Frank the Tank

We were all standing backstage at the Kumite last night, just hanging out… Chris White, Rory Scovel, Justin Schlegel, Frank Hong, Zach Toczynski, Larry Poon, Erin Conroy and myself. What goes on in a greenroom full of good, young comics? Just what you’d expect: backgammon. Backgammon and herbal tea. Talk about a hoot! It was like Lollapalooza back there, except with a lot more cocaine and backgammon.

Anyway, Rory and I went first. I chose to abide by the rules and stay under the 5 minute time limit. Rory decided to do a marathon set of 10 minutes of rule-breaking, including a forged tape recording of me talking about how much I hate the show, the audience and the judges. It was really funny. The winner would be decided by the audience. According to the audience, we tied, so the mystery judge (Jared Stern) gave it to Rory. That meant I could just hang out for the rest of the night. It was a little thing that I like to call “Blessing in disguise.”

After the next matchup, Larry, Justin, me and someone else (I forgot who) went downstairs to the Cold Stone Creamery. I got chocolate ice cream with cake mixed into it. Fantastic. Larry got plain vanilla. What a loser. Justin took my advice and got chocolate with cake, and he took it to the next level and got a 32 oz. milkshake on top of that. And he’s lactose intolerant. That Schlegel’s a risk-taker.

Here’s where the blessing in disguise came into play: as we were about to get on the elevator, I heard two female voices call out, “Ryan Conner,” so I turned and guess what? The loser was halted by fans who didn’t even know that he just finished performing 50 feet from where they stood. I don’t think Rory Scovel was halted by fans. Wait a minute… was he? No, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t. But what about that one girl? No, she didn’t exist… I hate Rory Scovel and his beard. I hate him so much.

Frank Hong dominated the rest of the Kumite and won.