By Michelle J. Mills, Staff Writer
Posted: 08/12/2011 02:02:03 AM PDT
"Incarcerate This: Young Men of Comedy" at the Ice House in Pasadena on Saturday offers an opportunity to feel good twice. It is a night to relax and laugh, and also a way of helping
others.
This will be the first stop from comedians Kenji Thomas, Jimmy Ouyang, Martin Rizo and Flaco Martinez, who will be taking their show on tour throughout the Los Angeles area to benefit Young Angels of America.
Young Angels of America is an after-school program that teaches business skills and financial literacy to lower-income middle and high school students using the entertainment industry as its platform.
Emerging artists and executives work with schools to review their resources and develop plans to help generate funds. Higher-income schools give lower-income schools a step up in starting their own programs.
The children are involved in every step of the process, learning the key aspects of business, including math, marketing, advertising and banking, along with acquiring leadership and fundraising skills.
The entertainers of "Incarcerate This" all draw the funny from
the various aspects of young urban life. They have performed at many comedy venues, including the Jon Lovitz Club at Universal CityWalk. Ouyang was recently named one of the top 30 young comedians in America by FunnyorDie.
The $10 tickets include a $5 voucher good for a visit to The Ice House; the $25 tickets include a ticket for a return visit to the Ice House for as many as four people.
WEASELS AT THE OAK
ROOM – September 23rd,
2011.8:30 p.m.$8.00 at the door.No
minimum.Deli open for dinner.
Young Angels of
America is an organization that teaches teens how to produce events and give
back to the community.My partner Debbie
and I founded it ten years ago, and a team of local, kid entrepreneurs has been
putting on student fundraising dances in the Palisades ever since.Our teen producers have worked at the Polo
Tournament, and Chamber of Commerce gigs at the Riviera,
they’ve had garage sales and helped their sister team in Watts.They know their way around a cash box and a
VIP, and how to handle a celebrity.I’d
put them up front at any event with utter confidence.
At our back-to-school meeting, it
turned out a lot of families had stayed home this summer.We talked about missing Village Books, and
how Swarthmore seemed sad and what could they do to liven things up.The kids decided it was their civic duty to
expand their production efforts to grownups.I was totally down with that since I’d spent the summer writing grants
for our Watts team, and as super fun as that
was, I could use some inexpensive, local fun. Now that Village Books is gone,
there’s not much cheer on Swarthmore.With the exception of the bar at Pearl Dragonand the back of the Mobil station, Pacific Palisades doesn’t have a real
after-dark scene at all.
When my husband told me that the
Weasels, my favorite boomer boy band, are playing at Lenny’s Oak Room on September
23rd, I asked if Young Angels could produce.It would be a good experience for the
kids.Lenny is the kind of entrepreneur
I wanted the team to be around, and rock ‘n roll that’s close to home?It may not be Paris, but it worked for me.
The Weasels play all the tunes that remind me
of my big sisters being young, stupid and boy-crazy, and the best part is I’m married
to the lead guitar player.He is the
kind of guy the popular girls drooled over, and I wished would go out with
me.All the Weasel boys are easy on the
eye.A cadre of Weasel women, many of
whom live in the Palisades, some of whom are your doctors and lawyers, can be
counted on to show up every time they play, whether it’s Corpus Christi, the
Bay Club or Rusty’s at the Pier.They belly
up to the band like it’s1969, and if you want to know what’s hot in the Palisades, it’s Weasel women.
That Oak Room has historic energy.
Some great times have been had there in the past.When the Weasels take the stage on September
23rd, the good times will start up again, and it’s not a moment too
soon.This economy brings new meaning to
the word “bummer.” Not to worry.In true American style, the nexus of young
entrepreneurs, a forward-thinking local businessman, and cute boys playing rock
‘n roll will take our minds off the money, and put them back where they belong.
Girls watching boys.Boys watching
girls.And dancing.It’s the season for a good time, right?
For dinner reservations before the show call 310.454.3337. Friday,
September 23, 2011.The Oak
Room. 1035 Swarthmore
Ave, Pacific Palisades,
CA 90272. $8 at the door.No
minimum.
Incarcerate This at the Ice House: Social Justice Can Be Hilarious
By Anthony D'Alessandro
Tue., Aug. 16 2011 at 9:00 AM
Comics
telling the truth, Ruth: (l. to r.) Kenji, Martin Rizo, Flaco Martinez, Reggie
Brown and Jimmy Ouyang
As the wholesome racial equality message emanated
from the new movie The Help over the weekend, a group of stand-ups
acutely debunked such propaganda Saturday at Pasadena's Ice House for the
charity show Incarcerate This: Young Men of Comedy.
Comedians Reggie Brown, Kenji, Jimmy Ouyang, Flaco
Martinez and Martin Rizo took hysterical jabs at those elephants in the room
that continue to pervade society: De facto segregation, misrepresentation,
infringement of speech and economic inequality.
The evening was, appropriately, hosted by Brown,
one of the reigning President Obama impersonators who, though heavily booked
for GOP soirees, was ejected two months ago from the Republican Leadership Conference for his jokes
about the Pachyderm party's presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. (In the
aftermath, Brown landed the opportunity to finish his set on Real Time With
Bill Maher)
Nothing is funnier than having a run-in with "The
Man." For Rizo this entails taking the wiper blades off his cars, making
it difficult for parking enforcement to leave tickets. Martinez's beef with white folk: "Their
fucking neighborhood watch! Why are they getting excited? It's not even their
car! At least with the Mexican neighborhood watch, we warn the criminals: 'Hey
someone is comin'!'"
