Jake Johannsen's KC show being taped for TV

People still talk about "This'll Take About an Hour," the 1992 HBO special starring one of the rising stars in standup comedy, a nerdy-looking Iowa State University dropout who stammered through deceptively well-honed, five-minute routines on his broken telephone, locking himself out of a car, watching "He-Men" on TV, buying condoms and other subjects.

It has been remembered and replayed ever since. When I googled Jake Johannsen, the very first hit I got was the YouTube (above) of that special.

Now, 17 years later, Johannsen is ready for an encore. And here's the best part: You can be there.

This Saturday night, he'll be performing more than an hour of his best material at the Uptown Theater, while cameras roll. The program will be produced by Kansas City's own Emery Emery, a longtime friend of Johannsen's.

If it's been a while since you saw Jake live, some things have changed.

"I have a wife, I'm of a certain age, I have a daughter -- for instance, just recently I hurt myself while I was asleep. You don't see that coming. So I talk about that. I talk about my daughter, who's two and today took off all her clothes. I feel I'm not ready for that yet.

"I guess I talk a little about having a family and paying taxes, a little about marriage, a little about relationships -- what it's like to be a person now."

Still one of the most successful standup comics working today some 25 years after he broken into the business via the San Francisco comedy-club scene, Johannsen continues to make regular appearances on "Late Show with David Letterman." He did a Comedy Central special a few years back. Every two years, he churns out a comedy CD.

But standup comedy is a peculiar business. It's not enough to make more money than 10 autoworkers make in a year, just by telling jokes. No, you have to make movies, you have to make sitcom pilots, you have to be a spokesman for baseball.

Johannsen and I talked about this recently in a phone interview.

"I was in New York the other week and Jerry Seinfeld came on and did a guest set before me," he said. "He was going out and doing a bunch of dates. He had a microcassette recorder with him. I said, 'You know, Jerry, they have digital recorders now.'

"He's going out and recording his sets and working on jokes and he loves it. Any guy who would walk away from a hugely successful show, I mean, he wouldn't have to leave his house again the rest of his life ..."

The thought trails off.

"It's funny how, from a comic's perspective, if you go onto a talk show and talk to Dave or Jay, that's the prestige thing. But I've talked to so many people who say,'It's great that you come out and do standup.'"

Not that he's not working on other projects. But in his 25 years of performing, the comedy world has transformed into an entrepreneurial business. Now you make your own sitcom pilots (he's wrapping one up now) and your own CDs and your own TV specials.

"What's happened now is that with the cost of things going down and computers and all, you can produce it yourself," Johannsen said. "Jim Gaffigan produced his own hour special and then HBO bought it from him.

The way the business works now, they say, 'Bring us the finished product.'

Hence the collaboration with Emery, who already has one HBO comedy credit under his belt -- he was the editor on the scatalogical classic "The Aristocrats."

"Of all the comics I've worked with, I've never worked with someone as implicit a writer as Jake," he said. "I think only Seinfeld compares." Emery also compares Johannsen's routine to Bob Newhart's, with its start-stop rhythm and a perspective on life as being something like a troublesome PC one has to keep rebooting. Indeed, Johannsen was one of the comedians selected to pay tribute when Newhart was awarded the Mark Twain Prize in 2002.

"I'm aware of the other options in Kansas City," said Emery. "A lot of things have been shot in the Midland Theatre and I don't think a lot has been shot in the Uptown, so that appealed to me. It's a really, really gorgeous remodeling job they've done there."

Jake Johannsen: Performing one show 7 p.m. Saturday at the Uptown Theater. Tickets are $25.