Jeff Cesario`s comedic mind works like a well-oiled machine.
That`s evident at the beginning of his latest Showtime special, ”Some Assembly Required.” It starts off with two harried workers setting up in a jumbled factory-type operation.
”Get that Segue Gasket and hook it up to the Punchline Pipe!” one worker yells to the other. ”Hook the Transition Hose into the Setup Shaft!” It turns out these guys are laboring in Cesario`s brain. Cesario says the depiction is more or less how his mind really works.
”Kinda, without a doubt. I mean, I gotta wake those guys up every now and then. `Hello? Try to do anything you can. I`ve got a show to do,` ” says the 38-year-old Kenosha native. That opening is a ”double meaning for me. I do think my brain works that way. Plus, I think that`s kinda the way I look at things.
”I pause for a refreshing moment, you might say, and look at something and see it from two or three different ways, and then I sorta put it together.”
”Some Assembly Required” premieres at 9:30 p.m. Friday on the Showtime cable channel, with repeat showings on Monday and Aug. 18, 24 and 29.
Cesario is celebrating his premiere by working at the Funny Bone-Naperville (1504 Naper Blvd.-Tower Crossing Shopping Center; 708-955-0500)
beginning on the same day.
The half-hour special takes one thought, looks at it from a different view, then hooks it up to another thought, and moves on with that theme.
”That`s why I titled it that way,” Cesario says. ”Because I think the material, especially in this particular special, reflects that. Where you go, `Ohhh, I see where he`s going now.` There`s a lot of left turns in this special where you don`t expect them.”
Noting that ”everything in life is fast,” Cesario says in the special that ”it used to be that you wanted a fast car, you brought a sports car. Now, every car is fast. Ford Festiva. With turbo. You don`t need to get anywhere that fast in a Ford Festiva.”
Cesario says that technology is especially fast now, especially computers, and even children are quick to adapt. ”We`ve got 10-year-old kids breaking into the Defense Department computer. When I was 10, I was stopped cold by a Slinky.”
Cesario, who says he tries to offer a slightly off-kilter view of reality, talks about the difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties: ”Democrats look at half a glass of water and they think it`s half empty.
Republicans look at half a glass of water and they think, `Who the hell drank half of my water?`
”What was happening was, I was doing the clubs (and) I found myself getting more thematic,” the comedian explains. ”I realized there`s a real theme emerging in my stuff. Sort of a reality thing and the world spinning out of control, and I`m the one who`s gonna fix it.
”Yeah, right,” he adds with a laugh.
Cesario says that, as he was writing more material, he noticed that his reality jokes and his performance of them were getting cohesive enough to work into a cable TV special.
”That was the theme that was emerging naturally out of my head as I wrote more material, and now out of my performances. It really just started to pull together for this special.”
The special caps a busy 12 months for Cesario, who labels himself Kenosha`s favorite junior son: ”I`d still have to give the nod (as favorite son) to Dan Travanti (of `Hill Street Blues`) or perhaps Don Ameche. I`m bucking for second.”
It started with Cesario`s first Showtime special last August. In between, there have been four appearances on ”The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson”;
one ”Late Night With David Letterman” (a second is scheduled for the end of this month); a New Year`s Eve performance at the Chicago Theatre with Jerry Seinfeld and Jake Johansen; and work on NBC`s ill-fated ”Sunday Best”
program, the critically panned showcase for various NBC shows that lasted only three weeks.
Of ”Sunday Best,” which was hosted by Carl Reiner, Cesario says: ”I thought that was a pretty good example of a decent idea that just wasn`t formulated enough to flesh it out and see where the strong points were.
”I did learn a lot about what not to do if you`re trying to put something like that together.” That from a man whose mind works overtime trying to construct concepts.
