33rd Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition Champion: Michael Malone

A comedy club is a very different thing than a big theater–the crowd is right on top of you, ready to interact with you (whether you want them to interact with you or not) and they’re not simply there to help you get the score that you need to push you up into the top spot for the week.  You’re going to have to work hard and earn those scores.

Joe Klocek certainly knows that.  He’s been through this a couple of times before.  The last time he took on the Seattle International Comedy Competition, in 2004, Joe made the finals and took 4th place over all.  In this year’s event, going into the last night, Joe was in…that’s right, 4th place.  Joe did NOT want to finish in 4th place this year.

Ahead of Joe in the weekly standings, going into this night, were Landry, Michael Malone and Tyrone Hawkins…and they all wanted to finish 1st for this year.  Joe would have to push past at least one of them if he was to not finish in 4th place.

Joe also had some urgency added into his situation–because immediately after tonight’s show, Joe would be racing to SeaTac airport for a flight taking him to China.  Hopefully he could rest on the plane because upon landing, he’d be driving four hours to do a show before he’d even get to check into his hotel!

Landry, no stranger to pressure situations as a previous winner of the Boston Comedy Festival and this year’s World Series of Comedy, would have his own challenge going into this night–he was going to be performing first.  He needed a big score while taking the bullet…while taking the “Go Up First Curse” head on.

Michael Malone, on the other hand, who suffered the Go Up First Curse the previous night at Bremerton’s Admiral Theatre (where he finished 3rd for the night, which dropped him from the top spot for the week into second place going into this last night of the competition), would be going up last–possibly a prime spot to get a good score…or, perhaps, falling into a dead zone where the crowd is tired out from a long show or too tipsy to control.

And Tyrone Hawkins, with two nightly wins in the four previous shows before this final night of the finals, held a slim lead over the field and was going up third–an excellent place to be.

The math was cruel to the fifth finalist and the only two-time champion of this event, Elliot Maxx–all he could do on this night would be to possibly play spoiler…

On this night, the show…as it has every night in this final week…and, truly, every night this entire competition…was strong, top to bottom.  The audience loved every performer and every performer earned their encore point.  It would be put into the hands of the judges and the cruelty of math.

On this night, the judges favored the pure material-based approach of San Francisco’s Joe Klocek…and earned the biggest scores of the night–by far.  He was the number one scored performer from four of the five judges (the fifth judge gave the night to Landry)…and that gave Joe Klocek his second nightly win of the week, matching Tyrone Hawkins in nightly wins.

The official nightly results for Night Five of the Finals Week of SICC-33 looked like this:

Finals Week-Night Five Nightly Top 5

1. Joe Klocek (San Francisco, CA)  
2. Landry (Atlanta, GA/Toronto, ON)
3. Michael Malone (Los Angeles, CA)
4. Tyrone Hawkins (Tacoma, WA)  
5. Elliot Maxx (Ballard, WA) 

…but what none of these performers knew at the time the Nightly Top 5 was announced was what their scores were…and how these scores, added to their previous scores, would impact the final standings for the competition.

Could Joe have scored high enough to push himself all the way from fourth to first?  Could Tyrone Hawkins hold on to first despite finishing fourth on this final night?  Michael Malone was closer to passing Tyrone than Landry or Joe, but Michael didn’t finish as high as either Landry or Joe…so, who won?

Without access to the math behind the final results, they might look a little strange…but all the math was triple checked and the equations all added up properly to give us the following results:

FINAL STANDINGS: L-R: Drew Barth (host), Michael Malone (1st), Elliot Maxx (5th), Landry (4th), Joe Klocek (2nd), Tyrone Hawkins (3rd)

Elliot Maxx took 5th place for the week–and he knew it too, not waiting to be called on stage as the 5th place finisher by our host Drew Barth…but just coming on stage on his own.

Landry had to be surprised to have finished 4th for the week–after all, he went into the night in third place…finished 2nd for the night…how could he have slipped back?  Well, the answer to that is simple–he was passed by Joe, who had been in 4th going into this last show…before taking the top spot for this last night of the finals, and his 2nd place finish did not give him a score to earn him a significant jump forward in the standings.

