The cool thing about running the Laugh Your Aspen Off! standup comedy troupe is working with such a great variety of funny, interesting comics, each of whom has strong ties and lots to say about life in Colorado and also life in general.

Case in point is our show coming up this Saturday, April 7, at the Winchester Nite-Club in north Rifle.  In addition to the local comics who have filled rooms from Steve’s Guitars to the Wheeler Opera house, we are fortunate to have as headliner this week a comic fresh off a one-year tour of Asia.  Former Aspenite Dan “Gonzo” Mechanic has played to sold-out audiences of expatriate Americans, Australians, Brits and more in a dozen countries across the Far East.

“Gonzo” takes his nickname in homage to the late Hunter S. Thompson, who supported the art of Machanik and the rest of the legendary Aspen Ridiculous Theater Company (ART/C) so much so that he came onstage to introduce them for several of their great shows in Aspen in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Dan is a CU graduate who won an amateur comedy contest in Aspen 13 weeks in a row, thereby launching his standup career and also paying his rent that summer with consecutive $200 prizes.

Similarly, Front Range comic Ted Larson, who precedes Gonzo at both the 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. shows at the Winchester, has a decades-long track record of making folks laugh.  I met Ted my first night ever as a standup comic.  He was there for my Denver Comedy Works debut July 25, 1997, and coached me through the process at subsequent gigs in my formative year onstage.  One memorable learning experience came when I completely bombed in front of a theater full of metal-heads in Denver.  The promoter’s idea was to have comics perform between bands at a heavy metal concert.  I did so poorly I was convinced the idea and the venue were all wrong.  But when I saw Ted take the mike after me and completely win over the heretofore silent crowd, I learned how a really good comic takes control of any situation.

The evolving and growing troupe of LYAO comics has, likewise, been a joy to behold.  Don Chaney, who actually opened for Dan Machanik at Ebbie’s in Aspen in 1993, made his second standup performance 14 years later as the headliner when LYAO rocked the Eagles Club in its inaugural performance Oct. 19, 2006.  Standup comedy may seem easy to the viewer, but to have the level of talent and showmanship the LYAO comics have displayed, and with such little stage time prior, is just shy of magic.

Likewise, family man and business exec Arthur Piubeni has rocketed to a funny, funny stage by letting loose all of the pent up anger, frustration, and angst any guy trying to make it in this unique valley must keep in store.  Piubeni vents unapologetically about shouting soccer encouragement to his kids between long drags on specially chopped Marlboros.  The parents on the sidelines who eye with disdain this animated smoker get special vitriol from the rubber-faced social assassin.  And Piubeni spares no edge for the wayward elk which totaled his Suburban. 

Mark Thomas spent 14 years of his life representing Aspen and its ski resorts to the world by virtue of his position as the voice of Ski Co, its snow reporter.  That experience steeped him in the myriad idiosyncrasies of Aspenites and their downvalley brethren.  Evidence of this fact is clear when Thomas relates the peculiar “Retail Archaeology” method by which town folk give directions.  Similarly, no local has topped Mark with his encyclopedic memory of terms created as synonyms for snow.

Another rising star with LYAO is West End resident Bill Seguin, who occupies a very different place in the social hierarchy in the valley, one to which he self-effacingly describes as that of an “asshole landlord”.  Audiences scream for more from this polished performer who takes on realtors and their vanity just as surely as Carol Dopkin will appear on horseback if a camera is present.

Skewering the rich history of entitlement in the valley is LYAO’s Michael Yoder, who takes us all the way back to silver miner E.B. Wheeler and his attitude in dealing with the Ute Indians.  Once Yoder explains how Wheeler coaxed the Indians to give up their birthright with the simple sentence, “We’re the white people; now get the fuck out!”, he tenderly explains how the Utes became the first in a long line of “downvalley trash”.

Two accomplished stage actors joined our troupe this winter.  Gerald DeLisser has played dramatic roles from Shakespeare to Arthur Miller, but when the time comes to be funny he has stories to tell about dogs in parks, girls in swimsuits and more.  Fellow actor Tyson Young also brings sharp personal experience to the standup stage.  For instance, when people mistakenly assume from Tyson’s olive complexion and dark eyes that he is Mexican, he simply plays into that assumption with a terse “burrito”.  Then he goes into a whole new bit about living life as a mentally challenged Mexican.

More comic hilarity can be extracted from Todd Hartley, who compares his infant son to the self-involved extreme athletes who sometimes share too much information regarding their in-race biological functions.  Bob Richmond, a clerk in Snowmass Village’s grocery store, and special guest April Clark, a columnist and reporter with the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, round out the performers Saturday night in Rifle. 

If you want tickets, see Great Divide Music in Aspen, Sounds Easy in Carbondale, Glenwood Music in Glenwood Springs, Harrelson Music in Rifle or the Winchester itself.  It will be the best $12.t50 you ever spent.