We were all gathered in the basement of an East Village restaurant for “Batsu!” This Japanese game show-themed improv comedy performance runs every Monday night at 8 p.m. Upstairs, customers at the Pan-Asian dining spot Je’Bon feasted on sushi while I was downstairs getting the shock of my life.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Electrifying: Japanese Game Show in the East Village, Village Beat
An hour after I signed a waiver saying I’d never sue, Noriko Sato tied a shock collar meant for dogs around my wrist. The audience watched in anticipation as she pushed a button on a handheld device. Suddenly, a spike of electricity tore deep into my skin. I yelped in pain as the crowd laughed.
“Can you confirm that the shock is real?” asked “Batsu!” co-host Kenji America as he held a microphone to my mouth.
“God, yes,” I said, clutching my wrist. As I walked back to my seat, someone handed me a plastic cup of beer and a strip of thick paper that read, “I survived BATSU! and won this free ticket!”
Batsu, which means “penalty” in Japanese, is a game show format where participants are punished when they bungle a task. Je’Bon’s “Batsu!” is the brainchild of Jay Painter, who co-founded the New York improv group Face Off Unlimited. When Je’Bon owner Joe Yipp was looking for ways to serve up more than just food in his restaurant, Painter offered his idea.
“It just hit me -- a Japanese game show!” said Painter. Batsu TV programs are extremely popular in Japan, and given the lively presence of Little Tokyo in the East Village area, Painter thought the format would translate. “Schadenfreude transcends cultural boundaries,” he added. Sato and America, both actors and comedians, were cast as co-hosts after nailing their auditions. And six months ago, “Batsu!” was born.
Rounding out the cast are Painter himself and his fellow Face Off Unlimited performers: Joe Tex, Eric Robinson, and occasionally Steve Zegers. At the June 13 show I attended, audience members got drunk on beer and sake while performers and volunteers eagerly received punishments such as shocks, paintballs to the torso, and slaps to the face.
I’d resolved not to drink during the show, but after I walked off the stage dazed, still clutching my arm, I took my seat and downed the cup of beer I’d been given. Then I joined about three dozen other audience members in the packed basement in cheering on Sato, 26, who is from Saitama, Japan.
If I had it bad, Tex and Zegers had it worse: A smiling Sato tied collars around their necks. Then, based on suggestions from the audience, each performed a character. If the audience didn’t find it funny, they shouted “Batsu!” and Sato activated the collar.
Tex’s impression of Tony Soprano (my suggestion) was a failure: Tex accidentally mentioned baklava instead of cannoli. “That’s Greek, not Italian!” shouted an audience member. “Batsu! Batsu!” chanted the crowd. Sato shocked Tex, and he clutched his neck in pain. Later, Zegers’ dead-on impression of a proper, crusty old Margaret Thatcher elicited roars of approval, and granted Zegers a reprieve.
And there were other games as well: In one, the ensemble improvised “a-man-walks-into-a-bar” jokes. If the joke fell flat, Sato smacked the joke-teller in the face with an oven mitt covered in talcum powder. In another, the performers and volunteers from the audience were divided into two teams that raced to consume the beer in identical yellow kegs. The losing players were forced to pop enormous yellow balloons against their bodies, inflicting stinging pain.
“How’d the collar feel?” Tex asked me after the show.
“Let’s put it this way,” I replied. “That’s the first time I ever decided to drink while covering a story.”
“Glad you got into the spirt of it!” Tex said.
I sure did. Batsu! is a blast: A shock to the system, but worth it.
A Library's Secret Life
The Carroll Gardens branch of the Brooklyn Public Library is noisy. It is essentially one large room, the size of a small gymnasium. Sounds echo throughout the space.
It’s a rainy day, and the tiled floor squeaks from the soles of shoes.
Against the wall near the exit is a Snapple vending machine. The brand’s logo—an anthropomorphized sun with licks of flame billowing around it like the petals of a daffodil—issues an expansive, dimpled smile, its fleshy lower lip protruding. A sign covers the machine: “out of order.” Nonetheless, the machine is plugged in, and issues a loud, pulsating hum.
Another source of noise is the librarian behind the checkout counter. 40ish, with straight brown hair hanging haphazardly down to his upper back, he converses loudly yet unintelligibly with a male patron. After several minutes, the patron leaves.
The children’s section is cordoned off by an arrangement of bookshelves. Unlike the hard, sickly white tiled floors of the rest of the library, the children’s section is covered with a thin, rough light-blue carpet. Scattered on the carpet are three colorful wire-and-bead toys. There are no children today, until a man, 30ish, walks in with a baby boy, about a year old. Hoisting him into the air by the armpits, the man stares into the baby’s face, and they smile at one another.
The man sits the baby in front of one of the wire-and-bead sets, and together they play, making clattering sounds as they slide beads across thin, looping yellow wires.
Adjacent to the children’s section, an older boy, perhaps 9 or 10, plays as well—in his case, an online first person shooter game on one of the library computers. He blasts away at robots with a heavy machine gun.