Tyrone Hawkins had gone into the night in first place for the week…but a fourth place finish on this final night earned him a new “drop score”–the lowest nightly score that a performer earns for a week is dropped from their weekly total.  That wasn’t surprising–he was one of three of the performers tonight whose score from tonight’s show was low enough to become their new drop score (only Landry and Joe Klocek actually improved their score with their score from the final show.)  Tyrone would have to settle for third place.

With a mad race to the airport and an international flight waiting for him, Joe Klocek had to find out if he’d made up enough ground from having won the final night to push all the way into taking the championship.  Unfortunately, while Joe could have and DID earn a score high enough to push himself past Landry and Tyrone Hawkins…even a nightly winning score would not be enough to push him past Michael Malone.  Still, second place is not fourth place…so Joe avoided repeating his finish from eight years ago.

Despite finishing third on the final night of finals…despite earning a score on this last night of the finals low enough to become his new “drop” score…and despite only snagging one nightly win, when both Joe and Tyrone had two each…the math showed that the consistently high scores of Los Angeles’ Michael Malone would be enough for him to be declared as the champion of the 33rd Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition.

After 22 shows over 25 nights at various venues in Western Washington, with hundreds of scores from scores of judges…it came down to this:  Michael Malone defeated Joe Klocek by 18 hundredths of a point.

(Michael was only half a point ahead of Tyrone and Landry.)

This only serves to illustrate how strong this year’s field was…how competitive this competition turned out to be.

And since we have a worthy, battle-tested new champion in Los Angeles’ Michael Malone…we can now close the book on an exciting year for the Seattle International Comedy Competition.

It’s over.

(Until we do it all again next year, of course…)

L-R: Drew Barth (host), Joe Klocek (1st), Michael Malone (3rd), Elliot Maxx (5th), Landry (2nd), Tyrone Hawkins (4th)

…and it kind of…sort of…happened again.

So, it was a Saturday night at the beautiful Admiral Theater in Bremerton.  This was the fourth of five shows in the final week of he 33rd Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition–and going into this show, the scores were astonishingly close.  Almost unfathomably close–with the difference between 1st place down to fourth pace being only some tenths…even hundredths of a point.  This show mattered–and all the performers knew it.

Michael Malone certainly knew it.  He would not only be taking on the Bremerton audience and his fellow competitors…but also the Go Up First Curse.  And Michael Malone took the fight right at everybody–it was perhaps one of the strongest and most consistent sets that anyone has had in this year’s competition.  He wanted to send a message…hell, he wanted to end the whole competition right then and there.

And maybe he did–but Joe Klocek, who followed Michael, certainly wasn’t just going to give up.  In fact, Joe came out and delivered haymaker after haymaker.  Only a stronger dismount gave Michael the advantage.

The third competitor of the night, Elliot Maxx, started out very strong, getting to one of his edgier songs far more quickly than he had at any time previous in this year’s competition.  Elliot’s set would go off on a few tangents from that point…but there were definitely big laughs throughout.

After an intermission, Tyrone Hawkins picked up the gauntlet that Michael had thrown down with his show opening set.  Tyrone owned that stage tonight…and the crowd loved it.

Closing out the show was Landry, who has been rock solid this entire competition…and he brought it, yet again, on this night.

When it came time to announce the order of finish…the crowd accepted that Elliot was in 5th place and that Joe was in 4th place (though Joe, who had locked his keys in his car earlier in the night, wasn’t there to accept his props on this night)…but when Michael Malone was announced in 3rd place, the crowd reacted strongly–in the way that only Bremerton audiences seem to…  There was a tidal wave like roar–some were cheering and some were booing–indicating that the audience did not necessarily agree with Michael not being higher in the order.

The odd thing was, the cheering for Landry in 2nd place…and then for Tyrone in 1st place for the night–was plenty loud.  They obviously liked Landry and Tyrone a lot–so, I’m not sure what the audience wanted…a three-way tie for first place, perhaps?

Producer Ron Reid and I exchanged exasperated looks…shrugged our shoulders and simply accepted the simple fact:  It’s Bremerton.  There’s nothing more that we could have done.

Here’s the order of finish, the way the judges saw things, for this night.

Finals Week-Night Four Nightly Top 5

1. Tyrone Hawkins (Tacoma, WA)  
2. Landry (Atlanta, GA/Toronto, ON)  
3. Michael Malone (Los Angeles, CA)
4. Joe Klocek (San Francisco, CA)
5. Elliot Maxx (Ballard, WA) 

Lost a little bit in the crowd’s reaction for Michael Malone was the fact that Tyrone Hawkins had an excellent set and earned his second nightly win for the week.  A very important factor when it comes to the close race to determine this year’s champion.

