Out Shabbos / Off the Wall Comedy Club Review

I decided to leave Givat Shmuel this weekend - unfortunately not under the best circumstances. A friend of mine from the sates unfortunately suffered the terrible loss of his one month old first born son and was sitting shiva in Allon Shvut. I normally would most likely not make a 2 hour commute for a shiva call but I know that most of his closer friends are in the U.S. and that anyone that he would appreciate seeing any friendly faces. I figured that once I was travelling that far I may as well stay for shabbos.

So I contacted my good buddy D. Erdfarb who invited me to stay over at his kollel apartment.

Friday morning we had pancakes in my apartment. This is becoming a near weekly ritual and it is becoming one of my favorite points of my week. There is a female friend of the apartment that comes over regularly and she volunteers to make fresh pancakes from scratch. (I do not know if this is a lot of work, but they taste great so I am grateful.) I am very into these simple pleasures so it's really great. All I need to add to this is hot chocolate and I am set. (This week was Cappuccino so it was still pretty good.)

I stayed in the guest bedroom at Erdfarbs with an American mattress and it kept out all the light - it was a terrific sleep. (I made sure to utilize it Shabbos day too.) D. and I were chavrusas together in YU in Rav Willig's shiur. He has a very cute son (that I am now good friends with even though he only calls me "abba's friend") and his wife is expecting soon too. It's great to see friend's families growing so fast.

As I already updated about Gush in the past there is not much to say. Although they do have new fish in the moat around the Yeshiva which is awesome.

Motz"sh I paid the shiva call and it was very painful and sad (as expected). After that I tremped back to Yerushalaim which was great fun, for no other reason than when I am asked: "Where to?", I can answer like the hitchhikers in movies: "As far as you can take me." (And hope they understand that means J'lem...)

I met up with some buddies in J'lem after and we went to Off the Wall Comedy Club which is run by David Kilimnick, the brother of one of my other YU chavrutas. Unfortunately David wasn't performing as I have seen his stuff on Youtube and some of it is hilarious. (My review of the place is below.)

Afterwards I went to tachana, got some dinner, popcorn (15 shek for medium) and deodorant (28 shek for small Axe deoderant!) and headed back to G"S.

Overall it was one of my busier weekends.


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Off the Wall Comedy Club - Review

The first performer, the hostess of the evening was absolutely terrible. Not even in the, "wow she is so bad its funny" way even. It was more of the "oh my god this is unbearably painful does someone have a fun so we can just end this now" kind of terrible. Mid performance she actually asked me "Sir, are you having a goodtime? You don't seem to be laughing." Since I did not want to be a jerk, I merely feigned laughter rather than responding "I am not laughing because there has been no good jokes yet. I have received funnier email forwards than this."

The next guy was an 18-year old who's supposed to be in Yeshiva now but instead is wasting his year doing medicore standup. Some of his stuff was ok, but some of his jokes were just dumb.

The next guy was a guest appearance by I think part owner Jeremy. He reminded me of the type of guys you see in NYC on a random weeknight. He was ok, but I'm not very into his type of delivery. I can imagine a full show by him is probably pretty good.

The last guy, however, was hilarious. His jokes were all very topical and well delivered. I wish I remembered his name so you could see him if you ever visit. It was 8 oclock show on december 16, so you could probably check the website and see who it was. (My favorite jokes were about Aliyah experience, Facebook, and Yeshiva)

The show cost 30 shekel (student 25) , plus a mandatory drink (8-20 shekel). Overall I would recommend giving the place a try. I thought the decor was fairly good, and it had a good atmosphere. I like that the shows are not dirty and there are no curse words, no vulgarity, and no inappropriatness. (Something you will rarely find in NYC.) I think next time I will do more research into who is performing before going though. It was a great idea by Kilimnick and I wish him the best of luck. It is worth visiting just to support the endevour. He also has Hebrew nights. Probably a good place to take a date too.