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Sammy Obeid Sets World Record in Comedy
[+ Show ]
365 Straight Days of Comedy
written by Rich Freedman
The call came from thin air. Actually, it was...365 Straight Days of Comedy
written by Rich Freedman
The call came from thin air. Actually, it was a text. Who the heck calls anyone anymore??Anyway, it was this comic, 26-year-old Sammy Obeid from the Northern California city of Fremont.
It seems ol’ Sammy (see photo above) was pushing deadline. A gig was cancelled. And he needed somewhere, anywhere to perform. Anywhere with a microphone, that is. And something looking like a crowd, beyond Macy’s store mannequins and a laugh track.?It seems the streak was in danger. Obeid had gone 199 straight nights of performing comedy. Hitting 200 wasn’t a big deal, but it was a hurdle en route to one year of performing his art every day or night. ?Yes, 365 straight days of sharing observational humor by the 2010 finalist in the San Francisco Stand-Up ?Comedy Competition.?It all started last December 26th.?“I set out to work hard in 2011 and then realized at the end of January I hadn’t had a day off since Christmas,” Obeid says. “So why not keeping going?”?Sure, he said, “when I started I knew there’d be obstacles and tough nights, but I thought it was possible for sure. It turned out to be easier than I thought after going to L.A. and New York where there are plenty of shows.”?Even some typically insensitive club managers got a little soft when told of Obeid’s workload.?“Venue managers can often be cold or hardly ever pay attention to the shows,” Obeid said. “Of the few that even know of the streak, they are impressed.”?Despite occasional exhaustion, rarely did Obeid question his quest.?“A few times I have asked myself, ‘If I just took a night off, would anybody really notice?’ And each time I made sure I did a show and then posted it on Facebook.”?Obeid managed to fill in a July 4 gig with a free show, working an Independence Day event with the Vallejo Symphony — “I opened for Beethoven,” he says laughing — and later got a Bay Area resident to host a front yard comedy show for 20 friends when a restaurant canceled its weekly shows at the last minute.?“I’ve had so many great gigs,” Obeid says. “I love theaters and good comedy clubs. I think the closest I came to a ‘perfect show’ was a gig at the San Francisco Punchline. I also like the room I run on Tuesdays in Hollywood called Three Clubs.”?Logistics, as expected, occasionally plays a role in his eternal performance schedule. Obeid had to fly from New York to Los Angeles and drive up to Northern California to barely catch his 200th straight show of the year. ?“People were understanding,” he says. “When they know what you’ve put into just getting there, you can be a few minutes late.”?What the streak has given Obeid is experience. He says he now has “at least” two hours of quality material “so I can rotate my heart out so I don’t get bored.”?Finishing as a finalist in the San Francisco competition last year helped Obeid hone in on short sets until the finals when he was allowed 20 minutes of stage time.?“At the beginning, I was questioning my choice to be a comedian,” he says. “Then I remembered, ‘I’ve got some great jokes and people like me.’ I also say this to myself in the mirror every morning.”?Obeid says he probably got paid for half his gigs during the streak. No matter. A streak is a streak, he said. And sure, he adds, there are rules, if only self-imposed.?“There needs to be a live audience and either a mic or a stage that’s set up so it’s implicit that a performance is happening,” Obeid says. “There are a handful of small theater gigs that do not use a mic, but it’s still most definitely stand-up.”?Obeid has performed for as few as two people during a couple of gigs at the Comedy Store in L.A., “but they paid to see a show and they got one,” he says. ?As for the upcoming holidays, there’s a glaring void on Thanksgiving. ?“I might have to offer to carve someone’s turkey in exchange for entertaining their relatives,” Obeid says.?And Christmas, making it exactly 365 straight days of performing? Obeid’s got it covered by a coupl
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UC Berkeley alum sees a future in stand-up comedy
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Fremont-raised comic Sammy Obeid has a few advantages over his competition. First off, he was raised...Fremont-raised comic Sammy Obeid has a few advantages over his competition. First off, he was raised in a multicultural community, which means he got habituated to stereotypes early on. "So I learned to be racist and funny," said Obeid, who is Lebanese by birth, Buddhist by choice, and often mistaken for Latino. Second, he double-majored in business and applied mathematics at UC Berkeley, where he learned to crunch numbers, thrive in a pressure-cooker environment, and think about things in abstract ways. Third — and perhaps most importantly — Obeid lives with his parents.