L-R: Tyrone Hawkins (SICC-33 Finals Week-Night Four Winner) and Drew Barth (host)

Despite being the only performer with two nightly wins this week, Tyrone does NOT have this competition wrapped up.  There is only a single point separating first place from fourth place in this week.  That means everything will depend on the fifth and final show of this final week of the 33rd Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition.  Someone will be crowned as the new champion of this event…and that someone will be crowned tonight, Sunday November 25th, at the Comedy Underground, in Seattle.

LAST SHOW:
SICC-33 Finals Week–Night Five
SUNDAY–November 25, 2012
Comedy Underground, Seattle
Showtime:  8pm

L-R: Elliot Maxx (5th), Landry (2nd), Michael Malone (3rd), Tyrone Hawkins (2nd), Tyrone’s son, Drew Barth (host).
NOT PICTURED: Joe Klocek (4th)

And, based on the fact that we were greeted with an enthusiastic, sold-out audience, primed for a great night of comedy–who all came out to see the show despite a drenching November rain–I get the feeling that they were glad we’d come back to the KPC too!

And…speaking of “being back”–we had both host Drew Barth and finalist Elliot Maxx back with us for this show after each had been unavailable for Night Two of the finals at the Vashon Theatre.

I think all of our finalists benefited from having Thanksgiving day to collect their thoughts, regather their strength and tweak their efforts a bit–as all five of our performers came out firing on all cylinders…with Joe Klocek opening the show off with another solid performance, Michael Malone–who has been fighting off a cold all week–came out with tons of energy and audience rapport–followed strongly…and then Landry built on that energy with his own fine work.  After an intermission, Tyrone Hawkins delivered his strongest and most cohesive set of the finals only to have Elliot Maxx close things out with smiles and songs.

It was a great night of comedy…and that should be enough.  However, this is a competition and we need numbers and rankings and all that stuff.

Finals Week-Night Three Nightly Top 5

1. Michael Malone (Los Angeles, CA)  
2. Tyrone Hawkins (Tacoma, WA)  
3. Landry (Atlanta, GA/Toronto, ON) 
4. Elliot Maxx (Ballard, WA) 
5. Joe Klocek (San Francisco, CA)

There were some surprised with the results–perhaps none more surprised than nightly winner, Michael Malone.  He thought that either Joe (who fell victim to the “Go Up First Curse”) or Tyrone would add a second nightly win in this finals week…rather than his getting his first first place nightly finish in the finals.

Let’s give Michael some photographic props here…

L-R: Michael Malone (SICC-33 Finals Week-Night Three Winner) and Drew Barth (host)

As you can imagine, the scores are quite close–as there’s been someone different in first place…and someone different in last place every night of the finals so far.  There are two shows to go–two shows to grab big scores…two shows to try to avoid the Go Up First Curse…two shows before we find out who the champion of the 33rd Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition will be.

NEXT SHOW:
SICC-33 Finals Week–Night Four
SATURDAY–November 24, 2012
Admiral Theatre, Bremerton
Showtime:  8pm

L-R: Joe Klocek (5th), Landry (3rd), Michael Malone (1st), Tyrone Hawkins (2nd), Drew Barth (host), Elliot Maxx (4th)

That was certainly true for us this year–as we brought our finalists over to Vashon Island on the night before Thanksgiving for Night Two of the Finals Week of the 33rd Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition.

Well, we brought four of the five of our finalists.  Unfortunately, Elliot Maxx did not make the trip and will have to take this night as his “drop score”–as every finalist will drop their lowest nightly score of the week…and, since he didn’t perform, Elliot’s score for this night will be a 0.00…and will automatically be his lowest score for the week.

A real shame, too, because everyone who has seen Elliot during the course of this competition recognized that he would have done very well for the nearly full house we had at the Vashon Theatre.  Without Elliot, the comedy fans on Vashon Island simply had to share their love for the four performers who did make the trip…and with our special guest host on this night:  our 6th place finisher for this year, Ricarlo Flanagan from Detroit.

