Opie & Anthony's Funniest Listener Contest @ Comix

Opie and Anthony recently announced they were having a funniest listener contest. Out of the tons of entries submitted, ten finalists were chosen to perform 3-5 minutes of their best stand-up at a NYC comedy club. Considering all the performers were virtually unknown, most only doing stand-up for a few years, the crowd at Comix stretched from wall to wall.

Rich Vos, the night's host, stepped out onstage and did about twenty mintues of his own material in addition to introducing the judge's: Opie, Bonnie McFarlene (Vos' wife), and some guy named Sam. Anthony supposedly couldn't make it because he was sick, a.k.a. probably getting a blow job from his wife, and Jim Norton was running late because, according to Vos, "..we're in the meatpacking district."

Funny listener number one was not funny at all. He came out wearing a Superman shirt and kept talking about wet toilet paper while shaking his butt in the air. Thankfully this was not a preview of the entire night, although there were some questionable performers. Among the un-funnies was a girl who asked if it was anyone's birththday and received dead silence from the audience, a guy whose entire skit seemed like it was one long drug reference, and another guy who kept screaming and talking about this girl he tried to screw who owned a cock-blocking dog.

Other comics compensated by telling jokes and having skits that were actually, what do you know, funny. One guy, probably the oldest contestant, was your typical Italian Brooklynite - think Andrew Dice Clay's voice coming out of Bob Saget. There were few if any points in his set with no reaction from the crowd. The very last performer was a gem. She had never done stand-up at all and was admittedly hyperventilating prior to her performance. She certainly wasn't fall out your seat, piss your pants funny, but she brought more laughs than many other "seasoned" performers.

While the scores were being tallied, the crowd was impatient. Vos tried doing his doing his thing, but it was clear who everyone wanted: Jim Norton. So, for a few minutes Norton got up on stage and mainly insulted weird looking audience members and those who kept shouting out their own lame quips. About five minutes later, the funniest listener was finally chosen. All the performers were pulled out on stage and Vos announced the winner, using the wrong name. Good job.

After that minor mess was sorted, the true winner, and recipient of a 42-inch TV, was announced: Jonathan Sosis. It definitely was a tight competition, but at the same time it wasn't a complete surprise he won. He truly was the funniest person up there, making comments on everything from being Jewish to retarded people. And though he's only done stand-up for about a year, you'd never know it.

-Lilly Ryden

To check out more of Jon Sosis:

http://www.myspace.com/jonathansosis