Need a good first date idea? This is not it. It’s more like the third date when you’re ready to see what your person is made of.
Smutty Clown Comedy at Saratoga Bar isn’t for the faint of heart, nor is it for the politically correct. Seriously. Do not bring that special someone who is canvassing for any sort of human rights. You will be dumped. Immediately.
But if you’re looking for a fun and kooky way to spend a Thursday night and you can handle straight cisgender guys yelling “you all are cunts” into the microphone, this may just be your place.
Billed as a monthly X-rated open mic, Smutty Clown is hosted by Sterling Clark and Whitney Streed. Clark is pretty much adorable – on this night she was wearing a floral dress and cardigan, hair in a head scarf with large glasses aka Sally Jessy Raphael. Streed was walking around in a suit, looking like she knew everyone in the place.
[Here are] “Some of the best comedians in town, saying some of the dirtiest things to you,” Streed said.
Virginia Jones, one of the funniest of the night, poked fun at her name – “It’s totally a black girl name, I get it. Virginia Jones either sings in a church or dies.” With hot pink dye streaking her dark hair and donning a suit with a tee-shirt, Jones, who is white, went on, “I don’t trust black Republicans for the same reason I don’t trust gay Republicans. Why would you want to be with a team that hates you?”
She described rockabilly guys “as faggy as you can get while still being a straight dude,” and said her experience on OKCupid has led her to believe that most straight men in Portland are bearded, bisexual, polyamorous and do graphic design – by freelance.
“I would like to be the expert in cock-sucking at my house,” she told the audience on why she ultimately decided to not date bisexual guys.
After a swear-filled rant about handjobs in a Korean spa from a guy with neck tattoos who lived in Vegas, Richie Stratton came on stage to say, “That act was sadder than a Craigslist personal ad.”
In the world of open mics, you’re lucky to see one or two that really light up the stage – that exude confidence and understand how to engage an audience. Stratton is one of these people – “I tried to kill myself,” he said as part of his twisted bit. “I took a whole bottle of pills but they were multivitamin and I woke up fighting crime.”
He added later, “I don’t do cocaine. The last thing I need is to be confident and not shut up.”
Guess maybe you had to be there.
It’s easy to rant about shitty jokes or the people who can’t deliver them – but I will say this – it’s not easy getting up in front of a crowd and performing for a laugh. And though much of the humor at Smutty Clown is refreshingly perverse and dirty, it’s not clean in the sense of smart or conscious – for the most part. But that’s just the night I went – something tells me every month is different – even if the same comedians show up to play.
Go and judge for yourself. Just have thick skin and be ready to deal with long-haired hipsters double-fisting beers and clapping obnoxiously in the middle of jokes. Kudos to Streed and Clark for creating a space for this to exist – the wildly inappropriate humor strangely fits in this wildly inappropriate world.
