The biggest announcement since our last announcement!

Well folks, last Saturday's show wraps up our pilot season. And to think, just six months ago it was six months ago, and none of this had even happened.

Normally when I say that I'm in a doctor's office or some kind of holding cell, so this is really neat for me.

Clips from episode six will be appearing shortly, and then we're gonna take a little summer break, you know, play coy and hard to get so you don't start taking us for granted and then go behind our backs with other late night shows.

Don't worry though, because we'll still be producing original content with all of our cast members, or at least, all of our cast members who can avoid getting pinched for taping without the proper permits.

That reminds me, we haven't checked in with our favorite announcer, sidekick, and voice actor Erik Braa in a while. Erik, why don't you tell us what the Variety Society means to you?

Yikes! Um, Erik is working through a few things folks, why don't we leave him to sort all of that out. Instead, a word from our resident investigative reporter, Alexia Staniotos. Take it away, Alexia:

Damn! I mean...damn. That's a side of Alexia we don't usually see. But now we'll see it every night in our nightmares, and possibly even just when we close our eyes, from now until doomsday. Brrrr.

Well, creeping alcoholism and unexpected psychotic episodes aside, we'll still be working to bring the Bay Area our special blend of irreverent comedy and local talent, rain or shine.

But not if it's hailing. Hail is where we draw the line. Or that thing where it's not really raining but not quite snowing yet? Yeah, we hate that, we're not going anywhere near that.

I've run the numbers a hundred times!

In case you hadn't heard, we're doing a show this Saturday.

But wait, you say (did you actually just say that? Because that would be so weird...), didn't you guys just do a show less than two weeks ago? Why yes, yes we did, and the fact that you keep such strict track makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like an inverted bunny rabbit.

But this upcoming episode is something of an emergency measure. You see, we have too much Stuff. "Stuff" is a technical term, so let me explain: "Stuff" means content, like the content that we put into each episode of "The Variety Society" (let me know if I've lost you). Usually we get about a two liter bottle each month, looks something like this:

Yeah, don't even ask where it all comes from, there are certain things you just plain don't want to know about TV. Anyway, once we have Stuff, we need somewhere to put it all, and that's where Show comes in:

And now for the number crunching:

Stuff/Show=1

Hot damn, that semester at MIT is finally paying off!

And that, my friends, is how we do business. But this month? Well, this month, we ran into a little problem:

Oh my God! That's almost twice as much Stuff as usual! In fact, let me do some more calculations...it's exactly twice as much! Quick, someone get me a calculator.

Stuff x 2/Show=2

Two?! It came out to two! That's never happened before! It always comes out to one! What does this mean? What dark sorcery has brought this to pass?

With more Stuff than we can fit into the single Show that we've completed, we have no choice but to do another Show in hopes that that will be sufficient to contain it all. And we'll be doing that show LIVE, SATURDAY, MAY 14th, at the BOXCAR THEATER STUDIOS, 125A HYDE STREET!

Let me just twist the cap off of this bottle of Stuff and see what we've got here...ah, it appears to be performance artist and musician Scott Alexander along with director David Moutray, who is just about to hit the festival circuit with his new film "Nobody's Laughing" (which, despite what certain smartasses will tell you, was not originally called "The Variety Society Story").

Now we just have to sit back and pray that the dreaded Stuffx3 bottle is only a myth, because our staff can only take so much. If we keep up this grueling pace, this job might start to feel like some kind of work.

Finding your loser.

Our originally scheduled guest, local dentist Orin Scrivello, bailed at the last minute, but lucky for us "Little Shop of Horrors" star John Lewis was around to fill in. Sometimes these things just seem meant to be.

Really strange the way Orin disappeared like that though. And strange how John was hanging around after he did. And strange how I always thought that plant in the green room was fake, but somehow its gotten bigger since last week.

Ah well, probably a series of unrelated and completely ordinary coincidences. And now, on with the show, without a thought in the world about these suspicious, unexplained events, which I'm sure will have no tragically ironic effect on our lives in the immediate future.

Boy, I sure hope our show is successful, because I really need a way to improve my quality of life and achieve my modest working-class dreams. If only there were a quick and easy way to get ahead that only required some morally ambiguous decisions and a complete lack of foresight or self-awareness.

Well, anyway, enough about my comically downtrodden circumstances and doomed but sympathetic nice-guy persona, instead let's hear about "Little Shop of Horrors":

The Variety Society, Episode 5-Monologue

Segment 1 of Episode 5, Cold Open, Intro & Monologue now online!!

Enjoy!

But really, can't we get beyond Thunderdome?

There's something of a natural process of escalation that's built into this job.

Before every show I talk up the guests, and then after every show I talk up the guests. Occasionally I do callbacks to previous guests. I spend some time on the guests, is what I'm saying here.

I do this for two reasons: one, it's just part of my job to say that the people we book bestride the narrow world like a colossus while we petty men peep out to find ourselves dishonorable graves, and two, they do, in fact, bestride the narrow world like a colossus while we petty men peep out to find ourselves dishonorable graves (kind of a handy coincidence, that).

Still, at some point, I'm going to begin finding it hard to top myself. Sure, I could tell you that the gals from Monday Night Foreplays were so funny at our Saturday taping that they might have shifted the earth's crust a couple of inches, like a sort of comedic Tohuku earthquake. But come to think of it, don't I say that about the PianoFight regulars too?

The way I see it, there's only one way to resolves this:

Gladiatorial combat!

Yes, I propose that this show's guests square off against previous shows' guests to determine, once and for all, just whose ass I ought to be kissing around here!

That's right, I want Blake Schaefer and Todd Shipley to square off mano y mano, guitarra y guitarra in a magical musical duel (guitarists do that sort of thing, right?) for the privilege of being called the Variety Society's greatest guitar-toting folk hero!

I want "Little Shop of Horrors" star John Lewis to pit his killer alien plants against Windy Borman's army of cybernetically enhanced robo-elephants (legal disclaimer: Ms. Borman does not necessarily endorse cybernetic experimentation on elephants)!

Can the existential beer pong players of PianoFight still crack wise while under the influence of Monday Night Foreplays' specially formulated 72 Hour Energy drink? THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT!

Is it crass? Sure. Gratuitous? Certainly. A senseless sideshow of carnage for the sake of an imagined prize of little or no value? Naturally! But at least...um...kind of forgot where I was going with this, actually.

Awkward...