Patrick Ferri's WRECKAGE-O-RAMA!!!

I just got back from the Montreal Circus Festival and a very hard working weekend.
I went with Dave Cox , Viveca Gardiner and Adam and met a bunch of very talented and fun people up there.
I promise to list their names here shortly.
I worked on the freestanding ladder and had some success with it for a change. I also worked hard on handstands, trapeze, silks, slackline and of course the unicycle.
I am starting to adjust to my new living arrangements but that will be slow process.
Anyhow, I have been starting to prepare for the PS 21 show this year on July 2 with Dave and I have a strolling job at the Delmar Farmers Market on Saturday June 4.
More soon …

As usual I have been skiing and not writing. I hurt my knee very seriously on New Years Eve and that has consumed a lot of my energy. I went back to my old high school to help my cousin with wrestling. ” NUFF SAID ”
It is healing fortunately and it looks like I will avoid surgery.
The skiing this winter has been the best in 10 years at least. More on that later.
Dave Cox and I went to see Tomas Kubinec perform Saturday night in Gt. Barrington, Mass. He had a big crowd and did not disappoint.
I am working at my favorite circus camp this week with Sean Fagan at the Millbrook School. The trip is worth the lunch alone.
More soon.

I had a good show the other night in Copake. The 20 or so kids really enjoyed “Anatoli” as did their parents. The Holiday version of the Columbia Arts Team show was a big hit as usual.
Happy New Year to all !!
I am heading down to a Polar Bear Swim at Vaughn Clark’s where there was supposed to be some hockey but with the warm temps that is probably out.
On top of that, yesterday I severely damaged my left knee.
I went to my young, cousin Kyle’s wrestling practice where I typically overdid it. Not a great start to the New Year.
2010 was as trying as 2009. I wasn’t quite sure that things could get worse but I was proved wrong again.
Oh well, it is a fresh start and it will be what we make of it.
I hope that the coming year brings us more of the important things in life; like health, love and some kind of peace; if not globally than at the minimum inner.
Best wishes for a wonderful year ahead.
Pat.

Tonight, Thursday Dec. 30th I will be doing the Anatoli Gravadonut bit at the Saturday Night Liv Family Holiday Show.
It is at the Copake Memorial Park Building: Mountain View Road, Copake, NY and it starts at 6:30 PM.

Here are the articles that ran in the Times Union and the Metroland for the recent Comedy For The New Depression show at The Linda. Thank you to Steve Barnes at the Times Union for taking so much time and asking a lot of really good questions.
Also , thank you to Josh Potter for doing the same.
One last thank you to Stephen Leon at Metroland for the article as well. Steve is an old soccer buddy of mine and maybe we will get a kick around in or better still, a little hockey this winter.
Merry Christmas to everyone ! Maybe this is the year we will see “Peace On Earth and Good Will To Men”. Don’t worry ! I am not overly optimistic, just wishful.

Comedy for the New Depression , Metroland, Dec. 9, 2010

“Now, we’re on this plane with a lobster, and the lobster falls off the plane and the plane spins,” says Pat Ferri, attempting to explain one of the scenes in his upcoming show Comedy for the New Depression. “I fall through the wing and the propeller falls off and we have to try and get the thing started . . .”

Ferri, an acrobat from Austerlitz, is one half of physical-comedy team Those Two Guys, along with Dave Cox, a juggler and equilibrist from Troy. After almost 20 years of busking and performing their individual slapstick routines at street fairs, theater festivals and on late-night TV, the two finally took an audience member’s suggestion to do a show in tandem.

“It’s like silent film but without the ‘silent’ and without the ‘film,’” says Ferri. “No jokes. All gags. In most of the bits you see the guys thinking. You don’t always see that in stand-up or in theater, but you always see it in silent films.” Ferri’s idol has always been Buster Keaton, the stone-faced silent-film star, but he says the show with Cox has a lot more to do with the work of Laurel and Hardy, or thrill comic Harold Lloyd, who was known for his cringe-inducing building-climbing and girder-walking stunts. “These guys are always trying to do the right thing, but their thinking goes crazy.

“There’s a bit where we’re out a window, changing a lightbulb,” Ferri says, describing another cartoony gag. “He’s hanging on to my belt, so when I fall out the window, he falls out the window. We end up putting a big plank on a sawhorse, but need to counterbalance and the sawhorse collapses. . . .”

The show is broken into four scenes of physical theatrics, punctuated by music, voiceovers and the duo’s athletic pratfalls. Like a film, there is a narrative arc, but the fun comes in watching the two make mistake after mistake as they attempt to navigate the task at hand in each vignette. It’s a brand of nonverbal theater that has remained popular to a degree in Europe but that most Americans associate with the ’20s and ’30s.

