Last Comic Leaving

A gigantic wall separates the unsung comics of Las Vegas from the Strip headliners whose billboards they pass while driving to work. After repeatedly failing to scale that wall, many comics end up beating their heads against it.

"You're not going to the big leagues if you stay in Vegas," claims Jamie "Maddog" Mattern, a 1996 Chaparral High School graduate who split for New York City in 2006. "The best you can play is Triple AAA there."

Mattern, 32, is one of five comics appearing Saturday at the Beauty Bar as part of a show called "Las Vegas Comedy Homecoming." All started out in Vegas and felt forced to move elsewhere to advance their careers. (Show host Bryan Bruner also lives in New York City, Sam Tripoli lives in Los Angeles, John Hilder in Salt Lake City and Nathan Lund in Denver.)

"To be big in Vegas, you have to be a name already," Mattern says, phoning from a 702 cell phone while food shopping in Upper Manhattan. "They usually only book people who've been on the road for years. They don't really move you up."

Mattern -- whose bio describes him as a "white-washed Mexican-American" -- launched his career via open-mic nights at the now-defunct valley bars Tongue and Groove, Stock Exchange and Honest John's. He describes the experience as "combat comedy."

"You're playing in a bar and people are playing video poker," he says. "And not only are you trying to get their attention, there would be drug deals going on."

Mattern consoled himself with the notion that starting at the bottom can only lead upward.

That's what he thought anyway.

"Everything in Vegas is geared toward the casinos," says Julie Seabaugh, a former Las Vegas entertainment journalist turned Los Angeles-based event organizer and publicist. "Breaking into that as a fledgling comic is next to impossible."

Seabaugh says she can't name a single current full-time Las Vegas comic who started out in Las Vegas.

"There's not a lot of infrastructure until you reach a certain level," she says, "and then you get support from the L.A. comedy clubs." (The fact that Saturday's show was Seabaugh's idea bears out her point: Like most of the city's big comedy bookings, even this smaller one was made in Los Angeles.)

In New York, Mattern's audiences are more likely to include the talent scouts, booking agents and writer/producers who can help his career advance. (Although plenty of such starmakers visit Las Vegas from Los Angeles, most are here to escape work and blow off steam, not discover new comedians in the shadows of the Strip.)

"New York is the place to be for me right now," Mattern says.

In addition, although the money Mattern earns per gig at Standup New York, Broadway Comedy Club and other Big Apple joints is no better than it was in the valley -- $50 to $100 -- he says there's more of it because he can do as many as five gigs per night. (Many more gigs are available, and they're centrally located for easy shuttling.)

"You can make some good loot," Mattern says. "In Vegas, you get your one gig and you piss away the fifty dollars drinking all night."

This will be Mattern's first trip home since Christmas. In addition to his fellow former Las Vegas funnymen -- and, of course, his mother and grandparents -- he says he looks forward to catching up with his old comedy Army buddies still banging their heads against the gigantic wall.

"Some of them get a weekend hosting at the Improv a couple of times a year," Mattern says. "But those guys have been doing it for a decade. It's insane."

Mattern admits he would consider a permanent return to Vegas -- but only when Vegas is ready for him.

"Then we can come back with our sellout money and get a nice house in Summerlin and eat lobster for breakfast," he says, adding: "That could happen."

Contact reporter Corey Levitan at clevitan@review journal.com or 702-383-0456.