‘Nobodies of Comedy’ get their 20 minutes

One of the comics, Joe Devito, was on ‘Last Comic Standing.’

By JOHN BENSON

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

With a title like “Nobodies of Comedy,” why wouldn’t you want to see a ragtag group of rising funnymen — Joe Devito, Jon Fisch, Pete Lee and Rodney Laney — coming to Warren on Saturday for a show at Packard Music Hall?

“‘Nobodies of Comedy’ is a really fun tour, and what they do is put together a group of four or five comics and bill it as the funniest comics you haven’t heard of yet,” said Devito, calling from New York City. “It’s people who have done Comedy Central and ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’ and stuff like that.”

Devito is coming to Northeast Ohio straight from NBC-TV reality show “Last Comic Standing,” where he made it into the top 32 contestants for season five. This former advertising writer-turned-stand-up-comedian said he’s looking forward to the change of pace provided by the “Nobodies of Comedy” show.

“What’s nice about it, it’s 20 minutes versus on ‘Last Comic Standing’ we were doing three minutes, which is the worst because you need to be funny, relaxed and you have two seconds to make it start happening,” Devito said. “So this is cool. With 20 minutes, you get to know who the person is.”

Devito said the expanded onstage time for these comedians, who are normally headliners in any other show, allows them to offer a greatest-hits-like set filled with what invariably should be tried-and-true material.

“I’m not exactly sure what I’ll talk about but one of the things I’ve been discussing lately has to do with TV commercials and how people are so lazy that they just make a pill for it,” Devito said. “The new thing killing me is the restless leg syndrome commercial. Because the cure for restless leg used to be go take a walk you lazy lump, but now it’s like you need to take a pill for this.

“And I like how it says it may cause sexual and gambling urges. When I heard that, I never thought I’d be nostalgic for plain old diarrhea as a side effect. This one, you wake up, you’re in Vegas and you’ve gambled away your kid’s college fund and spent your money on hookers but your legs feel fantastic. That’s important.”

Up next for Devito, he hopes, is cracking the late night television show circuit. He also said he’s busy studying acting in hopes of generating sitcom attention.

“It’s frustrating, I’m an awful actor,” Devito said. “I just started to get some training and it’s really annoying when you try to do something and you realize, ‘Wow, Lindsay Lohan is better at this than I am.’ That’s very frightening to admit that to myself.”

Something else just as frightening that Devito apparently has come to terms with is the fact, well, um, he’s often described in the media as being nerdy.

“Even my compliments have some sort of insult,” Devito said. “And I see that a lot when I go audition for a commercial. They’ll send you a breakdown and it says, ‘We’re looking for a nerdy guy. He’s probably losing his hair a little bit.’ It just turns into a list of insults.

“Then I go to an audition, and I’m in a room with guys who kind of look like me. It’s really strange, especially since none of them were all that good looking. ‘Wow, it’s a bunch of fat, Italian balding guys here, what a treat.’ It’s nice to be included in this group.”