Normally, that would be the source of a lot of self-deprecating jokes. But 25-year-old Obeid feels absolutely no compunction about graduating from Haas School of Business with a 3.9091 GPA (which he often cites in press materials) and moving back in with the folks. Obeid's living situation allowed him to return to Ohlone Community College, where he joined the speech and debate team. He specialized in "after-dinner speech" — a form of discourse meant to get the audience laughing. His quips were good enough to clinch first place in a national tournament in both 2007 and 2008. Ultimately, he parlayed his witticisms into amateur stand-up contests, where he would also prevail: In 2008, he took first in the Bay Area-wide Rooster T. Feathers Competition. In 2009, he won the San Jose Improv Competition, the Vallejo Comedy Competition, and the Killer Laughs Competition in Dublin.
But who's counting? Obeid jokes that he now has the luxury of working at "10 percent capacity" on comedy. That's probably an understatement, since that would hardly afford him time to run a weekly show at Fremont's Mission Pizza, plus a lot of one-offs. (He and another up-and-comer named Kabeezy also host a Wednesday night series at Tommy T's.) Yet, it's fair to say that Obeid is treating comedy as a lazy man's profession and using it to recuperate from business school burnout. When he's not onstage, Obeid busies himself doing odd jobs (e.g., hand modeling), writing scripts for web videos, and defending his slacker lifestyle. He says he's upholding a tradition of adult male lassitude that dates back two thousand years — to like, you know, Jesus Christ. In one of his funniest bits, Obeid reminds us that Jesus was an Arabic guy who had long hair and lived with his parents. "Gee," he concludes, "I wonder what that's like." Some nice reflexive irony you got there, Sammy.
Sammy Obeid stars in the January edition of Tourettes Without Regrets, which goes down Thursday, Jan. 7, at the Oakland Metro (630 3rd St.). 8 p.m., $10. MySpace.com/TourettesWithoutRegrets
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Obeid Fights for Comedy Title
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Sammy Obeid was a punch line away from taking his crying towel and going home to Fremont. Now, the 2...Sammy Obeid was a punch line away from taking his crying towel and going home to Fremont. Now, the 26-year-old has a chance to laugh all the way to the bank after sneaking into the Final Five of this week's San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Competition.
With only tonight's event at Cache Creek Casino and Saturday's finale in San Francisco left, Obeid has a shot at the winning $7,500 after believing he was eliminated in the early rounds of the 35th annual
competition.
Last year's Vallejo Comedy Competition winner, Obeid had placed sixth with the top five of his round and the top of the following week's round advancing to the semi-finals. But semi-finalist Marc Patrick suffered a serious injury in a car accident back home in Las Vegas, and Obeid was elevated to semi-finalist.
Only twice in the competition history did a semi-finalist bow out, said producer Jon Fox.
Still, Fox likes this year's finalists that include Tony Djamco of Los Angeles, Solomon Georgio of Seattle, Auggie Smith of Portland and Kurt Swann of San Diego. He believes Obeid is a fine representative for Northern California.
"He's very much in command of the stage," Fox said. "His point of view as a highly educated young man (U.C. grad in mathematics) who's still living at home is fascinating. I love his bit when he says he's Lebanese-American but not Muslim: 'I have Muslim friends. I wouldn't go on an airplane with them but a bike ride would be okay.' He also just has that certain something called 'charisma'"
Obeid put his math proficiency to use when analyzing his performances.
"I got second place on four nights, and fourth on two nights. Notice the symmetry of those numbers," Obeid said. "Yes, I made sure that happened on purpose."
Johnny Steele, past competition winner and host during one of the preliminaries, liked what he saw of Obeid.
"So many stand-ups just pander to the lowest common denominator, or seem fake, derivative, contrived," Steele said. "But Sammy's stuff is clever and honest and personal. And while he's not yet George Carlin -- who is? -- he doesn't shy away from controversial topics."
