Happy New Year Post Mortem

Following is a WSVN-FOX transcript from last night’s New Year’s Eve performance by the MVB Standup Comic at the MVB Lounge in Little H. As you will see, it didn’t go too well and we apologize to all of those who were offended and want their money back. However, if you had read the fine print on your ticket stub you would have discovered, refunds are prohibited due to the incendiary nature of the act, which will invariably offend those living in a hypersensitive community such as Miami anyway. Plus, you were also notified via the fine print that MVB couldn’t be held responsible for any bodily injury or mental anguish as a result of the act, caveat emptor, yada, yada, yada.

MVB Standup Comic (leaning on mic stand with a mojito in his hand): Hello! Hola! Happy New Year! Thanks for supporting my habit. (Sips mojito).

(Applause, whistles. The Comic shields his eyes to look at audience)

MVB SUC: Pardon me, but are there any Cubans out there?

(Shouts, whistles, applause, and lots of Spanish)

MVB SUC: Well, welcome to Miami!

HECKLER: 'Welcome to Miami'? We OWN the place, gringo!

(Lots of laughter, applause)

MVB SUC: Then you must be American.

HECKLER: Yeah, Cuban American!

(More laughter, whistles, and applause)

MVB SUC: Like the Irish own Boston. I can dig it. What would Miami be without its mojitos, cafe cubano, and big butt Latinas?

(Unrestrained applause, laughter, pounding on the tables, accompanied with shouts of joy as some big butt Latinas stand up to shake it all around)

MVB SUC: Yeah, baby, shake it this way! Anyway, a while back before they strung up this chain link fence between you and me and began offering a complimentary free mojito with every performance--.

HECKLER: Hey, without the mojito, man, no one would come!

(Laughter)

MVB SUC: Ain’t that the truth. It’s like the drink is the second half of a comedy team, Mojito and Me. Hell, it even gets top billing.

HECKLER: It deserves it!

(Laughter, applause)

MVB SUC: Yeah, maybe I can get Bacardi to sponsor a tour.

HECKLER: There you go, gringo!

(Laughter)

MVB SUC: Anyway, before the fence and the mojitos, I was pretending to interview this affordable-housing-Cuban-guy-developer who was in trouble for not developing which is to say he had taken millions of taxpayer dollars for everything but—including building himself a 14,000 square foot house—which he revealed was really a “Country Club for the Homeless.” Anyway, the interview begins with him picking up his cell phone and responding to my first question with “Si.”

(Abrupt silence, butts cease to shake. The Comic, surprised, looks around)

MVB SUC: What? I can’t use it? That’s exactly the kind of reaction I got the first time I used it in my act. Do I have to get written permission from somebody’s mother first? What gives?

HECKLER: Do you speak Spanish?

MVB SUC: No.

HECKLER: Then you can’t use it. It offends us.

MVB SUC: It “offends” you?

HECKLER: Si.

MVB SUC: I don’t get it. Why?

HECKLER: It implies that there is an anti-Hispanic undercurrent to your joke.

MVB SUC: Are you kidding me? The guy is Cuban, for crise sakes. You can bet if he was Italian, I would have thrown in a few “fagedabouits.” Hey, wait a minute. That sounds exactly like the message I found on my blog criticizing me for using “Si” in my act. You must be—

HECKLER: That’s right, I’m Anonymous!

MVB SUC (looking him over): Hell, man, I’d thought you’d be taller.

HECKLER: And I thought you’d be funnier.

(Heckler throws the first bottle of the evening at the fence)

MVB SUC: Whoe, dude, relax. Can’t you take a joke?

(The heckler, screaming, spittle flowing from the corner of his mouth, throws himself against the protective fencing but he can’t get at the MVB Standup Comic)

MVB SUC: I guess not.

(The MVB Standup Comic walked up to the protective barrier and hit the heckler’s hand with his microphone, which got the guy cussing in Spanish, the sound system screaming, and everyone grabbing their ears. As he fell back from the fencing, his big butt wife caught him and, swinging her big caboose, cleared the mojitos from the tables around her as she tried to calm him down. When he pushed her away and went for something under his coat, MVB’s B.S. Detector moved in, grabbed his arm and wrenched it behind his back before shoving him up against the chain link and chrome doming him. When he fell limp, the Detector grabbed him by his jacket’s collar and dragged him unceremoniously across the slippery mojito strewn floor toward an exit door with his fishtailing big butt wife clearing a path of destruction through the club that would have made General Sherman envious.)