Ricarlo did a great job and even the judges noted that they wish they could have given him good scores.  He kept the show moving (he had to…the Vashon Theater had one more showing of “Life of Pi”-3D to offer after our comedy show was done) and was just as funny as he’d shown himself to be while he was competing in this year’s event.

Our four finalists all came out swinging–gone, for the most part, was any tentativeness lingering from the previous show.  Each performer now knew what they could do with fifteen to twenty minutes…and each performer on this night built on that with lots of very specific local references–which drew the audience in even more as the show went on.

If the audience seemed to like everyone, how would our judges see things?  Well, here’s the official order of finish for the night:

Finals Week-Night Two Nightly Top 5…errr, Top 4, I guess…

1. Joe Klocek (San Francisco, CA)
2. Landry (Atlanta, GA/Toronto, ON) 
3. Michael Malone (Los Angeles, CA) 
4. Tyrone Hawkins (Tacoma, WA) 

…and that order of finish is a little odd, because it ended up being exactly opposite of the order of performance (Tyrone went up first, followed by Michael, then Landry and then Joe.)  However, taking a peek at the actual scores for this night suggests that there was really a three way tie for first place…as Joe, Landry and Michael all come out of the night with nearly identical scores.  (Tyrone, in 4th place, takes away a very respectable score that marries up well with his Night One victory.)

…but, nearly identical is not the same as identical, so let’s give Joe Klocek his props as the winner of Night Two!

L-R: Joe Klocek (SICC-33 Finals Week-Night Two Winner) and Ricarlo Flanagan (host)

All of us involved with the 33rd Annual Seattle International Comedy Competition want to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!

We’ll be back with the last three shows of this year’s event starting Friday with a 7:30pm show at the Kirkland Performance Center, an 8pm show on Saturday at the Admiral Theatre in Bremerton and the final night of the finals week on Sunday at the Comedy Underground in Seattle when a new champion will be crowned!

L-R: Ricarlo Flanagan (host), Tyrone Hawkins (4th), Michael Malone (3rd), Landry (2nd), Joe Klocek (1st)

Also, our five finalists needed to adjust to the longer set times of the finals.  In the Semi-Finals, they were asked for a ten minute set…but in the Finals, they now need to do a 15-20 minute set.  And this was their first time putting their long sets up for competitive judgment.

The end result of this was a show that was certainly entertaining for everyone in attendance but it felt a little tentative.  (Perhaps that also had something to do with a stage that was built in a “T” shape and had a significant drop to the floor if a wrong step was taken.)  Even our judges were a little unsure of themselves–with each judge having different favorites on the night.  And the end result of our judges’ scores ended up being different than the “popular choice” that the Washington Athletic Club members tally on their own from ballots received from all of the audience on this night.

So, let’s share the WAC Choice winner for this year…that award goes to Joe Klocek! 

L-R: WAC Choice Winner Joe Klocek and Drew Barth (host)

Congratulations, Joe!

Now, here’s how the judges scores saw things (and, in the end, it is the judge scores that count towards determining who will be this year’s champion):

Finals Week-Night One Nightly Top 5

1. Tyrone Hawkins (Tacoma, WA)  
2. Joe Klocek (San Francisco, CA) 
3. Michael Malone (Los Angeles, CA)
4. Landry (Atlanta, GA/Toronto, ON)
5. Elliot Maxx (Ballard, WA) 

So, taking the top spot on this night…and pushing past the WAC Choice to earn those top honors, was Tacoma’s Tyrone Hawkins.  He was the last of our competitors to take the stage on this night and delivered a set that was full of goofy highlights (his tangent into wanting to become rich enough to buy, own, pimp out and ride a moose through downtown was inexplicably hilarious) and the set pieces that had earned him his spot in the finals. 

L-R: Tyrone Hawkins (SICC-33 Finals Week-Night One Winner) and Drew Barth (host)

Congratulations to Tyrone!

So, on this night…we honor two winners–though, really, when you get right down to it…EVERYONE was a winner on this night at the Washington Athletic Club.

The Finals Week continues with our traditional Thanksgiving Eve show over on Vashon Island at the Vashon Theatre–perhaps, some more sensor recalibration will be needed for that show as well?  (We’ll find out soon enough!)

NEXT SHOW:
SICC-33 Finals Week–Night Two
WEDNESDAY–November 21, 2012
Vashon Theatre, Vashon
Showtime:  7:30pm