Hence the title Comedy for the New Depression. “I coined that phrase for my own stuff about two years ago,” he says, right when the American economy started to nosedive. The hope, it seems, is that this vintage brand of entertainment will help alleviate some of the stress of our current economic situation the same way it did nearly a century ago. “I think the last depression wasn’t so bad,” Ferri continues. “I think we could use a good one to let people know they’re neighbors again. The Greatest Generation came out of that. Instead of all this me-me-me, people are going to get together and help one another again.” At the very least, watching two guys bumble their way through absurd scenarios, laughing everytime they get hurt, should provide some much-needed diversion.

Those Two Guys will perform Comedy for the New Depression on Saturday (Dec. 11) at 7 PM at the Linda (339 Central Ave., Albany). Greg Aidala will serve as host. Tickets are $20, $15 for students and $12 for kids 12 and under. Call 465-5233 ext. 4. for tickets and more information.

—Josh Potter

HIGH FLYING COMEDY , Times Union, Dec. 9, 2010

Dave Cox and Pat Ferri own a private plane. It seems unlikely that many, or any, other comedians-clowns-buskers-jugglers can say as much. Minor point: The 10-foot-long biplane, with a 14-foot wingspan, does not fly. Instead, it’s the largest, most expensive prop yet for the locally based performing duo known as Those Two Guys, whose other equipment include more conventional tools of their craft such as unicycles, ramps and juggling implements.
Given that they sit in, climb around and generally imperil themselves on the plane, perhaps it is more properly considered a piece of the set than it is a prop.
No matter. The plane gets its second outing on Saturday, when Cox and Ferri bring their new show, “Comedy for the New Depression,” to The Linda in Albany. The 90-minute performance showcases their skills in physical dexterity and balance, clowning, juggling, stunts and what they generally call “dangerous comedy” to tell the story of a pair of Maine fishermen who fly the catch of the day to their aunt’s Chicago restaurant. Calamity ensues, told largely in the style of silent-film slapstick.
The pair got their start as a duo three years ago, following solo appearances on the same bill at a variety show in Chatham. Finding similarities and complements in their performing styles and ambitions, Cox, 35, and Ferri, who’s a decade older, began working jointly. They knit together some of their respective routines, conceived and wrote new segments and, by this summer, had a full evening’s entertainment.
The title invokes both the silent-era style of physical comedy they perform and what’s going on in the economy.
“There’s definitely a ’20s-’30s feel to the show, and the title refers to that time and to now — though now they’re just calling it a recession — as well as to how people may be feeling a little down,” says Ferri. “This is a little something to lift you out of that mood.”
Among the elements they’ve incorporated into “Comedy for the New Depression” is Cox’s stunt in which he jumps into a pair of pants.
“There’s the old saying that everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time,” says Cox. “Well, I didn’t want to do that anymore.” In the bit, Cox holds his trousers in front of his waist, leaps straight upward and drops his legs into the pants. He’s done the stunt for Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show,” and after he put a video online, a Levi’s commercial began featuring a version of the bit.
“None of them could really jump into them off the floor, and they were using really big pants,” says Cox, who has been performing for 15 years and makes a living from the work, as does Ferri. Cox says, “I contacted Calvin Klein when I was going on the (Leno) show to see if I could wear their underwear for money, but they never got back to me.”
“Comedy for the New Depression” is Those Two Guys’ first full-evening show with a complete story line, rather than disconnected routines presented in a variety-show format. They envision it as a touring show that, because its humor is visual and story basic, could be performed around the world without concern about language difficulties. This weekend’s performance will be recorded and edited down to a preview version for a press kit that will be shopped to agents and managers.
To help with publicity and marketing, Cox and Ferri turned to local comedian Greg Aidala, a tireless and savvy promoter, who’s aboard as producer and host, roles he often plays in comedy shows around the region.
“We’re at a point now … where we’re asking ourselves, ‘Are we going to move forward in entertainment or basically cash it in?’ We have the attitude of, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,’ ” says Aidala. “Our hearts are behind this. We think this is the show to really go for it with. It seriously could work. Stuff like this is not going on around the country. It’s certainly not coming to Albany. We think we’ve got a real chance with this.”

