By Danielle Kent, Stephen Niedzwiecki and Tonya Stewart
This April, the spotlight shines on jokers of all kinds, from local comedians to notorious pranksters.
Rahmein Mostafavi
Originally starting out as a theater actor, Rahmein Mostafavi left his work with the Kennedy Center to spend more time with this family. But after a couple of years he felt the bug to get back on stage and got into comedy for its flexible schedule. Now, the Oakton resident and comedian is performing and producing local shows.
What does comedy mean to you?
Laughter is one of the greatest gifts that we have; it is the opposite of stress. Comedy is a safe haven where you don’t have to worry about being PC all the time. Everyone in the room has to understand that this is a time for jokes, to leave your serious business at the door. Every once in a while we’ll slide in a real statement, but it still needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It’s our job to make people laugh, which can be a bit of a challenge for comedians. Once in a while we’ll start to soapbox, and we get away from being funny and making more of a speech. If you think you wrote the world’s most brilliant joke wrapped in some social-political message but nobody’s laughing, you didn’t write a good joke.
How do you come up with material for your jokes?
Just live life and note things as you go along. If I have a particular subject matter that means something to me, I’ll press to see if I can find something funny inside of it. I definitely do a lot material that lends itself from a social-political arena but I have to make sure it’s humorous. I’ll make comments about Chick-fil-A or the Washington Redskins situation but it’s more important to get the laughs.
How do you gauge your audience?
Funny is funny. Certainly, there are demographics that I’ll have more material that relates to, say, a 30-plus crowd. Sometimes I’ll be asked to do shows for a millennial crowd, 18-26, and I’ve just got to dig in and entertain them. At those shows I have to be careful not talk too much about my kids or else they’ll be like, ‘Ugh, you’re old.’ [With] people my age I can just say, ‘My wife did this,’ and we can talk about stuff our spouses do, but with younger crowds I might say something like, ‘When you’re old enough to have kids, you may find this.’ Some crowds I can walk in and be one of them. Some crowds I need to bring them into my world.
Dylan Meyer
What does comedy mean to you?
It’s a way of expressing things that don’t have a platform to be expressed elsewhere. It’s a creative outlet for me to feel as if I’m in control of my creative process. Being able to deliver people something that I’ve crafted myself without any restrictions or input is very liberating. You also learn a lot of about yourself. It’s just you up there with the microphone. At a certain point you have to be honest with yourself about what you’re saying and how the audience is responding.
How do you come up with the material for your jokes?
I sit down and write every day—sometimes it ends up being funny. Almost all of it stems from something that happened in my actual life. It’s something that happened to me once or is reoccurring that gets the gears turning, and from that point it’s a matter of where you end up.
How do you gauge your audience?
I’ll try to watch what is happen before I go up, like, ‘Oh, they didn’t seem to like that political joke,’ or they seem more conservative about certain types of jokes, so I’ll avoid those topics. I don’t think that there’s any type of demographic that means one thing or another. I’ve seen people of every race and age group that have laughed and not laughed at everything you could imagine. It depends where I am. A crowd in Arlington is going to be different then a crowd in Roanoke. The type of venue will tell me a little bit: If it’s a bar, people are more rowdy, have had more to drink and are more on board with taboo stuff. A club or nicer establishment will have an expectation to be clean cut or polished.
Tim D. Miller
The comedian from Texas, who now resides Alexandria, got his start after completing his service with the U.S. Army and believes comedy to be a way of dealing with tough situations and something that can provide healing.
What does comedy mean to you?
It’s an outlet to express a funny twist of what’s going on in my life or the world; it’s like therapy. I feel like we have to laugh about what’s going on, not just politics, but what’s going on in our lives. I think if we took a step back and laughed at the situation, we would be a lot happier.
How do you come up with the material for your jokes?
Usually I just see what’s going on currently, and if I think of something in my head that makes me laugh, that’s probably a joke. And there’s a reason that makes me laugh, so I try to figure it out and explain it.