A dark-skinned man, possibly Native American, 40ish, wearing a grungy checkered black-and-blue flannel sweater, stands up from a desk, loudly clattering a pair of crutches on the tiles. He has thick black hair and a rough, unshaven face. He struggles toward the exit. There is a short flight of stairs between the doors that mark the entrance to the library proper and the doors that exit the actual building. The man transfers one of his crutches to his left hand, holding both under his left arm. He uses his right arm to prop himself against the railing as he struggles down the staircase. A jarring clattering of metal doors, and he is gone.
Minutes later, the man hobbles back into the library. He leans at a sharp angle against one of the sensors near the entrance to the library.
Meanwhile, a woman, 30ish, wheeling an empty stroller, enters the library accompanied by a girl of about 4. The girl runs to the children’s section and hugs the man with the baby.
The man passes the baby to the woman as the girl selects a book from a shelf. The man takes the book, sits her on his lap, and reads to her.
10 feet away, the woman tries to breastfeed the baby. He turns his head away, and she gives up. Her shoulders slump, and her face droops in exhaustion.
The dark-skinned man, still leaning against the sensor, appears asleep on his feet.
A library employee walks up to him.
“Sir, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he replies. He struggles back out of the library, the large metal doors clanging behind him.
contact: davidzteich@gmail.com
It’s a rainy day, and the tiled floor squeaks from the soles of shoes.
Against the wall near the exit is a Snapple vending machine. The brand’s logo—an anthropomorphized sun with licks of flame billowing around it like the petals of a daffodil—issues an expansive, dimpled smile, its fleshy lower lip protruding. A sign covers the machine: “out of order.” Nonetheless, the machine is plugged in, and issues a loud, pulsating hum.
Another source of noise is the librarian behind the checkout counter. 40ish, with straight brown hair hanging haphazardly down to his upper back, he converses loudly yet unintelligibly with a male patron. After several minutes, the patron leaves.
The children’s section is cordoned off by an arrangement of bookshelves. Unlike the hard, sickly white tiled floors of the rest of the library, the children’s section is covered with a thin, rough light-blue carpet. Scattered on the carpet are three colorful wire-and-bead toys. There are no children today, until a man, 30ish, walks in with a baby boy, about a year old. Hoisting him into the air by the armpits, the man stares into the baby’s face, and they smile at one another.
The man sits the baby in front of one of the wire-and-bead sets, and together they play, making clattering sounds as they slide beads across thin, looping yellow wires.
Adjacent to the children’s section, an older boy, perhaps 9 or 10, plays as well—in his case, an online first person shooter game on one of the library computers. He blasts away at robots with a heavy machine gun.
A dark-skinned man, possibly Native American, 40ish, wearing a grungy checkered black-and-blue flannel sweater, stands up from a desk, loudly clattering a pair of crutches on the tiles. He has thick black hair and a rough, unshaven face. He struggles toward the exit. There is a short flight of stairs between the doors that mark the entrance to the library proper and the doors that exit the actual building. The man transfers one of his crutches to his left hand, holding both under his left arm. He uses his right arm to prop himself against the railing as he struggles down the staircase. A jarring clattering of metal doors, and he is gone.
Minutes later, the man hobbles back into the library. He leans at a sharp angle against one of the sensors near the entrance to the library.
Meanwhile, a woman, 30ish, wheeling an empty stroller, enters the library accompanied by a girl of about 4. The girl runs to the children’s section and hugs the man with the baby.
The man passes the baby to the woman as the girl selects a book from a shelf. The man takes the book, sits her on his lap, and reads to her.
10 feet away, the woman tries to breastfeed the baby. He turns his head away, and she gives up. Her shoulders slump, and her face droops in exhaustion.
The dark-skinned man, still leaning against the sensor, appears asleep on his feet.
A library employee walks up to him.
“Sir, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he replies. He struggles back out of the library, the large metal doors clanging behind him.
contact: davidzteich@gmail.com
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
The Midnight Showing
Midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show—a campy science fiction musical teeming with transvestites and sexual awakenings—have shown weekly in various movie theaters since 1976. The film itself, about two young innocents stranded on a stormy night who wander into a kinky madman’s lair, is just background: Dominating the proceedings are performers in their early twenties, who wear costumes and mimic the movie.
Sadie Keljikian, 20, has performed at the Clearview Cinemas movie theater, at 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue, since she was 17. Sadie is tall and thin, with prominent cheekbones and long, dark brown hair. She’s loved the film since age 10, when she watched it with her father on video. “The movie was so out there and wacky,” she says. “And I grew up in the Village—I knew drag queens.”
Sadie graduated from the prestigious LaGuardia Arts High School, and is currently studying vocal performance at NYU’s Steinhardt School. She plays four characters, including Magenta the domestic and Columbia the tap dancing groupie. “I do a lot of theater,” she says, “This is absolutely nothing like any other performance I do.”
Including Sadie, there were eight performers—five women and three men—at the Friday, February 11th show.