Obeid, added Steele, "seems totally at ease on stage. I'm a rage of energy, spitting and barking half the time. Sammy looks like he's just hanging out in his living room. Or at his age, probably his parents' living room."
Though the annual competition is known to get a bit cutthroat -- hey, money's involved -- "back stage life was fun," Obeid said. "I became friends with all the comics ... on Facebook."
Obeid laughed.
"In real life, we are just acquaintances," he said.
Though Obeid won last year's Vallejo Comedy Competition, it's the first time going for the big bucks in the San Francisco event.
"The best advice I got about this competition was, 'Just remember, if the judges vote for you, they know what they are doing.' If they don't vote for you, they are racist,'" he smiled.
With an eye on the reason he wiggled into the semi-finals, Obeid said any Top Five money he won would go toward upgrading his automobile insurance.
"It's a scary world out there," said Obeid, though he wouldn't mind seeing any Wintun Indians, the benefactors of Cache Creek.
"Native Americans love my comedy, because I don't steal jokes from them," Obeid said. "That didn't fully make sense, but you kind of get what I mean."
It's unlikely Obeid will hold back anything in his act, which is almost all family friendly.
"I'm all in," he said.
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Fremont Comic Ousts Locals for Contest Win
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It's not easy to joke about a car accident. However, thanks to his sharp 10-minute comedy routine, s...It's not easy to joke about a car accident. However, thanks to his sharp 10-minute comedy routine, stand-up Sammy Obeid can at least pay for part of a painful deductible after a recent wreck.
Obeid, a 25-year-old Fremont math teacher, won the Vallejo Music Theatre's Friday Night Supper Club's Comedy Clash last weekend, edging two local comics en route to snagging the $300 top prize.
"Now I'm only $700 in debt," Obeid said of his accident liability. "But I was satisfied."
With the dinner theater audience of about 75 voting, Obeid edged Vallejoan's Myles Weber and Derrick Leonard, respectively. Weber earned $150 for runner-up while Leonard "didn't get anything."
Other participants in the finals hosted by local musician and school board trustee Raymond Victor included Sam Wilcke, Jimmy Sweet, and Andrea Ruffin.
Having performed at Matt Larson's City Lights Cantina's comedy night and slated for the Sept. 12 comedy show by the Mira Theatre Guild, perhaps Obeid's best bet is to hoard his winnings for gas from the South Bay.
Not that he's complaining.
"Vallejo's my new favorite city," Obeid said after his victory. "I'm thinking about running for mayor, though I don't know if winning this competition counts as a credit. I do get a pretty good feel for the city's politics after tonight."
Born in Oakland and raised in Fremont - "Less urban, more turban" - Obeid's happy-go-lucky nature apparently appealed to the crowd which included a nice chunk of Weber fans.
Obeid worried he would have little local support with the Vallejoan stacking the deck. Leonard, a transplant from San Francisco, acknowledged he couldn't compete with Weber's local fan base.
"Looking back, I should have done a 10 minute chunk from my favorite Bill Cosby album," Leonard said, moaning that third place should be good for "at least a $15 Starbucks card or my picture on the side of a Vallejo Transit bus."
"After my set, I still wasn't sure," Obeid said. "The crowd was definitely in favor of cleaner material. Every crowd is unique."
Obeid scored big laughs with his take on environmentalists fretting about polar bears, "because they have feelings too. They're just like people."
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It's not easy to joke about a car accident. However, thanks to his sharp 10-minute comedy routine, stand-up Sammy Obeid can at least pay for part of a painful deductible after a recent wreck.
Obeid, a 25-year-old Fremont math teacher, won the Vallejo Music Theatre's Friday Night Supper Club's Comedy Clash last weekend, edging two local comics en route to snagging the $300 top prize.
"Now I'm only $700 in debt," Obeid said of his accident liability. "But I was satisfied."
With the dinner theater audience of about 75 voting, Obeid edged Vallejoan's Myles Weber and Derrick Leonard, respectively. Weber earned $150 for runner-up while Leonard "didn't get anything."
Other participants in the finals hosted by local musician and school board trustee Raymond Victor included Sam Wilcke, Jimmy Sweet, and Andrea Ruffin.
