comedy

The Comedy Bureau “Tips Its Hat” this week to JERROD CARMICHAEL.

During the first edition of First Five, a delightfully refreshing stand up comedy show where all the comedians do their very first five minutes they ever wrote, Jerrod performed off a crumpled piece a paper and performed a set that he did at a high school talent show in which he started with telling the principal to go fuck himself and then, still in the spirit of poking fun at his former self, ranted how about he doesn’t understand Siegfried and Roy and their white tiger like damn… damn.

With the likes of Greg Proops, Paul F. Tompkins, and Reggie Watts receiving Tips of the Hat, you might just be wondering exactly who is Jerrod Carmichael.  If credits are a concern, he’s a legitimate regular at the big clubs here in LA, but that’s not really why he’s being given this week’s “Tip of the Hat”.  Simply put, Jerrod Carmichael is hilarious all the time.

Whether at the Original Room at the Comedy Store (where he’s a paid regular) or at the back of Meltdown Comics for the indie-alt comedy show Meltdown or even at a sparse college bar full of the drunken frat/sorority crowd, Carmichael kills it.  As composed and mild-mannered as he may seem by merely staying in one place on stage, often keeping the mic in the mic stand, Carmichael keeps people hanging off every word he says, especially since he’ll linger on a couple of them in any given joke.  Though he can be described as a low-energy comic, he’s still incredibly engaging with his stage presence as he’s genuinely delighted to be telling jokes wherever he happens to be and a delivery comparable to a lovely, slowly kindling Christmas fireplace.

When it comes to writing jokes and their subsequent economy of words, Carmichael, hailing all the way from North Carolina, has definitely honed what he writes, or even what he riffs, into often perfectly phrased lines making the fact that he’s broke, an extremely common topic amongst comics, both original and hysterical, “I’m at a point in my life… where… … $30… can change… everything.”  No matter if he talks about his life or past wars of the United States, Carmichael’s observations on anything are, like I said earlier, hilarious all the time.

If you’re in LA, you’ll catch him popping up any sort of show from any size of club, so check back at the Comedy Bureau frequently to see when and where he’s going up.