It's the last Thursday in June, and Ron Funches is saying goodbye. For years one of the most popular and accomplished stand-up comics on the Portland scene, Funches has made a big, life-changing decision. He's packing up and moving to Los Angeles.
But first, Funches, 29, has a farewell show to do, at the Hollywood Theatre in Northeast Portland. This is the last time he'll be performing locally as an Oregon resident. But the mood is anything but sad.
Funches is the headliner, and leading up to his set are performances by his friends and fellow comics, including Sean Jordan, Shane Torres,
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Taking a break from her jokes, Streed offers a sincere tribute to her friend, echoing sentiments shared by his colleagues in Portland's comedy community.
"He deserves every good thing he's going to get," says Streed. "Which will be everything."
Now it's Funches' turn. He takes the stage to applause. He's a large man, and he moves slowly, deliberately, walking from side to side on the stage.
Funches begins by making a dry, self-deprecating observation about the ovation. "That died down quickly," he says, in his sweetly sly, quiet-voiced style. "Makes me feel good about leaving."
Comedy aside, Funches confesses to some mixed emotions about following in the footsteps of several other Portland comics who have relocated to L.A. It's a decision anybody who's serious about an entertainment career eventually faces. To progress to the next stage, comedians need to be at the center of show business, where the contacts and big-time opportunities are.
"I've been wanting to move," he says. "You feel like you've reached a ceiling here. I love being able to go up onstage as much as I like, but sometimes you wonder, am I getting a true reaction?"
As Karmel, who calls Funches "my big brother in stand-up comedy," says of his friend, "He was the best comic in our scene." Funches' credits include being named
;
another well-received 2011 set as one of the "New Faces" at the prestigious Just for Laughs festival in Montreal; and performances with some of the most respected names in stand-up.
The soft-spoken Funches doesn't trumpet his own achievements. But, as he says, he realizes he needs to commit to playing in the comedy big leagues.
"I like being the worst comic in the show," he says. "That gives me a place to work from. If I'm working from being the best, where do I go?"
Before he heads to California, Funches sits down for a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on a late June afternoon. He's at a sidewalk table outside a Southeast Portland cafe. Funches has been spending time in the neighborhood lately, hanging out with Karmel and other friends.
Though Funches lived in Salem for many years with his wife and son, he and his wife have recently separated.
"I give her much respect and love for making it as far as she did," says Funches, adding that it's not easy to be married to a comedian "who will be gone 15 days out of the month, and breaking even, moneywise."
Comedy's hardly a lucrative profession, he says. And the couple faced the challenge of being parents to a son with special needs. Their son, Malcolm, 9, was diagnosed with autism when he was 2. It took years to figure out therapy and other strategies to give Malcolm the care he needed, Funches recalls.
Now home-schooled, Malcolm is "doing great," says Funches. "He's healthy and happy. He went to the dentist and let the dentist work on him. I was extremely proud of him. There were times when we were like, 'He may never talk.' On Father's Day, he said, 'Happy Father's Day. I love you.'"
View full sizeFunches breaks up after he tangles up one of his joke lines at his farewell performance at the Hollywood Theater on June 28.Separating from his wife helped convince Funches that the time was right to move to California.
"I have to find a new place to live, no matter what," he says. "So it might as well be in Los Angeles."
But living away from his son is something Funches doesn't relish. "He's kind of like my best friend. We play video games a lot together, and hang out and have fun and enjoy each other's company."
Even though he traveled often to do comedy shows, it wasn't easy breaking the news to Malcolm that he was moving to another state. "I've talked to him about it," Funches says. "We'll work it out."
Funches was a child himself when he first became interested in comedy. Born in California, Funches lived in Chicago with his social-worker mother and his younger sister while he was a child.
They lived in the Woodlawn neighborhood, which Funches describes as "not necessarily the ghetto -- it wasn't the projects. But it wasn't the nicest of areas. There were a fair amount of shootings and robberies and whatnot."
