeist of life, love, humor, gun shows, and Winnie Cooper, but with less emphasis on random sex with naked cocktail waitresses and undertstanding troubled Germans on which he obsessed in Road Comic.

Barry does radio commentary and guest hosts Studio Tulsa, a daily news and affairs show, on NPR; has appeared in Esquire; writes a monthly column “Barry Friedman at Large” for TulsaPeople; and is a contributing writer for Explorer Magazine, an oil and gas journal, which, in itself, is humorous, because Barry knows nothing about the oil and exploration business and has actually hurt himself pumping his own gas.

D. C. Malone

After over two decades touring as one half of the celebrated comedy team Malone and Nootcheez, D.C. Malone has proven himself to be a great solo entertainer.
D.C. was born in Eugene, Ore. the son of a jazz drummer mortician. He lived in a mortuary till he was 13 years old. “That tends to hone your comedy skills right off the bat” says D.C. Originally a drummer like his father he started playing guitar at age 10. Raised on jazz, blues, and folk music his life changed radically when he heard his first comedy album. “My grandmother gave me an Allen Sherman record when I was a kid and I was hooked” After that he split his time between the Beatles and the Smothers Brothers.

Leaving home at 16, D.C. traveled to Toronto, Canada where he met his future partner and longtime friend Hampton Nootcheez. Although they began with aspirations of rock stardom, they both realized with time that they were much too cynical to be serious musicians. Nature took its course and a comedy team was born.

Hitchhiking over 40,000 miles in the early ‘70s and traveling extensively around Europe and the Orient, D.C. has gathered life experience that shows in his work. Whether expounding on the trails and tribulations of marriage and the complications of subsequent single life, or talking about his childhood, singing questionable camp songs, or maybe blasting into his blues classic “Upper middle class, white ass suburban just moved to the better part o town blues”, D.C. Malone has put together an incredibly entertaining show filled with hilarious songs and stories directly inspired by his own fascinating life.

Everyone can find something they relate to in D.C.’s show. His ease and likeability on stage makes you feel like your watching a friend.

In D.C’s own words, “Hey comedy for you, therapy for me”, and it is good comedy. Besides comedy clubs, casinos, concerts, and corporate bookings, D.C. is spending a great deal of time overseas entertaining our troops. “ It’s a great feeling hearing them laugh, they’re a wonderful audience.”

The details:
Tahoe Comedy North at the Crystal Bay Club’s Crown Room
Date: Tuesday, July 10
Time: Doors at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m.
Cost: $10 in advance, $15 day of the show
Info & Tickets: (775) 833-6333

In anticipation of the July 10 Tahoe Comedy North show, the Tahoe World’s Paul Raymore asked Barry Friedman a few questions via e-mail. The results are below

Tahoe World: You wrote a book, “Road Comic,” about your life while traveling on the comedy circuit. It sounds like a tough life, but maybe funny at the same time. Are you able to pull a lot of real-life material into your comedy act?

Barry Friedman: Let me answer this one with a story: About a year ago, I got ten thousand dollars to do one night of comedy at a Citgo corporate gig. When I called my dad, I said, “Hey, I’m getting ten grand for one night of comedy,” he replied, “Jesus! For that kind of money, they could get somebody good.” Sometimes, the jokes just write themselves. Plus, as I told my ex-wife, “You have therapy; I have stand-up.”

TW: And after all those years, why are you still doing comedy?

BF: Mostly because I can’t sing or dance and haven’t found any other marketable skills. There does come a point for a comedian when, having gotten off the train, he or she can’t just jump back into a normal occupational career path. I’m kind of stuck with it now.

TW: Does the fact that you got your start in comedy in Oklahoma continue to influence you? If so, in what way? If not, how has your stage act changed since the early days?

BF: I could have, probably should have started comedy in NYC, where I’m from, but why would I have wanted to do that? You know, agents, producers, managers, clubs, opportunities — that stuff just gets in the way. As for the act, there are approximately 16 Jews in Oklahoma, including me; so that was a springboard from which to start — ”Oklahoma, v’ere da vind comes schveeping down the plain. Oy!”
To specifically answer your question, since the early days, my act is … well, longer.

TW: In an excerpt from your second book, “Funny You Should Mention It,” you say that one of the best things about being a comedian is the 23 hours a day spent not working. So how do you occupy your time on the road when you aren’t performing? Any specific plans for when you’re in the Lake Tahoe area this time?

BF: I appreciate you reading the book. I knew there must have been someone else besides myself who’s thumbed through it. To try to be serious here, I do some writing on my columns; if there’s a new book in the works, I work on that (and there is one at the moment); and, if the Internet is free, I do what most comedians do: [Editor’s note: we’ll leave that for your imagination]

As for specific plans in your city, I am hoping to get a Hoss Cartright coffee mug from The Bonanza gift shoppe. Plus, of course, play nickel Keno.

TW: You do a lot more than make people laugh from the stage. You write books, you do some reporting, you’ve been a commentator on National Public Radio, submitted jokes to Esquire, and probably a whole lot more. Any idea what the future holds for you and your career?

BF: What the future holds? Damn, that’s good. I have these fantasies that a talk show will become available on NPR; Esquire will call and offer me a full-time position; my own Charlie Rose-John Stewart-morphed talk show on television will be in production. The thing about comedy is, as much as I love it still, it’s mostly sitting at the kids’ table, where writing, the NPR essays, the submissions to Esquire, even the reporting for the Explorer, the geology magazine, a field I know nothing about, seem like I’m being invited to eat with the grown-ups.

I have this monthly column for a magazine here in Tulsa and once, while meeting the mayor, he said, “Oh, so this is the famous Barry Friedman,” which was very nice that he even knew who I was, but I started thinking: that doesn’t happen after headlining a set at Chucklebutts in Cleveland. I can’t imagine I’ll be doing comedy at 60, but I also said that a few years before turning 50 and 40, so I should better just shut up about that and start working on an act for the time I work that retirement village in Boca.

TW: Anything else you’d like to add?
BF: Yes, very important: I know it’s in North Lake somewhere, but how exactly do you get to the house where they filmed so much of Godfather, Part II and will someone take me?