Erica and I went to see Demetri Martin's sold out "These are Jokes" show at the Lakeshore Theater on Saturday night. The show was being recorded for a Comedy Central Records release, which continues to be one of my fascinations with standup recordings -- he was doing four shows and just, you know, trusting that out of those four shows he'd get a good album. Madness.

The aforementioned jokes were, indeed, funny. Demetri just tells jokes, none of which are longer than 3 or 4 sentences, so it was nice that he varied the evening up by setting some of the jokes to a drum-machine and glockenspiel backing, others to guitar noodlings, and yet another set to a waltz with Will Forte on backing vocals.

Leo Allen opened up for Demetri and I thought he looked familiar -- a quick Google this afternoon revealed that I'd seen the Comedy Central Presents of his comedy duo Slovin and Allen. Also funny stuff -- I'd like to see more of him.

And if you weren't sure we're in the 21st Century yet -- at the end of the show Demetri came back out onto stage and told us that his flight back to New York had been canceled and so he'd be in town on Sunday to do an in-store or signing somewhere -- and that to find out where, we should check his MySpace page.

...

Erica had to leave the show early to go do KOKO at The Playground. Unfortunately, when she got there she discovered that the heat was out and the show ended up being canceled. Double-boo. And that meant that the Don't Spit the Water show was canceled as well, which means the world missed the debut of Clockwatcher Samson. I even bought a new wrestling mask at Chicago Comics and everything. Triple-boo.

(New Chicago Metroblogger Nicolette was at the later Demetri Martin show -- I noticed the drunk guys she talks about when I was on my way out.)