Eric Cheung
General Info
Genre:
Stand-Up / Sketch Comedy / ImprovTV Shows
TV: The Best of NBC's Stand-Up for Diversity Showcase 2004 (industry showcase); guest host Intraphic Live CCTVRadio:
WECB: WECBNews anchor/writer/producer/political correspondent; writer/performer/producer/DJ for own radio shows: "Derek Lester Zeigfield's Music to Vote By"
WMFO: In Studio/Call-in guest "Gods and Goddesses"
Website
facebook.com/Eric.Cheung.1981Bio
Eric Cheung began performing standup February 12, 2003 at Cambridge, MA’s Comedy Studio.While a student at Emerson College, he studied the comedy of Andy Kaufman, Woody Allen, and David Letterman. As a standup he blends the absurd with honest, child-like self-analysis charming audiences with a completely original, clean, wit that’s never angry or cynical but friendly, naïve, and bemused by the world we live in. In the summer of 2004, he wrote for Imagine Magazine, a New England film journal. He was also meticulously profiled in The Somerville News in July of 2004.
A few weeks later, after losing his day job to a temporary case of unrelated salmonella, he had time to go to New York to audition for NBC’s Stand-Up for Diversity Showcase, a showcase for casting directors, managers, and agents hosted by SNL’s Finesse Mitchell at New York’s Laugh Factory. After the show, he was called back to perform at the Laugh Factory in LA for NBC’s Best of Stand-Up for Diversity Showcase hosted by Last Comic Standing’s Alonzo Bodden. 2005 started off busy for Eric. He was the star of the short play Three Tea Cups in the January edition of SLAMBoston.
In response to the South Asian tsunami disaster he ran a standup benefit show scheduled for the same weekend as the biggest blizzard of the year. Because he was trying to help natural disaster victims and got snowed in, he rescheduled and re-titled the show The Benefit to End Ironic Weather.
That summer, he co-produced a showcase for Boston comics of color for a producer of "Stand-Up for Diversity" at the Comedy Studio and started hosting shows at Dick Doherty’s Comedy Vault.
In 2006, he was profiled as one of five Asian comics in Boston for Asian Boston’s premiere issue and was invited to the cast of Erin Judge Presents..., a comedy show which performed character-based sketch and monologues the last Sunday of every month at the Comedy Studio.
After having moved to LA, Eric began classes and an internship at Improv Olympic West. The future looks bright for Eric as he continues to perform and explore other creative ventures in LA.
To your right is Eric Cheung being funny at the Comedy Studio on the third floor of the Hong Kong Restaurant on April Fools Day 2006. There is an English person to his left and a watermark (due to the trial version software used to make the clip) in front of him.
Members
Me, Myself, I, and Derek Lester Zeigfield (on bass)Influences
Woody Allen, Andy Kaufman, Steven Wright, David Letterman, Steve Martin, Emo Philips, Demetri Martin, Norm MacDonald, The Beatles, Looney Tunes (see list of TV shows I like for other influences)
Latest Blog Entries
- Jul 9, 2010 12:58 AM A Fussy Meat-Lover Embraces Vegetarianism
- Apr 26, 2010 1:39 AM Canederli or Klöße (Guest Blogger: Eric Cheung)
- Nov 28, 2009 5:33 AM Top Ten Things to do at a High School Reunion
- Oct 1, 2009 2:06 PM Rational Thought Lazily Cribbed from Others
- Sep 25, 2009 12:42 AM Fall Harvest Scarecrow Event
Top Friends (8)
Music
Video Player
Blurbs
About me:
My dad's from Hong Kong and my mom's from Central Massachusetts, the third generation of an Italian family. I grew up in East Longmeadow, a suburb of Springfield, Mass. I'm sort of a hypochondriac, but mostly of the neurotic conditions. I'm friendly and outgoing, but paradoxically I'm socially inept in more complex situations. I'm a firm athiest, but I like some of the philosophical ideas from some religions: Yin and Yang, the Golden Rule, Karma, etc. I'm uncertain as to whether or not there's an afterlife...For three and a half years I was a standup in Boston, now I've moved out to LA to see if there's a future in television.
PET PEEVES: Narrowing things down, breaking the fourth wall on the written (web)page, top 8 lists (I just let MySpace arbitrarily rank my friends. For some reason it put four boys on top of four girls.), people who cut in line (I'm not sure I'm convinced line saving is particularly fair either).
NON SEQUITUR: I may suck at sarcasm, but I rule at being humble.
See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dereklesterzeigfield for my adventures in standup while I was in Boston or http://blog.myspace.com/eric_cheung, http://ericcheung.livejournal.com, or http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laericcheung for my new adventures in LA.
My score on The 3 Variable Funny Test:
the Wit
((61% dark, 26% spontaneous, 10% vulgar))
Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test (OkCupid Free Online Dating)
the Wit
((61% dark, 26% spontaneous, 10% vulgar))
your humor style:CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK
You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer.Your sense of humor takes the most thought to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion.
You probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm
talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/.
PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais
The 3-Variable Funny Test!
