It had been a while since the Punchline had huge headliners, so I was excited when I heard that Robert Schimmel was in town for the week. I had heard only great things about him, so I was eager to see what I was in store for.

With every comedy show, there has to be an opener and a feature on the bill. That night, we had the pleasure of seeing Mark Nadaeu and Kevin Kataoka.

Mark Nadeau is one of the local comics that I really like. I have seen his act a few times and it was good every time. When you first lay your eyes on him, he comes off as a quiet guy, but as soon as he hits the stage, all of that disappears. He has cringe potential somewhere deep down inside of him and it is slowly makes its way out as he makes fun of his French last name, how he can't get laid and his ex-girlfriend who told him that she had a tattoo of a swastika, but not mentioning that it was on her dick. Very nice work.

Next up comes a comic that I had never heard of named Kevin Kataoka who was a writer for the show "Blind Date" and Comedy Central's "Dr. Katz". He opened up with good stuff, but Kevin is Japanese and everyone knows where that'll eventually lead into. He relied on his background for a good portion of his act imitating his father with a terrible Asian accent and goofy facial expressions. Shocking. Normally, that would automatically reserve him a spot in the hack category, but he did catch me off guard with his opening bits. He did well for a while and then out of nowhere, plummeted into Hackville, USA. Aside from talking about his Asian ancestry, he went on with a bit where he walked out into the crowd yelling about how the name for Life cereal originated and then finished up with the Abbot & Costello "Who's on first?" bit with his dead, Japanese speaking grandfather. Blech. He was a little hard to judge at first, but I wouldn't be too excited if I ever saw him again.

As the feature stepped off stage, our headliner was waiting in the wings.

Up comes Robert Schimmel, clad in a suit and tie looking quite dapper. Most of Schimmel's material was based on some of the recent controversies going around, namely Kobe Bryant, Janet Jackson's halftime peep show and Michael Jackson blowing young boys, of course. He also spoke of his remission from testicular cancer and it seemed as though he was having a blast talking about his one nut. It was good to see that he was enjoying himself as much as everyone else was. He was a little tricky to judge as well. Some of his jokes were so amazing and the crowd was roaring with laughter and a few points in the show, but his other stuff was just adequate, not getting a huge response from the crowd. It was either you loved him or you didn't. He got a mixed response from the crowd, but overall, he did well. The one thing that I truly liked about him was the way his deliveries were very nonchalant. He just looked very "cool" doing his act without a care in the world. He ended on a sad note, talking about how he lost his son to cancer and he told everyone to live each day to the fullest because you never know when you're gonna go. That was kind of a downer. The audience felt a little remorse for having laughed prior to his little speech, but that is not what he intended, as he went on to joke a little about the cancer subject. He then thanked the audience for their time and walked off stage.

I had a really good time and now that I know about Robert Schimmel, I am looking forward to seeing him again when he comes to town.

-Natalie