Meanwhile, Ouyang's bane is that he's
always mistaken for a hot Asian chick with his long black hair, not to mention
he easily offends his black friends with his passionate rap indulgences seen
above
There was a great tempo to the night
with each comedian's set easily building into the next. But stand-up Kenji
stole the show with his insight on the judicial system's bias toward whites
over blacks (Read: Casey Anthony and Robert Blake getting away with murder).
Reminiscent of Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby in his
storytelling alacrity, Kenji, who was a victim of a drug ring sting, expressed
after his gig that there wasn't an opportunity during his brief jail sentence to keep the
inmates laughing. Rather it was about "staying alive." His passion
for comedy has kept him from the wrong crowd, and his hard times are fodder for
funny: check out his video about how Ramen
noodle soup might be the currency in jail, but it's a useless monetary
system once you're outside trying to pay your cable bill.
The night's proceeds went to Young Angels of America, a
non-profit which supports and funds after-school enrichment programs at
lower-income schools. Many of the comedians who appeared Saturday lend their
time to Young Angels as role models and teacher assistants at Watts, South Los Angeles and Pacific Palisades schools. Kenji,
for example, instructs students how to produce their own weekly variety shows.
Saturday's stand-up show was the first of several which Young Angels is taking
to cities around the country.
"Please come out and see more shows," said Kenji
in his closing, "You'll have less kids breaking into your house."
A great blog post from LA weekly about Yvette Monje, Animo Watts Charter High School.
Yvette Monje, High School Entrepreneur, Answers the Question: How to Make a Profit Off the Prom?
Ted Soqui
Yvette Monje
Yvette Monje's mom worries about the safety of her daughter, who is rapidly approaching womanhood. "A man might try to talk to me," explains Monje, a beautiful, dark-eyed high school girl from South L.A. Although she welcomes the advice from her mom, a UPS accountant whom she admires, Monje is a teenager and she shrugs off fear.
Her thoughts of home in a corner of L.A. many Angelenos know only for its crime are of "our quiet street and great neighbors, who I love. Our barbecue every weekend."
Her mom and stepdad are committed to making sure Monje, a student with promise, enters college next fall. To that end, they removed her from a troubled mainstream school and enrolled her at Animo Watts Charter High School, where, Monje says with a chuckle, "Every teacher is on your case." Her grades in biology, which fell to a D at her last school, roared back to A's.
Now, she happily ticks off her favorite classes as if listing hot new video games. "I like British literature, anatomy, physiology" -- she laughs at how weighty it must sound -- "and trigonometry!"
She's getting A's in all.
Also jammed into her daily schedule is Young Angels of America, a nonprofit program created by former entertainment industry executives Brook Dougherty and Debbie Koerner. Young Angels teaches kids in dicey neighborhoods to become businesspeople. It's a radical idea with a simple premise: With guidance from professional volunteers, the kids launch entrepreneurial school projects and productions that make money, and then use the profits to enhance their schools.
When she heard about Young Angels, Monje recalls, "My math teacher said it was an after-school program about fundraising, and I thought, 'Oh, selling chocolate on the street.' Instead, it was about having school dances, holding auditions to produce talent shows, setting up and running the student store."
Out of some secret place, a fledgling businesswoman arose. Says Monje: "Right away I thought, 'How do we make a profit off a school dance? Well, get a DJ, finger food -- and sell tickets for $5." Monje and the other teens were shocked by their $700 profit.
They analyzed their results and "debriefed" to review their mistakes and discussed what to do with the windfall. Everyone agreed, Animo Watts needed soccer uniforms.
Profits from another school dance went to subsidize the price of Animo Watts' first-ever yearbook -- the idea being that seniors from every background should be able to afford one. The young entrepreneurs drove the yearbook price down from $65 to $35.
The Young Angels program pairs kids from tough areas like South L.A. and Watts with kids from Brentwood and other Westside schools. The kids work at each other's events, sharing the load and cross-pollinating. The kids with greater resources underwrite some of the costs of the fundraisers, and both sides learn something.
A "sister team" of Pacific Palisades and Watts Animo students in April netted several hundred dollars selling barely used prom dresses at a Westside yard sale. The profits are helping pay the $13,500 cost of throwing an elegant oceanside senior prom -- another first for Animo Watts -- at Annenberg Beach House.
The rest of the prom fee will be paid by the Watts students out of the $200 in weekly profits being generated by the bustling Animo Watts student store. Monje says, "Everyone, including a lot of kids who didn't care at first, is excited now about having the prom on the beach."
As the boss who oversees the "workers" in the school store the kids set up, Monje has learned diplomacy, marketing, psychology and management. Not everything has worked out. In the one failure that still rankles, she sought to meet with the school principal. The question came back, "What's this about, Yvette?" Monje's vague response: "The vending machines."
To be more exact, Monje had determined that if the students could control the revenue stream generated by the candy bars and junk food that flies out of the vending machines, the kids could plow the profits back into school needs. Under the current setup, "The schools get only 10 percent of the money!"
The principal looked into her idea and told Monje she was sorry, but the vending contract couldn't be broken.
The June 4 prom is just days away. The crazy dream of the seniors at Animo Watts -- of a real prom, with all the upscale trimmings -- has come true. And of course, more than one boy in Watts has invited the disarming Yvette Monje to be their date. Are these all boyfriends? She laughs quietly, rolling her dark eyes. "I'm too busy for boyfriends!"
Comics
telling the truth, Ruth: (l. to r.) Kenji, Martin Rizo, Flaco Martinez, Reggie
Brown and Jimmy Ouyang
