Klown School

“I adopted my sister's two kids. Oh, she's not dead or anything; she's just a loser.  And, my niece is gothic. Who knew that was so expensive? It costs a lot of money to look like hell! They don't exactly sell those combat boots at Target, you know? And those Satanic T-shirts aren't cheap either. Who knew 666 was the freaking price tag?"

— Standup Academy teacher Bobbie Oliver

James Younan always knew that he had plenty of funny stories to share with people. But like so many millions of other workaday Americans, he spent most of his life only revealing his sense of humor to friends, family and customers at his family's liquor store in San Dimas.

But things have changed in a big way for Younan since he started learning how to perform comedy from Standup Academy, a series of classes that veteran comic Bobbie Oliver has been teaching on weekends at Pasadena's Ice House comedy club for the past three years. Younan loved the class so much that he's taken it four times so far, and found he had such a natural knack for being a funnyman that he recently won a national contest sponsored by NBC's “The Tonight Show,” earning a regular spot as a humorous traveling correspondent on late-night TV's top-rated program.

Yet Younan is just one of many success stories from Oliver's classes, in which she gives an average of 10 students in each of her three weekly classes five minutes on stage to bare their comedic souls before offering them an amazingly detailed and precise critique that literally transforms their writing and performance styles. Then, at the end of each eight-week session, the students get to perform their best five-minute sets live in front of a packed house and video camera at the Ice House, America's longest-running comedy club.

Some want to learn how to work with cleaner language, and some want to find the freedom to get raunchier. Some are pursuing a lifelong dream, while others are either acting on a dare, accepting a gift certificate or trying to overcome fears of public speaking.

Oliver has seen it all in her classes — and so did I, when I recently attempted to burnish my own decade-long attempt at a comedy career by taking an eight-week class Saturday afternoons throughout April and May. My class had a vertically challenged woman in her 50s,

a 15-years-married African-American couple who often discussed their sex lives on stage, a twentysomething Christian single guy who wanted to know how to perform cleanly and a 15-year-old guy who just wanted to have somewhere to perform without being tossed aside for being underage.

“There are tons of different reasons for the class, and the first day I tell people to tell us why they're taking it. It ranges from people who want to make it a career as the next Jay Leno, to people who want to try it or learn to speak in public, but everyone thinks that comics aren't afraid to speak in public and that separates comics from everyone else,” says Oliver, an Eagle Rock resident. “I tell everyone that we're afraid of it too, but we do it anyway. I think people say, ‘When I'm not afraid anymore, I will do comedy,' and then they sit on the couch and wait for the rest of their lives. But the only way to deal with that fear is to do it and then it ceases to scare you.”

“My friend told me that I could meet a lot of hot girls on the Internet. Yeah, but then you meet them in person and they try to explain why they now look like John Goodman.”

— Four-time Academy student Tom Vrab

Oliver herself has been performing comedy for nearly 20 years, starting as a 19-year-old college student in her native Georgia in 1987. At the time, none of the clubs in the Atlanta area would allow anyone under 21 to perform, so she started a stand-up group in college until hitting the road before after graduation and bouncing around the country for most of the next decade.

But when she realized she had only been seeing her husband an average of one day a week for the first eight years of her marriage, she opted to move to Los Angeles and pursue her comedic dreams in one place rather than risk letting her relationship deteriorate. She soon realized that she went from being the proverbial big fish in a small pond to having to create a new reputation in a new city, and teaching comedy to a new generation of performers would be a great way to still use her hard-won experience.

“There's a big misunderstanding about comedy. What people don't realize is that there are learnable skills and it also helps to have an outside pair of eyes and ears. I studied acting for four years and I still take classes. There are people who get masters and PhDs who still study, and gymnasts also make it look easy too but we know they've been in a gym since they were 4,” explains Oliver. “There are learnable skills and I think that I have a totally different point of view than most people. Hearing something different can also be a refreshing shakeup. I'm all about being organic, while others say adopt a character and make up stories about that person. But it's about being true onstage.”

“I'm really into sports these days. NASCAR is my favorite. I think it would be a lot better if they got rid of seatbelts, and helmets, and started putting olive oil on the track. I want to see some crashes!”

— 15-year-old three-time student Nick Feldsher

Former Pasadena Weekly Associate Publisher Paula Johnson, who now works as a marketing communications consultant, took the class and wound up sharing a stage at a Comedy Store show with Chris Rock and Andrew Dice Clay on just her third public performance. She's also found that “an unexpected benefit to being a comedian is a new perspective about what I can accomplish. After performing in front of a sold-out crowd at The Ice House, the other challenges in my life are a lot easier to handle.”

Next to Younan, it's Tom Vrab who is perhaps Oliver's top success story so far. And as a student who commutes weekly for the class from Orange County, he's also a prime example of how far people will go to learn from Oliver, the only working comic in Southern California to teach a class in a genuine club setting. Like Younan, Vrab won a national contest after submitting his graduation performance video to the Web site Ziddio.com, and landed one of just 10 spots offered to unknown comics to perform in the prestigious Aspen Comedy Festival this past March.

“I feel what's great about Bobbie is that her class shows you that all you need to have is yourself. She makes you dig in and find out who you really are and express it on stage,” says Vrab. “You realize how to turn your life into what can be considered standup or funny. Even if you don't think you're ready, you've got to take that extra step.”