Jonathan Katz on the Commons today for the Americans with Disabilities Act

There will be a rally today on Boston Common today to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Jonathan Katz will speak, and the keynote speaker is John Hockenberry. Other entertainment includes the Matt Savage Trio and the Tommy Filiault Band. There will also be a march leaving the Common at 11:15. Go to the New England ADA Center Web site for more details.

Thursday Night Round-Up: Heavy Metal Bee Gees, Spring Fever with the Steamies, and Games with Jonathan Katz

If you're looking for a comedy show tonight, you're loaded with great options. First off, Berklee grad Brandon Small of Adult Swim's Matalocalypse is at Showcase Live tonight with the School of Rock All-Stars paying tribute to... the Bee Gees? Small will do a Q&A to start the show, and then give way to Tragedy, an ensemble Showcase Live touts on their Web site as "The #1 heavy metal tribute to the Bee Gees." I imagine it's not a terrible crowded field. The All-Stars are also slated to join Small to play some Dethklok tunes and a few assorted metal classics. Show starts at 7PM.

If you don't want to drive out to Foxboro or metal isn't your thing, head out to the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge for the Spring Fever show with the Steamy Bohemians, Goli, and Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band. It's been a while since the Steamies have played the Lizard, and this should be an interesting show. Members of all three musical groups will sit in on each other's sets, and the Steamies are doing a full hour, with a drummer. Show begins at 8:30PM with a vrigin sacrifice.

Also tonight, the second installment of Jonathan Katz's One Man, Many Games at ImprovBoston. I spoke with Mr. Katz before last week's show -- read the interview here. Show starts at 7PM.

Jonathan Katz: One Man, Many Games at ImprovBoston

Jonathan Katz returns to ImprovBoston tomorrow with a new show, One Man: Many Games. Katz calls it “kind of a work in progress,” an adaptation of his podcast from WKATZ.com with a few games added in to round things out. The show will run the next two Thursdays, then take a break for Passover on April 9, and come back for one more show April 16.

So what about the “games” in the title? You’ll have to see the show to find out more specifically, but Katz did tell me about one game called “Don’t Die.”

“When I was 16, I was going out on my first date and my grandfather pointed out that my shoelaces were filthy,” said Katz. “So I changed my shoelaces and he came in and I modeled them and he said, ‘New laces make a big difference.’ And then he keeled over and died. It was the end of my grandfather but the beginning of the game, ‘Don’t Die.’”

“If you say something that’s really hanging there, or if you’re wife said something to you like, ‘Don’t forget to…’ or something really mundane, you could say to her, ‘Don’t die.’ You wouldn’t want to tell her family that those were her last words. That’s how that works. It’s a great game. All you have to do is play it once and you’re hooked.”

Just like the podcast, the show should be all-new material, a prospect that excites Katz. “My wife says to me, ‘I hope you’re not planning on doing everything brand new,’” he said. “And I kind of want to do it brand new. I want to do something I haven’t done before onstage.”

Katz has worked with ImprovBoston, performing a show at the Central Square venue last year. It’s a convenient place for the Newton resident to work, and it’s also easy for Katz, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1997, to access.

“I like them for a couple of reasons,” he says. “One is they’re in Central Square. The other is that the theater is accessible, not only for the audience but for the performers, as well. And there aren’t a lot of places like that around here. It’s so easy for me to get in and out of it.”

ImprovBoston has been presenting more non-improv shows, like its Thursday night “10 Slot” stand-up and storytelling show. One Man fits better with those shows than the theaters traditional improv fair. “I’m one of the least spontaneous performers I know,” says Katz. “And that show in particular is so perfectly timed and planned. It’s just me generating audio from my computer. Whatever dialogue there is I’ve timed out on my computer to sound like a natural conversation on the phone.”

Eventually, Katz would like to take the show to a bigger venue and perhaps film it, although he is still working on how to present that. “It’s not visually very intriguing, I’m just a guy pretending to be on the radio,” he says. “But I guess it worked for Howard Stern on TV. He also had a lot of naked women walking around behind him.”

An Entertaining Digression with Dr. Katz

To Interview Jonathan Katz is to be caught in a constant series of entertaining digressions. He’s often trying out new material, which would be irritating from some comedians, but not from Katz. Somehow, the conversation becomes the set-up, he tees off, and moves on. And his poker-faced delivery (even over the phone) never gives you the impression that he’s “on.” Which are, of course, the qualities that made him such a great foil, and made his Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist such a great show.

I originally called Katz, who still lives in Newton, to talk about The Best of Dr. Katz, which Comedy Central released in December. He offered this, within the first couple of minutes:

“This is my marital advice tip of the day. You’re married right? Don’t ever compare your marriage to life in prison. Because I said to my wife, you know the biggest difference between marriage and life in prison? Conjugal visits. It’s not a bad joke, but she’s the wrong audience.”

We went from that into talking about Katz’s new venture, the nation’s first therapy-based theme park, called “Happy Acres,” in western Massachusetts. Again, there is no clue, other than the outright preposterousness of the premise, that he is joking.

“The big attraction is going to be a ride called ‘The Great Depression,’” he says. “It’s a place where you can go with your shrink, just to have a good time, really. To see the other side of life in therapy. There’s of course the Emotional Roller Coaster. There’s the Tunnel of Self-Loathing. What else? We have the Haunted By Your Past House. If you spend a day at a theme park, eventually you get hungry. And there’s a snack bar there called Munchausen’s.”

Here’s a little video peek at Happy Acres, recently posted on YouTube:



We did eventually wind up talking about the DVD and Dr. Katz. In December, Katz did another “Dr. Katz: Live!” show, similar to one he did at the Somerville Theatre last year. “I like doing it,” he says. “It keeps changing forms, which is interesting. It’s gone from a vehicle for me, similar to the show, me usuing the stand-up comedy of my patients as a therapist, to the most theatrical version, which is what Tom and I did in Somerville, where he plays my therapist and I get the chance to be an asshole, too.”

The new DVD features a lot of great comics, with a lot of comedians with Boston connections – Louis C.K., David Cross, Janeane Garofalo, Conan O’Brien, and Denis Leary. But the roster is not complete, according to Katz. “Two things about that list – it doesn’t include Dom Irrera, who is my favorite,” he says. “The other thing is, I was reminded how funny Julia Louis-Dreyfus was. Because she was pregnant at the time I recorded her, she was on a speaker phone. And she was very funny. Unless it’s me I’m thinking of.”

The new compilation was Comedy Central’s idea, not Katz’s, but he did get a chance to show off some scenes with Laura Silverman and H. Jon Benjamin, which were muc more at the core of the show than the comedian therapy sessions. And compilations may help him as he continues to pursue “Dr. Katz: Live.”

“I think the hardcore Dr. Katz fan is somebody who owns the boxed set, but I guess it’s a good reminder to people,” he says. “To the press, it’s a good reminder.”