Today we’d like to introduce you to OJ Patterson
OJ, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. While playing high school football, I met a classmate named Jesse McGrath. In addition to being benchwarmer misfits, we bonded over games and goofing off—video games were intrinsic to our socio-cultural milieu, but comedy was the real adhesive.
After going off to college, graduating (BA in Game Design), and coming back, I immersed myself into the historic Bay Area stand-up comedy scene. Jesse followed suit. By 2014, our collective experiences in the shockingly competitive comedy and gaming scenes inspired something a little less serious. We called it “Super Trashed Bros,” named after our first (and most frequent) competitive platform, “Super Smash Bros,” and after the fact we primarily hosted our events in bars with encouraged drinking rules. Lose a match, take a sip, that kind of thing.
“Super Trashed” eventually became less about booze and more emblematic of “joyful chaos.” The competitions are intrinsic to providing structure and attracting an audience, but being a place for everyone to be rowdy, funny smartasses is our real appeal. Our format and community were refined over the years, ported to different cities, resulting in a network of social clubs for hilarious party nerds.
After I relocated to Los Angeles for my wife’s work, and after a few producers/hosts from different cities also clustered in the area, Super Trashed LA started at Brews Brothers North Hollywood in 2022 with Jacob Rubin, Dan Robitzski, Jesse Baldridge and myself. We organize monthly tournaments featuring four-player matches, (some) items turned on, and a bunch of other shenanigans.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Super Trashed is pretty intricate for something so silly and simple. Finding a venue that “gets it” was hard. Selecting a night that fits the venue’s schedule and goals was tricky. Having producers/hosts that understand and can execute the show is paramount. Each show in each venue in each region has its own identity that only emerges with successive iterations. And the shows themselves require massive amounts of time, energy, and knowhow.
We started with 10-12 players in a small section of the bar while competing with a comedy open mic also in the venue. It took a while to catch on with local Super Smash Bros Ultimate players. (SoCal has one of the largest competitive Smash communities in the world). We tried a Mario Kart night that just confused our nascent group of regulars. The open mic night dissolved and we were moved to the venue’s main event area (more space, more complications). Brews Bros North Hollywood had an emergency one night so we had to get people to their sister location in Burbank. We’ve had nights where too many people have showed up, nights with blistering heat, nights with stifling technical difficulties. There was once a show-stopping, gnarly party foul. Another time someone had to host the show alone because the other hosts had COVID.
It’s a real group effort. We persist because of everyone—hosts, venue staff, attendees, spontaneous volunteers, friends, family—being in service of each other and the spirit of the show. It has become a true community.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
It’s funny, the answer to this question would be different almost every year we’ve been producing Super Trashed. At times I would have leaned into more of one thing (career, family, social, creativity), that would throw me off-kilter.
Right now, I’m fortunate to work with my family as an administrative assistant. The work’s remote so I get a lot of quality time with my dog and my wife. Super Trashed is sustainable and fulfilling; it appeals to my experience in the games industry and the comedy world. And I keep meeting cool people through Super Trashed that inspire and inform my creative projects. I’m gracious for the rhythm; balance and iteration are the goals.
I’m most proud of “Bay Area Stand-Up Comedy: A Humorous History”, the book I co-wrote with my friend and collaborator, the comedian Nina G. It’s niche and concise but really in depth. We wrote it during lockdown. I’ve always gotten a lot of joy out of distilling things—people, places, scenes, events, projects—into the perfect words/stories, in order to encapsulate its spirit. My ultimate dream would be to open/run a comedy museum.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was really shy growing up. It was to the point that family would hear I did stand-up and they’d be shocked.
Rule-follower, people-pleaser, curious, pretentious. A loner that floated between different groups. Sometimes, to others’ annoyance, I tried to “be funny” and energetic, to be acknowledged and validated. But my true comfort was in solitude—reading a book, writing my Myspace/Livejournal blogs and going to the movies by myself.
Pricing:
- Free
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.supertrashed.tv/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/supertrashedtv/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SuperTrashedTV
- Twitter: https://x.com/supertrashedtv
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@supertrashedtv
- Other: https://linktr.ee/supertrashed
Image Credits
Personal photo of me by Red Scott ([email protected]). Pictures of NoHo Brews Bros Event by Jesse Baldridge ([email protected]).
