A vegan evening of comedy and fro-yo.

Mondays can be lame and depressing. However, we can control our destinies and overcome this.

I'd been told by many that I'm one of the more annoyingly health-conscious people out there. Now that I got a knee surgery around the corner and can not exercise as much as I'd like to, this is even more true. I'd been eyeing Real Food Daily for some time and looking forward to trying it out.

I'm no vegan but if all vegetarian food was this incredible I would turn in a second. I started out with some lovely miso soup. I've grown too accustomed to soup in general being over salted, especially miso, but with this one I could not find much to complain about. It was full of vegetables, none of which were overcooked as is too often the case. All of its flavor came from fresh herbs and so forth and no corners were cut here. Next came some magnificently gigantic burrito. It was ready to explode into a fury of delicious seasoned Spanish rice, avocado, red pepper, sauteed onions, something that I could have sworn was delicious bacon but obviously couldn't have been, and probably far more varieties of vegetables and herbs than I could ever possibly hope to identify. It was sort of comical that this entirely vegetable-based burrito would have the nerve to arrive with a salad on the same plate, but it was delicious enough to not be unwelcome.

It was the kind of burrito that by sight alone you'd know that you shouldn't eat it because it will akwardly park in your stomach and never move like your neighbors ugly, hippy-looking, oversized RV on your suburban street where you grew up. But the trick is, there are no refried beans or meat or grease of any kind so it ends up being more like that sleek party bus that rolls up by your place and efficiently leaves so quickly that you wish you could have had a glimpse of it a little while longer and joined in on the fun some more. If anything, it was a tragedy to lose this meal to the process of digestion (as a character on King of the Hill once said of his neighbors cooking).

As this was the La Cienega location, we were a short walk to the new Largo where our seats were awaiting us for Sarah Silverman & Friends. There's a part of me that misses the overstuffed, as claustrophobic as it was intimate setting of the old location by Fairfax, but its spirit remains in the grander-yet-still homely La Cienega venue. As you enter the tucked away entrance after being greeted by the friendly staff at the door, you find that you've stepped into a beautiful, open-aired atrium flanked by the entrance to the Coronet up ahead and the lounge area on the other. You still have the dramatically archaic piano and lounge area, coated by the beautiful cranberry raid drapes and paint, and dramatically low, diffused lighting that invites you to slow down and chat with your company that makes it still date-friendly (as if I have any of that on my calendar!). It is in this room that the spirit of the old Largo is most strong. What is new is the theatre styled Coronet room, with its cinema style chairs and high-ceiling and grander stage and subtly placed art-deco prop lighting off to the side that takes you back an era of long past.

Don't Stop or We'll Die was up first, performing lovingly light-hearted songs with an underlying anxiousness and silliness. I didn't understand why parts of the audience were laughing right away at the start of the show but it became obvious why as I finally observed that their live performance and energy was just as playful and humorous as their lyrics.

2006 Stoner of the Year Doug Benson, who will delightfully interrupt various films over at UCB hosted the whole show and brought out lots of guest that I'd seen several times before but have yet to get tired of seeing live: Tig Notaro, Steve Agee, Sarah Silverman, and then concluding with Todd Glass (the one I hadn't seen before). I can definitely respect Todd Glass for having sharing my first name and first letter of my last name, but it also helps that he was extremely hilarious. His incredible intensity and rapid-fire humor made it seem like he was just bouncing off the walls, in stark contrast to the more mellow, reaction-based, storytelling type of comedy the first three comedians were setting the pace with. Given that I appreciate both types of comedy, I enjoyed the unexpected change of pace at the tail-end of the show and hilarious extended epilouge as Doug Benson and Todd Glass concluded the show.

As we made our trek back to west LA to call it a night, someone had to suggest some fro-yo and I had no intention of refusing. I dislike Pinkberry and their imbecilic no-photography policy that they proudly boast on the outside window of their storefronts. I get the idea that their frozen yogurt is supposed to taste a bit tart which I like in concept, but it tastes too bland for me. The alternative suggested to me was Red Mango and I was pleasantly surprised. It was like Pinkberry without all the things that annoyed me. We came late enough that there was no overly-trendy crowd of addicted attention-whores, the clerk working their patiently offered us ample samplage, there was no such "no photography" policy I observed anywhere, and the yogurt itself was in the same style of, yet superior to pinkberry. Here it just tasted more like yogurt to me, and with a better balance of tartness, texture, and flavor. Even its cute little upscale Ikea looking furniture inside looked more really inviting but with the store about to close it had to be enjoyed inside a lovely 2003 Jetta. There is no other way to end the evening.