Roasting a friend who is going away

Cassidy Henehan is a much-loved NYC comic who is returning to his hometown of New Orleans in a couple of weeks. On Friday night, there was a roast in his honor at Coco 66. Tons of fun and a lot of love in the room (disguised as nastiness of course).

Here's a photo I took of Cass from the stage as he closed out the night:



That light came on and I reached for my phone as fast as I could. Didn't even notice the appropriate "Exit" signs in the background until later. (More of my photography here in case you're curious.)

I had never done a roast set before so it was interesting coming up with the material. You kinda have to reverse engineer jokes. Start with the list of people and figure out what things there are to make fun of them about. Then try to figure out the back door to get to it. Extra points if you're extra nasty or have a very creative approach.

Some of my lines: "X is so fat, the other day I had to convince five Japanese tourists that he was NOT actually Ground Zero." "Y has a real gambling problem. The only way we got him here tonight was by telling him Coco was a horse and the odds were 66-1." "A lot of girls think Z is very chivalrous. They don't realize he's holding the door open for them because he forgot he's not still at work." (Last one about a comic who works as a doorman. A lot of the jokes were very insidery like that.)

Also, I had one of Cassidy's set lists from a month ago. It only had two things on it: 1) Anything 2) The Rain. Yes, it actually said the word "anything." And I saw the set...he never did talk about the rain. So I ended by pulling that out.

I, along with everyone else on stage, got it pretty good too. I should spend less time writing this blog and more time writing jokes! I'm a narcissist! My suits are old and cheap! And so am I! Etc. It's actually kinda nice. All that shit that people say behind your back comes out. If you're the type who likes to know what people really think of ya, even the painful stuff can be good to hear.

These one-off shows where everyone has to come up with new/fresh material are always fun too. Feels like a real community thing as opposed to normal shows which are a bit more "look at me." Kudos to Nick Turner for doing a great job putting it together.


(Photo by Melissa Teran.)