Tom Lenk Is My New Favorite Person

So last night, fellow podcasters @scarletscribe, @da7e and I, along with my dear friend Matthew went to go see Tom Lenk do musical comedy at Don't Tell Mama, a Cabaret/Piano Bar adjacent to Broadway. I suspected the show would be, you know, cool, but I had NO IDEA it would be ACTUALLY incredible.

He opened the show singing a cabaret version of Gimmie More, which you can check out from an old Lenk performance below. I found the clip in an article by Nathaniel R from The Film Experience about Tom Lenk, written a while back. You should definitely check it out here.



I so wish I had recorded some video last night, but we weren't sure whether we were allowed to or not, so alas.

After the show stopping Gimmie More, Tom performed a song he actually wrote on the plane on the way here about his "Last Minute Show" which was also fantastic. He writes pretty damn well!

What followed for the next 30 min was some of the best stand up I've ever seen. Granted, I haven't seen much stand up, but holy crap was he hilarious. He regaled us with stories about how in LA homeless people love to yell at him, spit at him and threaten him with scissors and told an epic tale detailing why you should never date someone who a. asked to be set up with you because he was a fan of your work on Buffy and b. who is 8-9 years your junior.

One of my favorite portions of the stand up was when Tom busted out his favorite "Men Seeking Men" ads from Craigslist. Priceless. Even better was when Tom read out loud the comments from an old Alloy article, called "Your Next Crush," featuring Tom. The teenage girl' comments started out sweet and quickly descended into "Eyu, this guy's an elf!" It was truly hilarious, and made even better by the fact that Tom clearly takes it all in stride.

We then entered the portion of the show where Tom sang some songs he wrote in Jr high & high school, which although had hilariously juvenile lyrics...were accompanied by pretty great music. Apparently he sent in all of his songs to Cher & the B52s so they could record them. And you know, they should have :).

Then, out of nowhere, suddenly I'm crying as Tom tells us about his best friend from jr high/high school who had cystic fibrosis and had to move away in tenth grade for health reasons. Months later, she wrote him a note that he read aloud and it literally made me bawl.

We were then treated to a sketch involving a German Star Trek fan to close the show, a song about the Master Cleanse Tom wrote that EVERYONE looking into fad diets needs to hear. It was amazing.

After the randomly brilliant show, Tom stood outside and received every single one of his guests, shaking hands, taking pictures, talking as long as we wanted. He is a truly sweet, talented guy who deserves to be successful. Today he is auditioning for something pretty huge here in New York, so let's all collectively put good vibes out there in the world for him.