Will Weldon, funny as shit
  • willweldon.com
  • Will Weldon, funny as shit

Seriously, last night I laughed for nearly 90 minutes straight. Most amazingly, it was at a comedy club, a place I'm not usually inspired to laugh for so long and so hard.

But last night's semi-finals of the 32nd annual Seattle International Comedy Competition at the Comedy Underground was seriously one of the most consistently funny things I've ever seen in a comedy club. Of the nine comedians, seven were really, really good—smart, inventive, polished but relaxed, and so funny I all but forgot the two who made me want to hoot at their lameness.

Among the best of the good ones: Kansas City's Mike Baldwin (who had the night's high score), Houston's Sam Demaris, Seattle's Xung Lam, Austin's Eric Krug, and LA's Patrick Keane and Rick Kunkler.

But my personal fave of the night (which was literally a total sausage fest, with not one broad on the boards) was Will Weldon, a young L.A.-by-way-of-Canada comedian who got the night's second-highest score and told the first pro-transgender joke I've ever heard.

Actually, it was more of an anti-people-who-are-dicks-about-trans-folks joke, and in lieu of a transcript (I was drinking), here's a description, which will rob the joke of its comedy but will represent it accurately. Weldon started the bit by bringing up the lame-ass Hollywood-and-TV comedy trope in which a big douchey straight guy makes out with some super-hot chick, after which it is revealed that the super-hot chick is MTF trans, with the revelation immediately followed by footage of the douchey guy puking into a toilet over a laugh track.

Will Weldon calls bullshit: "You're throwing up because the girl you kissed used to be a guy? She used to be a guy. Past-tense." Weldon then pointed out that everyone in the world used to be a baby, and that kissing a person who used to be another gender doesn't make you any more gay than kissing someone who used to be a baby makes you a pedophile.

I did a lousy job relating this, but the whole joke made me want to buy him a yacht.

The Seattle International Comedy Competition continues, building to the night of finals on Sunday November 27.