Having performed at Matt Larson's City Lights Cantina's comedy night and slated for the Sept. 12 comedy show by the Mira Theatre Guild, perhaps Obeid's best bet is to hoard his winnings for gas from the South Bay.
Not that he's complaining.
"Vallejo's my new favorite city," Obeid said after his victory. "I'm thinking about running for mayor, though I don't know if winning this competition counts as a credit. I do get a pretty good feel for the city's politics after tonight."
Born in Oakland and raised in Fremont - "Less urban, more turban" - Obeid's happy-go-lucky nature apparently appealed to the crowd which included a nice chunk of Weber fans.
Obeid worried he would have little local support with the Vallejoan stacking the deck. Leonard, a transplant from San Francisco, acknowledged he couldn't compete with Weber's local fan base.
"Looking back, I should have done a 10 minute chunk from my favorite Bill Cosby album," Leonard said, moaning that third place should be good for "at least a $15 Starbucks card or my picture on the side of a Vallejo Transit bus."
"After my set, I still wasn't sure," Obeid said. "The crowd was definitely in favor of cleaner material. Every crowd is unique."
Obeid scored big laughs with his take on environmentalists fretting about polar bears, "because they have feelings too. They're just like people."
"If they're just like people, I'm sure they'll be OK," Obeid said. "They'll steal land from the grizzly bear, enslave the black bears and have the panda bears building railroads."
Obeid called Girl Scouts "the biggest terrorists out there, selling trans fats to obese Americans at twice the market value. There's nothing cute about it."
Obeid said he's working on material for the not-to-distant future for American audiences - introducing his first joke: "Porque el pollo cruzo la calle?"
In real life, as a fifth grade teacher, Obeid said "some kids in my class have more facial hair than I do. And some are girls."
Weber, noting that Robin Williams and Ellen DeGeneres were runners-up in the San Francisco International Comedy Competition, said he's thrilled placing second.
"It's OK with me. I've still got money," he said. "And it's going in the bank."
Weber pondered the state of the banking industry.
"Maybe I'll put the money under the mattress," he said, adding that he was happy with his performance.
Finishing second did nothing to thwart the Vallejo comic's career goals.
"This is what I am going to do with my life - make people laugh," Weber said. "I believe in myself. That's what it's all about."
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Obeid, Kabeezy Kill 3 Clubs
[+ Show ]
Even though 3 Clubs is my favorite small room venue for a comedy show, I have not been there in a wh...Even though 3 Clubs is my favorite small room venue for a comedy show, I have not been there in a while. It’s intimate without being cramped, the room is situated in a way that allows for people to come into the show room without interrupting the comedians, seating is flexible, and there is still a bar for drinks. It’s very nice. I highly recommend checking it out.
Comedian Justin McClure invited me out to the show last night because he books and promotes the show there on the 2nd Tuesday of every month. Brian Swinehart handles the duties the other weeks. The show is free and features mostly up and coming comedians, which I love. I have a tendency to frequent the same shows, so it’s good to break things up. I was really impressed with all the comedians for the night and how well McClure ran the show. It was packed too. 11 comedians performed, which is normally too many. However, the show was only an hour and a half, which was perfect.
Sammy Obeid and Kabeezy were stellar. Both comedians perform regularly in the Bay Area and are just down for a visit, which is a bummer, but they were very polished. From what I gather, neither has been performing stand-up for very long. I might have a soft spot for Obeid because he’s Lebanese like me. I’m on the Whitey McWhite side of Lebanese…but still…there aren’t too many of us around. He was great though. Kabeezy had great stage presence and his material was stellar. I put videos of both up in the video bar.
Laura Rosenberg, Justin McClure, and Candice Thompson were also great. I’ve seen Laura a ton and you can always expect great energy from her. Looking forward to seeing longer sets from McClure and Thompson.
The full line-up is below. Highly recommend checking out the show when you can. 9pm, Tuesday nights, 3 Clubs on Vine.
Laura Rosenberg, Ed Galvez, Tim Mars, Shawn Latham, Candice Thompson, Sammy Obeid, Chris Strait, Abby Stern, Brian Swinehart, Justin McClure, Kabeezy
supersonic