How do you gauge your audience?
It can be tough. A lot of it depends what mood I’m in. If I’m going first, I try to prove that I’m funny with a joke that every audience laughs at. Then I’ll try to go with something more controversial and see how they take it. If I want to [I’ll] change it to make them more comfortable or go deeper.
Pranks at Work
Are you ready for some football? Perhaps not.
Dave was an avid Redskins fan and a youth football coach. One of Dave’s co-workers sent him a letter from the Redskins on official-looking letterhead inviting him to an appreciation event honoring youth football coaches to be held at the Jack Kent Cooke room at Sequoia restaurant in Georgetown—no such room exists. Honored and excited to be invited to such an event, Dave took the day off from work. He arrived at Sequoia, where the pranksters had already acquired a table to view Dave’s demise, to discover he’d been had.
Good fences make good neighbors. Cubicle walls, however, may be suspect …
A co-worker who decided to have some fun at Gene’s expense sent him a couple of notices supposedly from the company’s HR department citing alleged violations Gene had committed: the overhang of a poster on Gene’s cubicle wall constituted a fire code violation and required immediate attention, and the minifridge in his office was not only in violation of company policy but had also been recalled by the manufacturer due to safety concerns. The prankster had invested some effort in moving the appliance to clandestinely obtain its make, model and serial number and had included this information on the notice. The biggest wrinkle in the prankster’s plan, however, was that the author of the notices was fictitious, and although Gene didn’t know all of his company’s HR employees, it didn’t take him long to sniff out the scam.
Jell-O, is it me you’re looking for?
Ed keeps a tidy desk; there is a place for everything, and everything is always in its place. Following a previously agreed-upon plan, several of Ed’s coworkers stopped by his desk at various times throughout the day to engage him in conversation while slightly and nonchalantly moving an item on his desk. During each conversation, Ed eventually moved the item back to its original position. One co-worker decided to up the ante: Each time Ed stepped away from his desk over the course of the rest of the week, the co-worker removed Ed’s desk supplies one at a time. The final straw was the removal of his desktop mouse, an injustice that drove Ed to the boss’ office. A few days later, Ed returned to work to find each of his missing office supplies in their original places on his desk, completely enshrined in Jell-O. His stapler, tape dispenser and other desk supplies were now jiggling, colorful and citrus-flavored.
George alker Bush, 43rd President of the United States
Shortly after the transition from President Bill Clinton’s administration to President George W. Bush’s administration, a media storm erupted. The W key had gone missing from innumerable keyboards throughout the White House.
Abducted office gnome
Ann kept a small gnome in her office. One day it went missing. Soon Ann began receiving ransom letters from her gnome’s kidnappers, along with photos of her missing property in various seemingly unfortunate situations. Ann determined not to negotiate with terrorists.
Where there’s smoke, there’s …dinner?
Lisa, a firefighter, often spoke highly of her culinary prowess to her coworkers. One night at the station she was heating dinner in the microwave when she became distracted and left it unattended. As the microwave spewed enough smoke to activate the smoke alarm, firefighters ran to the kitchen with an extinguisher. The next day Lisa walked into the kitchen and discovered a full set of turn-out gear standing waiting and ready for use and bearing a sign which read, “In case of Lisa’s cooking, please deploy rescue gear.”
Prank the probie
Damien was the rookie at the fire station. After realizing the station was out of blue flares, Damien’s supervisor sent him to another fire station not too far away to obtain more. As soon as Damien’s car pulled out of the parking lot, his co-workers called the neighboring station to forewarn them of the approaching rookie and his mission. Damien arrived at the neighboring station and was told that they too were out of blue flares. He was sent to another station. Then another. And then another. Each station had no blue flares. As directed, Damien went to station after station until finally one agreed to give him the blue flares to take back to his station. The object of his search? A couple of red flares that had been taped with blue painter’s tape and the completion of his rookie initiation.