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Veteran Seattle stand-up comic Jan Barrett is calling her series of upcoming shows "a joke rummage sale."
"I started doing stand-up when I was old enough to get into a bar," Barrett said this week. "And now I'm getting my car insurance from AARP."
Barrett, who began her stand-up career on the Seattle scene in the early 1980s, has toured with the Chippendale dancers and opened for Jerry Seinfeld, Dana Carvey, Louie Anderson and other comics before they became national stars. In the early 1990s, she did a local PBS show, "Free Ride," that won an Emmy Award for writing.
After performing Thursday through July 15 at the Comedy Underground, Barrett plans to take a hiatus from stand-up to begin work on a one-woman show that could be staged at coffeehouses, small theaters or community halls.
"I've had a great career doing stand-up," she said. "But as Cary Grant once said, 'If you want to stay in show business, don't get off the bus.' I'm not getting off the bus; I'm asking the driver to take another route."
Barrett was inspired by comedian Rob Becker, who launched the successful one-man show "Defending the Caveman." Another source of inspiration is Dame Edna, the cross-dressing Australian comedian. But Barrett likely will base her show on her own experiences and not on a fictional character.
"That's where I want to go with my act. I want to start doing it in a theater with audiences that are educated and maybe a little bit older. I want to play to the PBS crowd," she said. "If I see one more baseball cap on backwards, I think I'll gouge my eyes out."
Barrett may call her show "Loser Friendly" or "Hey, I Just Realized I'm Old" or perhaps "Grin and Barrett."
The Bothell-based comedian had an epiphany last February while performing a benefit show for Vashon Allied Arts on Vashon Island, where she lived for a number of years while struggling with a failing marriage and a business that went awry.
"It was a nice audience of people of all ages," she said. "When I mentioned that my ex-husband had owed everybody on the island money, some guy yelled, 'Hey, he owes me money!' And I said, 'Get in line.' "
Barrett bantered with a man and his wife sitting in the front row. At the end of her set, the man stood up and applauded, setting off a standing ovation. Afterward, Barrett learned his identity: former Gov. Booth Gardner.
"I thought, 'Wow, if I can get a politician to start a standing ovation, maybe I should start playing small theaters.' "
Barrett said stand-up comedy has lost its luster for a number of reasons. The first may simply be comedy overload.
"The day starts with the funny drive-time radio guys and goes all through the day with the Comedy Network and Ellen Degeneres' monologue and then Jay Leno's and David Letterman's monologue. And now you can even get a text-message joke every day," she said.
"By the time someone gets to a comedy club, they're like a cheerleader that's been passed around by the entire football team."
Cable TV also has put a dent in comedy club attendance, Barrett said.
"You can sit home and watch a comedian and play with your dog and eat out of your own refrigerator, and avoid a DWI," she said.
Barrett said the smoking ban has hit comedy clubs especially hard.
"The only people making any money off stand-up comedy are the Indian casinos because they allow smoking," she said. "We've been waiting for the non-smokers to come back, and they haven't."
But there is good news and bad news about the smoking ban.
"The good news is my dry cleaning bills are down. The bad news is that without the cloud of smoke, my Botox treatments have increased."
Barrett, who was once part of a vibrant local community of comics, is troubled by the dumbing-down of stand-up comedy.
"We need a smarter group of young comics who are not going to pander to the whole drug, hip-hop, silly sex-stuff thing," she said.
"I watched that 'Last Comic Standing' thing, and it doesn't even remotely resemble the Seattle comedy scene in the 1980s, with people like Rick Shrader, Elliot Maxx, Peggy Platt and Chris Alpine."
"I've worked with some of the greatest, and I give the Comedy Underground huge marks for staying with the times and trying to keep things current, but trying to bring back some of the old favorites."
Among those old favorites is Jay Wendell Walker, a 40-year veteran of stand-up who will be roasted by Barrett and other comics July 19 at the Comedy Underground.
"Jay takes off his toupee as a sight gag. That may seem very old-fashioned to a lot of young kids who have been brought up on the Comedy Channel," she said. "But before 'Talk Soup' and 'The Daily Show,' we had the Jay Wendell Walkers of the world out there entertaining us."
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