Martin Urbano Is Toying With Us

I’ve been in love with Mar­tin Urbano since the days of Sure Thing shows at the now-shut­tered North Lamar loca­tion of Austin Java. Throw­ing out small pic­tures of actress Park­er Posey to his audi­ence as part of a joke set­up, Urbano’s cre­ativ­i­ty has always been on dis­play. Even his Mad Lib bit from his ear­li­est days of per­form­ing is seared into my brain as some­thing that no one could ever repli­cate. Lucky for you, you can see a fine­ly honed ver­sion of the Mad Lib bit by watch­ing his appear­ance on Jim­my Kim­mel Live.

On his 3^rd vis­it to our pod­cast, this is the most-self-assured and con­fi­dent (and def­i­nite­ly the most opin­ion­at­ed) ver­sion of Urbano yet. Did New York City play a part in this evolution? 

In the city that nev­er sleeps – and before the COVID pan­dem­ic – Urbano was able to refine his com­e­dy with ample stage time; in our 2018 episode with Urbano we dis­cussed the abil­i­ty to hit 4 – 7 mics and shows in a sin­gle night. It cer­tain­ly helped liv­ing in the same city that was home to the cre­ative alt-com­e­dy gem The Chris Geth­ard Show. Geth­ard’s show was an elab­o­rate take on the cable access show con­cept and Urbano per­formed reg­u­lar­ly. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of Urbano’s mul­ti­ple part series of ​“Com­e­dy Ama­teur­class” lec­tures. For legal pur­pos­es, I use the word ​“lec­ture” very, very loose­ly here. 

Urbano still has an air of friend­ly Brownsville, Texas native more than a rough and tum­ble New York­er. New York­ers, if I may gen­er­al­ize, are known for hav­ing a con­fi­dence and self-assured­ness that they put on full dis­play, and I real­ly love that famil­iar­i­ty in this ver­sion of him as much as I loved the ver­sion I watched on Austin stages in the mid 2010s. 

It was­n’t just New York that shaped this cur­rent ver­sion of Urbano. COVID forced a lot of peo­ple to reshape their visions for the future. It was­n’t an option for him to come home to Texas, but don’t wor­ry, he’s not banned from the state: he just hap­pens to love New York too much to leave. After sev­er­al months of COVID lock­down, dur­ing which he lit­er­al­ly did noth­ing cre­ative – unless you count hours and hours of play­ing video games – Urbano was ready to cre­ate some­thing new.

Would you have guessed that Urbano’s first large cre­ative project would be a game show? 

No, we would­n’t have either. The week­ly game show Who Wants $2.69 with Mar­tin Urbano? launched dur­ing the sum­mer of 2020. By the way, read that show title slow­ly for full effect: it’s anoth­er mas­ter­ful dis­play of his word­play prowess. 

Mod­eled after Who Wants to be a Mil­lion­aire–but with a decid­ed­ly small­er pay­off prize – Urbano, it turns out, is a great game show host. He authored the ques­tions him­self, which meant an aggres­sive exer­cis­ing of comedic writ­ing mus­cles. The show ran for as long as it took the New York live com­e­dy stages to reopen. 

The lim­it­ed run show offers insight into Urbano’s ambi­tion is to be a game show host on a larg­er scale. To that end, his lat­est endeav­or is a new game show con­cept debut­ing at the end of May in Brook­lyn called Why Would You Ask Me That?. This is clear­ly a man on a quest: ​“I want to host … Wheel of For­tune or some­thing. That’d be fun. Even­tu­al­ly, Pat [Sajak] will die.” We’re ready to peti­tion for him to be hand­ed the keys to the wheel when Sajak retires. Again, for legal rea­sons, our peti­tion will be based on retire­ment, not death. 

The world needs to see more of the mag­ic potion that Urbano is brew­ing. Vul​ture​.com cap­tured Urbano’s comedic style apt­ly by say­ing: ​“His work com­bines edgy, almost-over-the-line humor with – get this – real­ly good jokes”.

It’s easy to say jokes that cross the line…something that hap­pens more often than it should in the Austin com­e­dy scene. It takes hard work and per­sis­tence to tell jokes that get very close to the line, but keep you lik­able, which is pre­cise­ly Urbano’s gift. 

Urbano shares that after COVID he’d open for Geth­ard and ​“the silence that those bits would get dis­cour­aged me. Should I just drop these jokes com­plete­ly? So I was like, okay, I got­ta drip the irony a lit­tle bit more, get a lit­tle sil­li­er with it, get a lit­tle whinier with it.” In typ­i­cal Urbano fash­ion, he wraps up the tale of his hard-fought retool­ing with ​“And now those bits are very strong … You know, it’s more of a mixed bag. Like some­times they’ll like me, and some­times they’re like, Who’s this? What’s going on?”

