Comedy experiment “Judgement Day with ‘Mike’s Got This’ DiPasquale” delivers for standing room only Ship crowd
Photo by RJ Baig
The crowd is heavily dressed in that edgy shade of black—bordering on punk, highlighting potential artistry while allowing shadows to blend in as if humbly base and not itchingly self-aware. The stage lies before us in ominous waiting, two antique-looking modern-made Windsor chairs loom stage left with a true antique coffee table perched in front, a dark wooden preacher’s podium center, and a tall, cloaked object stage right.
Photo by RJ Baig
The Ship is playing host to a new kind of comedy show, with a decidedly unexpected angle involving a local semi-celebrity. What the night has in store, and whether it will land or merely come as some bizarre experiment, is about to be determined.
Photo by RJ Baig
Aaron Scarborough plays God, prepared to gently scathe the talented outputs of local artists and one very special Italian-American local celebrity guest, a man who graces Kansas City’s billboards and buses: attorney-at-law Mike DiPasquale.
Scarbrough walks out with a basketball in one hand and a Cold Snack in the other, prefacing himself at the podium. “It’s a sold-out show, I wanna say it’s me… I know why you guys are here. We’re all passionate about injury law.” The crowd warms with laughter.
Introduction complete, he moves towards the mysterious tall cloaked object and unveils it as a true-to-size white beach lifeguard stand, which he mounts to audience applause, and remains perched there, light brown Chelsea boots dangling three feet above the stage, not to grace the floor again until the trial of guests is over. He introduces his girlfriend, comedian Madi Stancic.
Woman of many talents, she, like him, paints, and has her prints of the funny and sincere alongside Scarbrough’s in the back. She deals a continuous blow of laughter with parading physical comedy and precise pauses. A story about a past crush has her turning to look up at her boyfriend with impeccable tongue-in-cheek, “It was before your time, babe.” Concluding her set, she graces the first chair to thunderous applause as an additional Judge, accompanied shortly after by the man who crafted them, woodworker Alex Bear.
Pictures meant for the privacy of a wife’s phone are displayed to the crowd on the screen, taken for said wife’s perusal when working long hours on holidays as a nurse, in-between other pictures of wood, such as likes of a Canadian flag draped seductively across a very probably nude Bear to a carved ornate box made of locally sourced walnut, to a similar raunchy thought of Thanksgiving re-enacted with carefully placed leaves, to a stool.
Photo by RJ Baig
Scarbrough dogs on the guests and they bite back. Savagely in the case of ceramicist and painter Heidi Schultz, a past professor of Scarbrough’s, creator of ceramic Buddha buddies two feet tall, who quips, “I really appreciate that you are in student debt, because that’s paid my salary” and innocently accidental in the case of photographer Quinlyn Tosh asking “What year did you go to school?” and when the year is eventually answered, saying incredulously “…from college?”
Tosh, sponsored by Photoshop and now recently by Nikon, lives full-time as a photographer and says, “it’s literally the end goal.” To which Scarbrough roasts, “Do you own property?” Generational dreams differ.
Photo by RJ Baig
The man of the hour enters with fanfare, entering to Sinatra’s “That’s Amore” amid chants of “Mike! Mike! Mike!” as a red checkered tablecloth is dramatically floated onto the coffee table, a cold six-pack he carried with him on stage placed atop. For him to look so spread-legged comfortable between a woman who deftly painted a depiction of Brendan Fraser as The Whale comedic with nothing more than a specific background hue of pink and a man whose continuous best-seller on Etsy is two medieval towers named ‘Ne’er Forget’ is ballsy. But he’s Mike, and he’s ‘Got This.’
He blunts a swear word and Scarbrough parodies, “First of all, thank you for saying ‘f-off’,” and to which DiPasquale retorts, “I’ve got kids here,” gesturing to Tosh’s friend group sitting cross-legged in front of the stage.
Photo by RJ Baig
Between early pictures of his basketball days, screenshots of Instagram comments between Mike and Aaron, sketch renditions of his face done by Scarbrough, and prodding banter like referencing his ads overlaid on the buses downtown, “which, by the way, has one of those buses ever run someone over?” he holds his own. He’s been attentive the whole show, even cross-examining Madi’s B-team golf days that she referenced early in her set.
The mastery of Scarbrough and DiPasquale together is that they both know how to toe the line without edging over. Through their discourse, there’s tension of two different people in two different circles of life fencing with the potential for the jesting sword to draw blood. Mike, a man of certain means, who swore on the Bible twice, contrasts with working-class Scarborough, who, early in the show, denounced his evangelical roots. But amicable ground was held. Communist roots subverted Mike’s slogan in a crude billboard drawing by Scarbrough, with the words “Exploited by Landlord? Mao’s Got This!” and a number to call (Scarbrough’s).
DiPasquale parried in a sidestep without commenting on the direct nature of it—maybe because he’s got good tact as an attorney, or just maybe because, as he could claim, he’s got athlete written in his bones as a “two-time state champ.”
Photo by RJ Baig
His answer to: “Has a bus with his face on it ever run someone over?” “That’s a private client privilege.”
Metal band The Moose concluded the evening by bulldozing the stage in case any egos remained.
The night was a rousing turnout of community and collaboration with a dash of local celebrity, and as the woman taking a selfie in the front row of the packed house said: “It’s like we live in a city or something.”
Photo by RJ Baig
