Ian Bagg wants to know..."What do you do?"

Jay and I went to see Ian Bagg last night at the DC Improv and unfortunately, since we were in the absolute last row, we were unable to inform Mr. Bagg of our occupations. But that didn't stop him from asking every. single. other. member. of. the. audience. that. question.

What do you do?

Bagg relied so much on crowd work that I think we saw maybe ten minutes of actual material. Now I'm not saying I disliked his set as I enjoyed the material he had and was extremely impressed at some of the places he was able to go from the audience participation aspect of the show. The best part of the night had Bagg doing almost ten minutes straight of improvised material after a member of the audience volunteered that he had only one testicle.

The improv is fine (especially since the show occurred at the Improv) but why oh why did 95% of it have to come after Bagg asked his favorite question of all time, "What do you do?"

Sample Dialogue from last's night's show:
"Hey ma'am. Yes you, the lesbian with all of the tattoos, what do you do? Oh you're a lesbian, right on. Hey you sir, What do you do? Oh you work in the Navy. huh? Sounds like a lazy job. Bet you'd be late for war if you had that lesbian on your boat. You three, what do y'all do? You work for a non-profit? You think you're better than everyone else? You sir, what do you do? Too late, moving on. This table, what do y'all do? We'll just have to guess, cannot wait for response. The back section! What do you do? Everyone in the audience...WHAT DO YOU DO!? What do you do, what do you do, does not compute, what do you do, malfunctioning, what do you do!!!!!?

It was at that point that Bagg's circiut board shorted out and the show was over. But that didn't stop Jay and I from asking each other what we did for the next hour straight. Despite that one glaring annoyance, the show was pretty good, and you wouldn't be doing yourself a disservice by checking him out tonight or tomorrow. For more info, check out DC Improv's homepage.