Viggo Venn's Full Halftime Performance at the San Antonio Spurs Game (10/25/23)

link to the full show enclosed

Happy Friday all,

Welcome to the 24 (!!) new subscribers after my post last week. And now for something completely different. Here is Viggo Venn’s halftime performance at the San Antonio Spurs game on Wednesday night:

Sorry if the audio is a bit janky. The in-arena video feed didn’t pick up any of the crowd noise, so I had to stitch together the audio from 4-5 different recordings from a few people who thankfully filmed parts of the performance on their iPhones.

Also, sorry if this seems like a completely random thing to share here. I can explain.

For the unfamiliar, Viggo is a longtime friend and collaborator of the mailing list. We first met in 2016, when he was doing a comedy show with my older brother Zach:

Viggo (L) and Zach (R) circa 2015, doing the Kiss Cam number from their comedy show Zach and Viggo: Thunderflop.

The three of us spent most of 2017 on tour along with Jonny Woolley, their fellow classmate from clown school who was directing and teching their show:

(From L-R) Jonny, me, Zach and Viggo.

(peep my shirt btw)

Here’s one of the first pictures I took of them in 2017:

zachandviggo

A post shared by @zachandviggo

And here is me (top right) and Jonny (left of the green-faced man) dressed as Zach & Viggo on the cover of a local magazine in Adelaide (Viggo is all the way on the left)

david.zucker

A post shared by @david.zucker

During this time, the boys were doing a refined version of their award-winning and critically-acclaimed hour, Zach & Viggo: Thunderflop, and Viggo was developing his first full-length solo show, Viggo Venn: The Life of Pepito. We brought these shows (as well as Zach’s debut solo show, Human Person) all over Australia. We did shows at Perth Fringe World, the Adelaide Fringe, the inaugural Halls Gap Comedy Festival, and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival:

(From L-R) Zach and Viggo, Kyle Legacy, and me at the first night of ‘Midnight Madness’ at Tuxedo Cat, nowadays known as Stamptown Comedy Night.

We then went to Europe, and did shows in Berlin, Paris, the Udderbelly Festival in London (inside a giant purple cow), the Edinburgh Fringe, and the Brighton Fringe:

(From L-R) Viggo, Zach, me, and Jonny.

But along the way, we could never quite figure out how to make a basketball number:

Naturally, my next move was to take a ten-day clowning workshop on a farm in Norway (more on that another time), where Viggo further developed his solo show:

Fun fact: I actually made the “My Name Is” audio file that Viggo still uses to this day, including on his semi-final performance on Britain’s Got Talent (bit starts at 1:15)

More recently, I’ve been helping him with his social media these past six months after his Britain’s Got Talent audition for Simon Cowell went viral on TikTok and YouTube:

Since that audition aired in April, we’ve grown his TikTok from 0 to 650K+ followers and his Instagram from 2K to 150K+ followers. He ended up winning the whole competition in June, netting £250,000 in prize money, and a spot on the upcoming Royal Variety Performance for King Charles. In other words, this will quite literally make him the first clown to perform for the King of England in hundreds of years.

So you can tell I was a little proud when he won:

(From L-R) Viggo’s step-dad, Viggo’s mom, and me at BGT.

Viggo trusted me in part because I spent all of January making professional Simon Sez caller Steve Max mega viral on my own TikTok page (50+ million views). I mention this because Steve frequently performs at NBA halftime shows. And I find it incredibly strange how much of my life in 2023 has been altered by what “Simon Says”.

Anyways, here’s us on Wednesday night, putting all the pieces together:

(From L-R) NLE Choppa, Viggo, Zach, and me.

I think it’s safe to say we finally figured out that basketball number.

All the vest,

David Zucker