MVB SUC: Watch out for that ass, buddy—Oh, man! Sorry about that. Poor bastard. At least he went out with a smile on his face.

(This brought on a chorus of boos, shouted Spanish epithets, and a smattering of applause and laughter)

MVB SUC: I see I got a mixed group here tonight. Love me or hate me, you still paid good money to ring in the New Year with me.

(Someone threw his or her Cobb salad at him and it stuck in the chain link)

MVB SUC: Hey, why doesn’t someone toss me a mojito, man? I could use one.

(Someone tossed his mojito and the souvenir New Year’s Eve glass with the MVB logo exploded against the fence, scattering MVB’s drink of choice and slivers of glass over the Comic. After flinching, the Comic wiped his palm across his forehead and licked his fingers. Blood ran from beneath his backward Kangol and down his face)

MVB SUC: Thanks. Like I said before: mojitos, cafe cubano, and big butt Latinas; what more could you want?

HECKLER 2: How ‘bout a good joke?

MVB SUC: How ‘bout an audience with a sense of humor?

HECKLER 2: Fvck you!

(The Comic shaded his eyes to look out into the audience)

MVB SUC: Whoe, now it looks like I pissed off the Americanos.

HECKLER 2: I’m Cuban, you mamapinga!

MVB SUC: You’re “Cuban”? Does that mean you’re working for...FIDEL?

HECKLER 2: ¡Resiñate!

(At that point, the biggest, meanest, fattest bastard you ever saw stuffed into a guayabera rushed out of the shadows and threw himself at the protective fencing. The Comic stepped back just in time as it came down in front of him)

HECKLER 3 (running toward the stage): ¡Mate a comico! ¡Mate a comico!

When the Comic saw the fat bastard in the guayabera getting up and what looked like the whole audience charging the stage, he ran like hell for the nearest exit screaming “Castro’s dead! Castro’s dead!” as if that would save his raggedy ass. Where the angry mob got their torches and Cuban flags is still a mystery. Perhaps, as the Comic has suggested in earlier routines, they never leave home without them. In any event, the Comic escaped further injury thanks in part to his conditioning and the fact that he is one giant chocha.

(End WVSN-Fox transcript)

What Fox didn't know was the mob caught up to the Comic a block down Calle Ocho when he tripped over one of those giant chicken sculptures and promptly beat and kicked him to a pulp. He is now recuperating at Jackson with broken bones, cuts, and bruises. Also, he keeps asking for his mommy in a voice that makes you want to cry.

MVB Lounge New Year's Eve Show SOLD OUT!

Attack on the MiamiVision Comic!

Some people never learn.

On August 5th*, the MiamiVision Comic made a mistake joking about the Cuban exile community 's short fuse when it comes to anyone questioning their interepretation of the "American Way." The response that night was nothing compared to what happened last night.

Last night at the MiamiVision Comedy Club, the MiamiVision Comic was attacked by an angry mob who didn't find him very funny at all. What began as a luke warm reception to some well-worn jokes in the sparsly filled club on the outskirts of Little Havana, quickly turned into a mob scene when the comic tried to get topical. Hours earlier the news reported that the Dade County School Board voted to challenge a Federal Judge's order to stop them from banning the book "Vamos a Cuba." The book, part of a series depicting different countries for 5 to 7-year-old kids, was deemed by the 4th largest school district in the U.S. to be unsuitable for children because it painted a false picture of life in Cuba. The kids in the book actually seemed to be enjoying their lives and, according to the large and very vocal Cuban exile community, that ain't so and it's a lie and a danger to kids living in Dade County to tell them otherwise.

Well, wouldn't you know it, after joking about how much it will cost the school board to defend their action in court-- estimates of at least a quarter-of-a-million-dollars-- with predictions by legal experts that they will lose, he went into a riff about how Cuban's are more like Castro then they want to admit.

"The next thing I know," the MiamiVision Comic recalls from his hospital bed while nursing a black eye and a couple of broken ribs, "someone threw a mojito in my face and started cussing me out in spanish. When they rushed the stage, I thought I was going to die. I had a flashback to that old 'Frankenstein' movie when the villagers are chasing Boris Karloff through the night with torches. Well, one guy was flicking his Bic at me, that's pretty close to being a torch, I guess. Anyway, the last time I got into trouble down here, I discovered if I yelled 'I just heard Castro died!' it'd save your ass. This time it didn't."

