My Bridgetown got off to a gentle start last night—the festival's venues are more scattered around the city than in years past, but I stuck around the Doug Fir zone to catch Paul F Tomkins' Dead Authors podcast at Bossanova, followed by Late Night Action with Alex Falcone.
I'm happy to report that the Bossonova doesn't smell as much like the inside of an old man's mouth as it used to. The line for the at-capacity show stretched around the block and I'm not sure I've ever felt more surrounded my people than at a comedy show about READING BOOKS. Other than that, I have nothing to add to Bob's terrific writeup.
Late Night Action, of course, is Mercury contributor Alex Falcone's monthly talk show; the all-comedy lineup for the Bridgetown Edition featured Myq Kaplan, Aparna Nancherla, Henry Phillips, and fest co-founder Andy Wood. Each comic did a short set followed by a brief interview; it's always interesting to see the side-by-side comparison between a comic's polished act, and how they present themselves in an interview. Aparna Nancherla's stage presence is beyond laid-back; she told Alex that when working on Totally Biased with Kamau Bell, sometimes it was a struggle to drum up sufficient levels of outrage. Andy Wood did some dishing about the festival and the logistics of putting it together, including some of the past's most infamous guests—Gallagher being a giant racist and Andy Dick being an absolute train wreck of a human. (“I was worried that this was gonna be known as the festival that killed Andy Dick," he said at one point.) And then I went home! I regret not making it up to Hawthorne for the first New Negroes showcase, but you can't win 'em all.