Funches could turn to TV for relief. "I was always interested in comedy, like when I was 5 years old. I watched 'I Love Lucy' and 'Benny Hill.' I would always joke around with my sister. My mom was into comedy, too. She would go to the video store and get a couple of movies and some stand-up comedians' tapes."
He wasn't a class clown, though. "People would say I was funny, but I wasn't necessarily disrupting in class. I was pretty soft-spoken, even more so than now. I would whisper things to people and they would be like, 'That's hilarious.' I thought I was unpopular, and I later found out I was popular. I wish I'd known it at the time."
Funches moved from Chicago to Salem when he was about 13. In Chicago, "My mom could afford to put us in a Catholic school for grades one through seven, but not after that." Which meant Funches would have to transfer to a school he didn't want to go to.
"My school wasn't the best, but this school had metal detectors," he says. "It was not fun."
So Funches got in touch with his dad, who was living in Salem and working as a pipe fitter. Though it was hard for his mother, Funches says, ultimately moving to Salem was the best thing for him.
Which isn't to say there wasn't some culture shock involved.
"I was a large black kid in an all-white school," he says, of attending McKay High School in Salem. "Well, not all white, but mostly white."
But in high school, Funches was placed in AP English, which at last challenged his mind. He read Molière, Salinger, Faulkner, and was particularly fond of Erich Maria Remarque's World War I novel, "All Quiet on the Western Front."
"I was finally reading something that wasn't boring," he recalls.
After a few years doing various jobs he wasn't suited for in his early 20s -- including being head cashier at a Grocery Outlet and working at a bank call center -- Funches started pursuing comedy. He takes the writing part of it very seriously. "My comedy is kind of a counteraction to some of the comedy I don't like," he says. "Or things I don't like. Fear-based things, like homophobia or sexism. I like to go the other way with it."
Contrary to a remark made recently by comic Adam Carolla, to the effect that being nice isn't funny, Funches believes "being nice can be funny. A lot of my jokes are like, let me take a bad situation and try to put the best spin on it."
Friends say Funches' penchant for being positive isn't just his act -- it's the way he is.
Onstage, as Portland comedian Gabe Dinger says, Funches "seems so happy and full of joy that it's impossible to watch him and not have at least a little of that rub off on you. His delivery just draws you in."
Offstage, Dinger adds, "he's not negative, he's not bitter, he always is upbeat. He always smiled when he saw people, and remembered their names, which is something rare in this business."
Dinger says he told Funches, "a part of me is like, no, I don't want my friend to go. But that's very selfish. Ron needs to be in L.A. It's his time, and I think he's going to make all of us look good and give more attention to what we have here in the Northwest, which is a very good comedy scene."
Streed agrees that Funches "is so big here there's not a lot of room for him to grow any more."
He's already made an impact on the Portland comedy scene, Streed says, and that will continue. "I think he's definitely shown us that Portland is a place that real comedians are coming from."
Karmel thinks Funches will just keep getting better. "I think he's an amazing stand-up comedian. But he could also do voice-over work. When he talks, if you close your eyes you don't see that coming out of a person, you see that coming out of a friendly, sleepy forest creature. And I'd love to see him bringing me along on his headlining tour."
As he closes his set at the Hollywood Theatre, Funches thanks his friends and fellow comics. "I'll be back sometime," he says. "But hopefully not soon."
Now settled in L.A., in a house he shares with two other comedians, Funches is staying busy.
"I've been doing a lot of shows and auditions," he says over the phone. He's due back in the Northwest for Seattle's Bumbershoot festival in September, and to see his son.
"I talk to him every other day," Funches says. "It's difficult to not be able to pick him up and twirl him around. He tells me he's mad about it, and makes demands for different video games to make up for it."
For now, Funches says, "I just keep working. It's scary sometimes, but I'm hanging out with a lot of people that I like and respect. I'm where I'm supposed to be right now."
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