I am a V.I.P.

Okay, so maybe it is not I who is Very Important, but I was with a Premium Blend alumnus which allowed me V.I.P. access to Comedy Central’s taping of the next season of P.B. The host was D.L. (Peeeee) Hughley. (get it, peee-hughley?) A bad, bad choice in hosts. He speaks as though his cheeks are chubby on the inside. There’s just too much interfering with normal speech patterns. His set during the taping of the first episode was pretty good, but when it came to reading from the teleprompter to introduce a comic he fizzled. Bad host, bad, bad.

My only other complaint was the lull in between episodes. While we waited for the band and host to change clothes, the warm-up “comic” led us with a little game of playing matchmaker. A woman in the audience would stand up, Warm Up Comic would ask a few basic questions (name, age, etc.), would hint at making a joke but would fall short, and then solicit a man to volunteer to meet her after the show. It might as well have been a horse auction. “Look at this little filly right here, boy I’d like to ride her bare back! Going once, going twice . . . YES, YOU! Meet her after the show! All right, next single woman . . .”

It was all very misogynistic and did absolutely nothing to keep the audience engaged (which is, you know, the point) as it went on way too long after the novelty of it wore off. If that’s the route they wanted to go, they should have had a guy like Ron Poole who is aces at audience interaction. He could have turned that 20 minutes into a show in and of itself.

Luckily the stand-up talent rose above D.L. Hughley’s marbles-in-his-mouth speech impediment and the Warm Up Comic’s sh*ting on the audience energy. . . there really wasn’t a dud act to be found. More importantly, Julius Sharpe did well, much to my, Christian, Eric, Jay and Bob‘s delight. His was a job well done, and I recommend you set your TiVo now.