Friday evening at Cozmic Pizza saw a stunt comedy show by The Curious Comedy Tour, a traveling variety show from Seattle. @@http://www.yelp.com/biz/cozmic-pizza-eugene-2@@ @@http://www.curiouscomedytour.com/@@
The comics, Louie Foxx and Eugene native Matt Baker, performed an assortment of different tricks to a laughing crowd for two hours starting at 6 p.m. The show included everything from regular stand-up jokes to juggling and magic tricks.
In one of the first routines, Baker, who used to be a world-champion hacky sack competitor, juggled two hacky sacks on one foot while escaping from handcuffs behind his back.
“This is nothing,” Baker joked during the stunt. “My most famous escape today was from my Verizon one-year contract.”
Other feats included cutting flowers and bananas with a whip, bubble tricks and a traditional Chinese water trick Foxx called hoop and cup balancing, where a cup of water balanced on a wooden hoop was swung and rotated without spilling.
Another trick was juggling pingpong balls with his mouth.
“My grandma died like this,” Baker joked during the act. “But you know, I was great at Hungry Hungry Hippos as a kid.”
First Baker demonstrated, and then he called an audience member up on stage to try it. Jeremy Thomson, a 30-year-old who has lived on and off in Eugene, said being on stage was fun.
“I got a kick out of it,” Thomson said, recalling old days of doing drama in school and dinner theater. “But a pingpong trick is a little different. I’ve never done that before.”
Thomson said he had read about the comedy show in Eugene Weekly and came because it sounded entertaining.
“It’s good pizza and beer and something to do,” he said.
As for participating on stage, Thomson didn’t expect to be called up from his front-row seat.
“I assumed they had people out in the audience,” he said. “I mean, they could have had paid actors, but they didn’t.”
Baker and Foxx have both been on “America’s Got Talent,” and between them they have broken seven Guinness World Records. Baker is currently working on another one, he said: catching a bowling ball on his head in 30 seconds, a stunt he practiced for the audience Friday night. Baker has also appeared on “Last Comic Standing,” and Foxx was named best live entertainment for kids by Parent Map magazine in 2011. @@http://louiefoxx.com/fansite/?p=714@@
The two comics performed Friday night for an all-ages audience, calling kids as well as adults up on stage to help with different stunts like card tricks and balancing rotating balls.
“If the kids get the jokes, it’s not my fault. Blame Shrek, not me,” Baker joked during the show.
Both comics regularly perform at a variety of events like state fairs, casinos and comedy clubs for adults.
“I perform everywhere: comedy clubs, corporate events, interventions,” Baker said during the show. “And cruise ships. In fact, just two weeks ago I was in the Bahamas, so you can imagine how excited I was to come to Eugene.”
All joking aside though, Baker and Foxx said the current tour through Oregon was going well. The duo was in Lincoln City and Bend in the days leading up to the Cozmic Pizza appearance, and their two previous shows were sold out.
“It’s a ton of fun,” Foxx said of the tour. “I’ve only seen Oregon by driving through it. I mean, I used to work in Portland and Medford. But now I’ve got to see a lot of Oregon that I’ve never seen before. Lots of breweries down here, too,” he added with a smile.
“I don’t ever get nervous before shows, but tonight I was a little nervous,” Baker admitted, since performing in his hometown had brought familiar faces to the audience.
Both comics said Eugene was a fun place to perform.
“Eugene is great,” Baker said. “For such a small town it has a lot of culture. Some of the bigger venues, they don’t know who we are. But Eugene has so many different venues with different feels. It’s great to be able to expose the community to different things.”