Mercy Hospital expects the MiamiVision Comic to be released tomorrow pending further tests.

*Scroll down the main blog to that entry "Is it a joke or what..."

UpDate (6/7/07): The Miami-Dade School Board defends its ban on Vamos a Cuba before a Florida appellate court. Legal costs in the case have exceeded $250,000.00.

Is it a joke or what...

When the FAA restricts the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts from popping its beacon on and lighting up the night sky because it might interfere with pilots landing at MIA? Hell, if anything it ought to help them find it.

"I lost Miami!"
"Follow the light!"
"It's too bright! I can't see!"
"What? You didn't bring your aviator sunglasses? And you call yourself a pilot?"

(Uncontrolled laughter)

Geesh, I tell you, if I was paranoid, I'd think the Atlanta branch of the FAA which makes up these cockamamied rules has got it in for us. They're even telling us we can't build buildings as big as we want to. The nerve of them. Last time I checked this was America-- except for certain parts of Miami.

(Uneasy laughter)

Hey, I'm only kidding. Lighten up. Where's a translator when you need one?

(Someone heckles the Miami Vision Comic in Spanish. He doesn't know Spanish but senses he may have crossed the line. He tugs at his necktie and begins to sweat under the spot lights. He quickly whips out his emergency back-up line)

I just heard Castro died!

(Uncontrolled cheering and shouts of joy)

Yeah, the first parade is scheduled right after this set.

(Except for a few blog surfers that stumbled into the Miami Vision Comedy Club accidentally and haven't a clue about what is going on, the room is suddenly empty as the audience rushes out onto Calle Ocho to begin another round of marching up and down the street and waving small Cuban flags which they always carry somewhere on their bodies for exactly this kind of news).

Miami Performing Arts Center Cultural Beacon

Considering the Disney family gave $75 million dollars for the naming rights of the Frank Gehry designed symphony hall in LA, Carnival got a deal when they landed the naming rights for the nearly half-billion dollar Miami Performing Arts Center for $20 million dollars. Beggars can't be choosers but that is a drop in a bucket with a perpetual leak. Perhaps the Art Deco Sears tower can come to the rescue. Architect Cesar Pelli was forced to keep it in his design by well-meaning but misguided preservationists who went epileptic when they found out that it might get nixed in the plan. Although it is not a great example of the Art Deco style, it seems it was the only example of Art Deco architecture left in Miami. Too bad there isn't any money in the budget to hire Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen to turn it into a giant flashlight pointing skyward, its beam splitting the night like a Star Wars light sabre. That would give Miami that elusive signature piece of art or architecture it sorely lacks because no matter how grand the design and effective the accoustics are, Pelli's buildings would be hard to pick out of a lineup of concert halls. Still, the tower cries out to be shooting a beam of light into the night sky pinpointing the epicenter of the performing arts in Miami. If the monopoly known as Florida Power & Light would stop pouring millions of dollars into advertising campaigns reminding us that they are always there for us instead of putting that money into naming rights for the tower and its perpetual beam, that is money that would be well spent. FP&L will take up less space on the side of the tower than say Duracell or Eveready (but I do like the implications regarding the future and the dynamisim of the PAC), but beggars can't be choosers.


As an aside, the new Carnival Performing Arts Center website quotes Pelli regarding the Sears tower: "...it connects with a past that was precious to many people." As someone who grew up here, that statement reeks with irony. It was in the Sears tower that I was first exposed to racisim and the Jim Crow laws of 1950's Miami. I was probably five or six when I made the mistake of going to the wrong water fountain. I was thirsty and either couldn't read yet or didn't see the sign but I drank from the "Negro" water fountain. An older and wiser kid set me straight by pointing out the "White" fountain next to it. It didn't make any sense then and it still doesn't. In time it won't matter because all of us who lived here then will have died and taken those memories with us. That's my opinion. What's yours?

Update (8/5): It seems the FAA has a problem with this proposal. They think it might blind/distract pilots flying into Miami. Check out what the Miami Vision Comic has to say about that on the August 5th blog entry. If you would like to see a way cool "Interactive" Miami Herald presentation of the CCPA (which includes news about the FAA actions) and the building boom it has spawned around it, click here: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15199356.htm