After Syracuse University graduates Jake Goldman, Justin Young and Dan Leif moved to Hudson County last year, they wanted to keep doing sketch comedy together, but didn’t know what to call their group.
“Leif really wanted to call us ‘Door Waffle,’ said Goldman last week. “I didn’t like it. He said that it’s two words that shouldn’t be together. I didn’t think that’s a good reason. But I’m going to get that as a tattoo. I just need to save up.”
After batting around more than 100 names, they were taking a bus home from a football game at Temple University and passed an ugly-looking river. They settled on the name “Cleanest River in America.” “It’s really a bad story,” Young admitted.
“We told another sketch group this story, and it took 15 minutes,” Goldman said. “I think they were in agony by the end.”
Wacky stuff
The three college friends, who play off each other with humor that ranges from the wry to the outlandish, have been performing at improv festivals across the country in order to gain an audience. Full-time, they work in New York. Goldman edits videos of band interviews, while Young works for an architectural consulting firm and Leif is an assistant stage manager for a theater.
Goldman and Leif share a house with two roommates in Weehawken, while Young lives in Hoboken. They heard about the towns from friends and decided living in Hudson was a better financial move than living in New York City.
Since graduating in May, they have appeared at comedy festivals in New York City, Providence, and Boston, and have gotten invitations to perform elsewhere as a result. They appeared in a New Year’s Eve show at Rififi, a club in New York City, and plan to appear this Jan. 13 at a comedy show in Chicago.
But the show they are most excited about is a combination show/audition on Jan. 17 at the PIT (People’s Improve Theater) in Manhattan. They are hoping to get a large audience, and if they do well, they may be asked to perform there for four weeks in a row.
However, perhaps the biggest brush with comedy stardom already came when Leif was working at a full-time job.
“I was canvassing for an environmental organization,” said the Massachusetts native, who admits to having held many jobs since moving here. “I saw Jimmy Fallon and got $40 off him. At the end, I said, ‘You’re Jimmy Kimmel, aren’t you?’ He took it well. He’s a pretty good guy.”
Sketches
The three men perform a series of original sketches at each show. In one favorite of theirs, a man is mugged by a fish, and a detective flushes his career down the toilet in pursuit of the rogue fish. In another, a New Jersey sex offender goes door to door to inform his neighbors that he’s a sex offender. At one stop, he actually meets another registered sex offender. “He tries to befriend him,” Goldman said. “There’s a song at the end.”
In a different skit, a group of soldiers in Iraq can’t figure out whether they’re a brigade, battalion, or something else.
“It escalates, as sketches do,” Goldman explained.
“It builds to a crescendo,” Young confirmed.
“I wrote a lot of sketches for the last show that didn’t get in because they didn’t make sense,” added Goldman winsomely. “I’m not mad. They just didn’t make sense.”
Goals
The trio wants to perform as much as possible, but they know they have to find their audience. They also enjoy exploring their Weehawken and Hoboken digs.
“I took the PATH train in, and I work next to the World Trade Center,” said Young about his first brush with the mile-square city. “The PATH station smelled like popcorn, unlike the urine and blood of the New York City subways. I was immediately smitten.”
“Weehawken’s cool,” Leif added. “We had no idea what it would be like.”
Goldman said they are particularly fond of an Ecuadorian restaurant in Union City that has no menus and offers only two things: plantains and fish soup. Leif is currently consumed with trying to find the Weehawken/Union City border on maps.
Come to the show
The trio wanted to encourage readers to come to their show at the PIT, and threatened a revocation of Jersey citizenship for those who don’t attend.
The Jan. 17 show is at 9:30 p.m. at the theater at 29th Street and Sixth Avenue (http://www.thepit-nyc.com/). Tickets are $5.
To read more on the motley crew, check out cleanestriver.com. Goldman also has a blog at internetdogfist.com, and Young writes media rants at www.mediabitchfest.com.