The packed theater—with 14 rows of 13 seats— is small and intimate.
Throughout the opening credits, as a crimson pair of disembodied lips sang onscreen of classic science fiction camp such as Flash Gordon and Forbidden Planet, a young, dark-haired woman, in black bra, black panties, and ripped fish-net stockings, danced seductively along the aisles, occasionally doing cartwheels.
During the film proper, the performers acted under the screen and along the aisles, mouthing dialogue and mimicking the film’s action and dance sequences. Their costumes exactly mirrored those of their onscreen duplicates: For the counterpart of Susan Sarandon’s Janet Weiss, a lavender suit and a white wide-brimmed hat; for Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a messy black wig, white pearl necklace, black leather corset with matching bikini bottom, and temporary tattoo of a dripping, dagger-pierced heart labeled ‘boss’; for Peter Hinwood’s Rocky Horror, just a naked set of chiseled abs and crotch-hugging gold lamé underpants.
The props—such as a shiny yellow saxophone, two plastic-wrapped orange dumbbells, and a black wheelchair—were equally authentic.
Meanwhile, actors planted in the third row barked precisely timed jokes. (“This is what Michael Phelps’s funeral looks like!” a young man shouted near the film’s end, moments before Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s corpse was seen bobbing in a swimming pool.)
When the show ended and the performers took curtain calls, they were greeted with enthusiastic applause.
For St. John’s University Student Jennifer Choi, a 20-year-old Chinese American, the show was startling. During the sexually charged song “Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me,” she laughed nervously as a corseted female with wavy blonde hair climbed atop her lap, straddled her, and pressed her chest into Jennifer’s face. “I was in too much shock to stop her,” Jennifer says.
Nonetheless, she enjoyed herself. With a history of behind-the-scenes stage work, she especially liked the costumes.
“It was a totally different experience than, say, a Broadway show,” she adds. “After a while I liked it, but it was strange at first.”
To the performers, the show is more than a curiosity.
“It’s a labor of love,” says Sadie. “We don’t make money. But the cast, it’s the kind of community you can’t find anywhere else. It’s a crazy, big, fucked up family.”
contact: davidzteich@gmail.com
Sadie Keljikian, 20, has performed at the Clearview Cinemas movie theater, at 23rd Street and Eighth Avenue, since she was 17. Sadie is tall and thin, with prominent cheekbones and long, dark brown hair. She’s loved the film since age 10, when she watched it with her father on video. “The movie was so out there and wacky,” she says. “And I grew up in the Village—I knew drag queens.”
Sadie graduated from the prestigious LaGuardia Arts High School, and is currently studying vocal performance at NYU’s Steinhardt School. She plays four characters, including Magenta the domestic and Columbia the tap dancing groupie. “I do a lot of theater,” she says, “This is absolutely nothing like any other performance I do.”
Including Sadie, there were eight performers—five women and three men—at the Friday, February 11th show.
The packed theater—with 14 rows of 13 seats— is small and intimate.
Throughout the opening credits, as a crimson pair of disembodied lips sang onscreen of classic science fiction camp such as Flash Gordon and Forbidden Planet, a young, dark-haired woman, in black bra, black panties, and ripped fish-net stockings, danced seductively along the aisles, occasionally doing cartwheels.
During the film proper, the performers acted under the screen and along the aisles, mouthing dialogue and mimicking the film’s action and dance sequences. Their costumes exactly mirrored those of their onscreen duplicates: For the counterpart of Susan Sarandon’s Janet Weiss, a lavender suit and a white wide-brimmed hat; for Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a messy black wig, white pearl necklace, black leather corset with matching bikini bottom, and temporary tattoo of a dripping, dagger-pierced heart labeled ‘boss’; for Peter Hinwood’s Rocky Horror, just a naked set of chiseled abs and crotch-hugging gold lamé underpants.
The props—such as a shiny yellow saxophone, two plastic-wrapped orange dumbbells, and a black wheelchair—were equally authentic.
Meanwhile, actors planted in the third row barked precisely timed jokes. (“This is what Michael Phelps’s funeral looks like!” a young man shouted near the film’s end, moments before Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s corpse was seen bobbing in a swimming pool.)
When the show ended and the performers took curtain calls, they were greeted with enthusiastic applause.
For St. John’s University Student Jennifer Choi, a 20-year-old Chinese American, the show was startling. During the sexually charged song “Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me,” she laughed nervously as a corseted female with wavy blonde hair climbed atop her lap, straddled her, and pressed her chest into Jennifer’s face. “I was in too much shock to stop her,” Jennifer says.
Nonetheless, she enjoyed herself. With a history of behind-the-scenes stage work, she especially liked the costumes.
“It was a totally different experience than, say, a Broadway show,” she adds. “After a while I liked it, but it was strange at first.”
To the performers, the show is more than a curiosity.
“It’s a labor of love,” says Sadie. “We don’t make money. But the cast, it’s the kind of community you can’t find anywhere else. It’s a crazy, big, fucked up family.”
contact: davidzteich@gmail.com
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