The Show at “”The Linda” on Saturday night went really well. Thanks to everyone that came out and to those who didn’t, I hope to see you next time. As usual there were about 100 accidents but fortunately the show is mostly accidents; so it is hard to tell when they are unintentional.
Here is an article that ran in the Troy Record last Thursday :

Those Two Guys have physical flights of fancy
Published: Thursday, December 09, 2010
By Stephen Douglas
Special to The Record

On Saturday, Pat Ferri and Dave Cox will fly into WAMC’s The Linda with a comedy show that you’ll likely never see again. Pat and Dave — those TWO guys — are set to entertain the crowd with “Comedy for the New Depression,” which features seafood, physical comedy and yes, an airplane.

Ferri lives locally and on the road. He grew up in Schenectady and now resides in Austerlitz, but comedy has consistently taken him away from the Capital District since he graduated high school.

“I was class clown and shortly after dropping out of college, I started acting school in New York. I took some improv classes at the Improvisation in New York.”

From there, Ferri moved to Chicago where he preformed for a year in the late 1980’s before moving back to New York. In 1995 he met another standup comedian, who was into physical comedy. “Since then, I’ve been doing all physical stuff.”

Eventually that comedian moved to California, which allowed Ferri to work on his own for a couple years before he met up with Dave Cox.

The decision to work in entertainment was an easy one for Cox. “I basically started out as a juggler. At one point someone offered me money to come juggle at one of their parties. I did that and wondered why I would do any other work?”

Working as a juggler soon led to other jobs in live entertainment. “I did that for quite a bit. I did a lot of walk-around gigs where you just walk around and talk to people while you juggle. Then I started to put an actual show together. I did a lot of street performing in Boulder, Key West, California and Canada. I had a pretty solid solo show.”

Cox and Ferri met at a variety show in Columbia County. In 2006, they did a show together with each performer doing a separate hour-long set. They did the introduction and farewells together and it got a positive response according to Ferri. “People said ‘why don’t you do more stuff together. That was really funny.’”

They decided to write a couple sketches together, but went their separate ways for a year. “In 2007 we did two or three bits. Every year we did a couple more bits together and this year we combined it into a single storyline. That’s ‘Comedy for the New Depression’.”

“Comedy for the New Depression” tells the story of two guys who live in Maine who are trying to help their aunt save her restaurant in Chicago. Being physical comedians, Cox explains that the humor comes from the visuals. “A big part of what we do is our props. The first scene is with a boat. The second scene is with an airplane. It’s all about big, heavy sets and its pretty elaborate.”

The biplane has a 14-foot wingspan and spins 360 degrees. I’m not sure how they’ll get the plane inside The Linda, but they seem confident. The idea for the plane was just a joke on Ferri’s part. “When you’re still fleshing out the story, we got the idea of the restaurant and these guys changing a lightbulb and serving dinner. Something brought us away from the mid-west. I just said ‘why don’t we throw a plane in the show?’ That’ll get us from Maine to the Midwest.”

Cox agreed, but Ferri didn’t think he was seriously considering the suggestion until Cox built a model plane out of legos. The next thing you know, they had a plane with hydraulics, gears and pedals that took two months of non-stop work to build.

The end result is something both men are excited to show the world. “We’ve got so much invested in this show,” said Ferri. “I think it’s more interesting than what I’m doing on my own. Its grown into a bigger thing in a way.”

Ferri and Cox still tour separately. Ferri plays both close to home and on the road while Cox travels the country and spends a good deal of time in Canada. Ferri says that Comedy for the New Depression is something that fans won’t see anywhere else. “I’ve got a pretty good handle on who is doing what in the US and I can think of maybe three or four people that are doing something theatrical. I can almost guarantee that no one has seen anything like this in their life.”

Dave and I will be doing a WCDB ( 90.9 FM ) interview tonight at 11:00 PM in support of Saturday nights show.
So far we are both still intact; but very sore.

Here is the interview on WAMC’s ” The Roundtable ” that Dave and I did yesterday with Joe Donahue:

WAMC”s “The Roundtable” interview

We had a really good time hanging out at the studio and everyone made us feel right at home.
Thank you Victoria, Joe, Allison and Sarah for the opportunity and to Greg Aidala for setting it up.
Today is more rehearsing and the obligatory prop adjusting.

Dave Cox and I will be live on WAMC’s The Roundtable this Friday, December 3 with Sarah Laduke.
I believe the interview is at 11:00 AM and I will post confirmation here.
Also look for interviews in The Times Union, The Troy Record ( this Thursday ) and Metroland.

Here is Incredible Larry’s son, Alex having his leg glued back together by Lori after a run-in with a spiked, unicycle pedal last Sunday night. He is mending and will be back.

Glueing Alex’ leg

Dave and I will be performing at The International Quidditch Competition in NYC this Saturday. Yeah, you read that right !!!