Urbano per­formed at sev­er­al Moon­tow­er JFL shows this year, includ­ing the wicked­ly weird Good Pol­lu­tion show. At Good Pol­lu­tion, he deliv­ered a sol­id, tight, tra­di­tion­al standup set and his jokes reflect­ed who he was in Austin, but with a veneer and pol­ish earned in New York. The Urbano that I adored at Sure Thing is still there, but with even more crafty word play and the con­tin­ued per­pet­u­a­tion of the ​“creep on stage” persona. 

I love Urbano the standup com­ic, but increas­ing­ly what Urbano excels at is char­ac­ter work. The oth­er Moon­tow­er JFL per­for­mance for Urbano was for the con­cept-bend­ing, Stamp­town, brain-child of Zach Zuck­er. Urbano’s char­ac­ter in Stamp­town was as a pseu­do-jour­nal­ist cri­tiquing the evening’s per­for­mance. Stamp­town ran over the course of 4 nights and each night is dif­fer­ent so Urbano had to be on his toes to impro­vise his jour­nal­is­tic cri­tiques. He excelled on the night I attend­ed and was one of the mem­o­rable high­lights of the evening. I can’t dis­cuss the oth­er mem­o­rable high­lights of Stamp­town, because I try to keep things fam­i­ly friend­ly.

Play­ing a mem­o­rable char­ac­ter is a new­found skillset for Urbano. If you did­n’t fall in love with Hulu’s This Fool, you missed a brief appear­ance by Urbano. I was sad it was one and done due to the nature of his role, but dur­ing our inter­view, Urbano dropped the excit­ing news that the show was bring­ing Julio Tam­bi­en back for sea­son 2. The oth­er excit­ing news shared is his atten­dance at this year’s Edin­burgh Fringe Fes­ti­val in August. The nerves, the plan­ning, the logis­tics, the finan­cial cost, all fright­en and thrill Urbano and we hope that he delights audi­ences in Scot­land as much as he delights them here. 

We should also not gloss over the fact that Urbano recent­ly com­plet­ed a stint as a writer for The Tonight Show with Jim­my Fal­lon. You can catch Urbano for his Apol­o­gy Come­back Tour, which has lim­it­ed dates in the mid­west and north­east. Self­ish­ly, we’d love to see a nation­al tour in Urbano’s future because frankly, catch­ing a 10 minute set and his role as pseu­do-jour­nal­ist at 2023 Moon­tow­er JFL was not enough.

While there’s a lot we miss about the Austin com­e­dy scene that Urbano was a part of, there’s a def­i­nite thrill to know­ing that we can say ​“we knew them when”. (We’ve been say­ing that a lot late­ly of the alum­ni of the pre-COVID Austin com­e­dy scene.) Urbano holds a spe­cial place in our hearts because he’s always been will­ing to play along. 

Whether it’s play­ful­ly throw­ing pic­tures of Park­er Posey from his pock­et at the audi­ence, play­ing with Mad Libs on stage, or even his 2015 guest appear­ance on a Radio Tatas episode where he played along with Lara Smith’s and my warped vision of a sil­ly pod­cast. It was, and remains, the only time I’ve ever had a spit take, after he said some­thing so unex­pect­ed­ly hilar­i­ous while I was drink­ing my first (and last) Red Bull. Or the time he spent an evening with me and Lara on our 2018 vis­it to New York and we all play­ful­ly donned goofy hats to cap off the evening. All this play­ing along is exact­ly what con­tin­ues to set him apart. Sud­den­ly, it makes per­fect sense that all this play­ing along was train­ing for Urbano’s ulti­mate goal — toy­ing with audi­ences and keep­ing them on their toes.

Fol­low Martin

• Linktr.ee- link​tr​.ee/​m​a​r​t​i​n​u​rbano
• Insta­gram — @martinurbanojr
  
• Tik­Tok — @martinurbanojr

Mar­tin can be seen and heard:

• Jim­my Kim­mel Live set — youtu​.be/​J​i​m​m​y​K​i​m​m​e​lLive
• Chris Geth­ard Presents — mul­ti­ple appear­ances, includ­ing the ​“Com­e­dy Ama­teur­class” series — youtube​.com/​@​c​h​r​i​s​g​e​t​h​a​r​d​p​r​e​sents
• This Fool (Hulu)
  
• Pre­vi­ous appear­ances on our podcast
  • Mar­tin Urbano Loves Com­e­dy (2016)
    
  • Kelsey Caine & Mar­tin Urbano: What Are You Wait­ing For? (2018)
    
• Apol­o­gy Come­back tour
  
• 2023 Edin­burgh Fringe Festival