"If we didn't have immigration, who in the hell would buy your daughter's '85 Escort with the 300,000 miles and the pro-choice bumper stickers when she graduated high school?" he says from the ballroom stage. "I live with these guys in west Phoenix. I know they don't put those stickers on themselves. 'Yo, Vato, I got something to show you: "Keep U.S. out of my uterus!" Huh? What do you think?'"
In the end, even though he makes the top 10 cut, Jesmer doesn't win the $1,000 grand prize in the finals the following night. That prize goes to Ken Kaz, a writer on the new local AZTV cable comedy show Live . . . On Tape! featuring yet another motivated comic, John Waldron.
Peter Scanlon
Tempe Improv owner Dan Mer: "What we've got here is all these frustrated comics around town . . . they're just filthy, and they're unfunny. They're unwatchable."
![Comic Josh McDermitt: "Nobody's gonna get a TV show from Phoenix. You gotta be out there [in Hollywood]."](http://media.phoenixnewtimes.com/jokers-wild.11314.40.jpg)
Peter Scanlon
Comic Josh McDermitt: "Nobody's gonna get a TV show from Phoenix. You gotta be out there [in Hollywood]."
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But Jesmer, along with Josh McDermitt, who performed in the showcase as a non-contestant, comes away from the convention an even bigger winner. Mad TV cast member Bobby Lee, on hand at the convention to school the crowd on the horrors of doing live sketch comedy on television, winds up being so impressed by Jesmer's and McDermitt's three minutes, he invites the two out to L.A. to help get them time at all the A-clubs: the Comedy Store, the Laff Factory and the Hollywood Improv, where Lee is supposed to have connections -- they can only hope.
"We're tentatively set to go out there in mid-September, to do some shows and be kind of under his wing," says Jesmer, who currently tends bar at The Buzz in north Scottsdale. "He said he could definitely help us out, with getting us agents and getting the right people to come out and see us."
For McDermitt, who's always felt Phoenix is just a practice grounds for entertainers before moving to L.A., getting out of town seems like the only way to make it big.
"Nobody's gonna get a TV show from Phoenix," McDermitt says. "You gotta be out there."
Still, the more experienced players say L.A. is not all it's cracked up to be. Mark Cordes says, true, there are more clubs. "But it's the old 90-10 rule: 10 percent of the comics are making 90 percent of the money."
Dan Mer has seen local comics he turned down -- especially those with a comedy school diploma from Tony Vicich -- take off in a huff to misguidedly try their luck in Hollywood.
"Some of these people get their hopes up, and they fly to Hollywood, and there's nothing for them," he says. "They can't even get a job at Starbucks. And they ruin their lives."
Chris McLennan, who after running four seasons of SlamFests now says she has the names of between 150 and 200 local comics in her database, can think of a more self-preservationist reason to create a thriving comedy scene in Phoenix.
"All of these people have severe, incredible issues," says the woman who's probably seen more amateur Valley comics in the past year than anyone. "Some of them tell you what their issues are in their comedy: 'I'm fat.' 'I'm an alcoholic.' 'My mother is a lesbian.' 'My father used to beat us.' Or the big one: 'I've got an ego that's so big I can't stand it unless I'm in front of an audience that's cheering at me!'"
McLennan has seen some comics with issues that simply can't be made to sound funny. "Oh, hell yeah!" she says. "We've got people that have really, really bad problems that are seriously not funny."
But she also shudders to think what the city would be like if the 200 people in her database who actually can joke about their lives were suddenly left to roam the streets and nightclubs without a microphone and a spotlight to turn what they're feeling into entertainment for others.
"These people need to hear laughs," she says. "It's like an addiction to them.
"Can you imagine if none of these people had a stage to go on and get that fix?"
