Doug Weiss is going from amateur comedy nights, where the club`s staff and comics sometime outnumber the audience, to a possible shot at a standup`s dream: ”The Tonight Show.”
Weiss, a 31-year-old computer programmer and part-time comic for the last 3 1/2 years around the Chicago area, won ”The NBC Tonight Show with Jay Leno Comedy Challenge” on Tuesday night at Zanie`s on Wells Street.
A videotape of Weiss` performance will be sent to ”The Tonight Show”
for the national contest, with a chance at winning an all-expenses-paid trip to California and a guest spot on the show.
”I feel like I should walk down the aisle holding flowers,” Weiss said on stage, after beating nine others chosen from more than 200 audio and video performances sent to WMAQ-Ch. 5, host of the Chicago competition.
Weiss will join finalists from more than 100 markets across the country, said Rich Brase, WMAQ`s director of broadcast and promotion.
The winner, who has to have no network or cable-television exposure, will be chosen by the end of February and should make a ”Tonight Show” debut in the spring.
Weiss won thanks partly to a deadpan delivery and a little self-deprecating humor.
Weiss, looking every bit the computer programmer in his dark business suit and tie, joked that he was approached by a man wanting to sell him lessons on having an out-of-body experience.
”I said, `Why would I want to spend 700 bucks to get out of this bod . . . do you take credit cards?` ”
His recipe for homemade pizza: Take a canned casserole entree and let it explode in a microwave. ”Then order pizza.”
”He was the most original of everyone up there,” said talk-show host and comic Jenny Jones, one of the celebrity judges. ”If you see him once, you don`t ever forget him.”