- it rules -
If you're interested, try my best friend's best test:
The Genghis Khan Genetic Fitness Masterpiece
Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test (OkCupid Free Online Dating)
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2
Who I'd like to meet:
Details
- Status: In a Relationship
- Here for: Networking, Friends
- Hometown: East Longmeadow, MA
- Orientation: Straight
- Height: 5' 11"
- Ethnicity: Other
- Religion: Atheist
- Zodiac Sign: Scorpio
- Children: Someday
- Smoke / Drink: No / No
- Education: College graduate
Interests
General
bowling, British Ilses (including their invasion of the US...via culture), comedy, creating fictional media empires, diners and greasy spoons, forms of media, observing the redundancies in my own profile, more bowlingMusic
(Other than the Beatles the following artists are ones of which I likely only know between a couple of songs to a couple of albums for, but it’ll give you a pretty good idea what kind of music I like and/or what kind of music I’d make if I were so inclined):The Beatles (esp. Rubber Soul, Revolver, and the [White Album]), Beck, Belle and Sebastian, Ben Folds (Five), Chuck Berry, The Buggles, The Buzzcocks, Cake, The Cars, Ray Charles, The Clash, Elvis Costello (early stuff), Creedance Clearwater Revival, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Feist, Fountains of Wayne, Franz Ferdinand, Vince Gauraldi, The Hives, The Kinks, Ben Kweller, Tom Lehrer, ? and the Mysterians, Little Richard, The Monkees, OK Go, Tom Petty, Elvis Presley, The Ramones, The Redwalls, The Sex Pistols, Spoon, Talking Heads, They Might Be Giants, The Thrills, Vampire Weekend, The Velvet Underground, The Violent Femmes, Weezer, Weird Al Yankovic, The White Stripes, The Who, Amy Winehouse, Frank Zappa (songs with lyrics), Warren Zevon, The Zombies.
British Invasion
, early 70s AM pop, garage rock, indie rock, indie pop, lo-fi, new wave, punk, rock ’n’ roll, rock ’n’ roll as played on the piano.If you put on WFNX in Boston or KDLD in LA then they’re probably playing something I dig too.
Also: Although I prefer melody to rythym, I love songs that chug (for example "Hey Bulldog" by the Beatles or "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five" from the Wings album "Band on the Run").
Movies
The 40-Year Old Virgin, Airplane, Annie Hall, American Pop, The Aristocrats, Back to the Future trilogy, Big Fish, Casablanca, The Cameraman (1928), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), Comedian, Contact, Dumb and Dumber, E.T., Forrest Gump, A Hard Day's Night, Harry Potter (series), Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Hot Fuzz (even better than Shaun of the Dead), It's a Wonderful Life, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Man on the Moon, My Fellow Americans, 1984, Napoleon Dynamite, North By Northwest, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ratatouille, School of Rock, Shaun of the Dead, Space Cowboys, Spiderman 2, Star Trek (series), UHF, Wayne's World, When Standup Stood Out, movies with Boston or the British Isles in them.Favorite Directors: Brad Bird
, Alfred Hitchcock, Buster Keaton, Wes Anderson, Woody AllenTelevision
Animaniacs, Arrested Development, Battlestar Gallactica (re-boot), The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Ernie Kovacs, Family Guy, Get Smart, Green Acres, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Looney Tunes, Malcolm in the Middle, Mr. Bean, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Muppet Show, Newsradio, The Office (US), Red Dwarf, Ren and Stimpy, Saturday Night Live, Scrubs, SCTV, Seinfeld, The Simpsons (c.1992-1998, although I've seen an episode here and there from about 2003 on and it seems to be getting pretty good again), South Park, Star Trek (DS9 especially. That show is far and away one of my biggest influences as a storyteller. It's the only television series I saw from the night it premiered to the night it ended. That said, my first exposure to Star Trek was TNG and TOS, so I've been checking out TOS-Remastered. Enterprise didn't impress me at first, but it's really grown on me in the past couple of years. I think it was the creators attempt to redeem themselves after VOY.), 30 Rock, You Can't Do that on Television, YouTube (it's not really television, but there's some great old stuff there).Books
I like almost any book I actually bother reading. I also like reading the work of people I know because I’m a decent editor.Around the World in Eighty Days, Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat (my first Buster Keaton biography), The Catcher in the Rye, Cheaper by the Dozen, The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time, Forrest Gump, Guru: My Days with Del Close, Hipster Handbook (I would have bought it but I couldn’t convince the clerk I was going to read it ironically), Improvise.: Scene from the Inside Out, Lennon (by Ray Coleman), Live From New York, The Mezzanine, Michael Caine: Acting on Film, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Of Mice and Men, Persepolis, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (it’s a really good book on television, especially writing), my notebook and my sketchbook.
Comic Strips: Calvin and Hobbes, Funky Winkerbean
Authors: Chris Van Allsburg, I used to read things by Dave Barry, Roald Dahl (Disappointed that he was an Anti-Semite, but I loved his books as a child, especially if illustrated by Quentin Blake), I liked Sarah Vowell’s Partly Cloudy Patriot, Take the Cannoli, and Assassination Vacation (in that order from good to great).
I really should read more.
Heroes
Pre-Army Woody Allen.
Schools
-
Emerson College
- Boston,Massachusetts
- Graduated: 2003
- Student status: Alumni
- Degree: Bachelor's Degree
- Major: Film
- Minor: Writing
- Clubs: Earth Emerson, Latent Image, Emerson Casting, WECB (DJ, promotions manager, WECB News anchor/writer/producer/political correspondent for Election Night 2000)
1999 to 2003 -
East Longmeadow High
- East Longmeadow,Massachusetts
- Graduated: 1999
- Student status: Alumni
- Degree: High School Diploma
- Clubs: Environmental Action Club (acting secretary/treasurer), Drama Club, Key Club, French Club, Science League, Spartanum Spectaculum (Spotlight), Yearbook, Class Klutz 1999
1995 to 1999