Confrontation comic Billy Eichner, the screamingest queen to ever brandish a microphone in a bewildered stranger’s face, curated a comedy showcase called Billy Eichner and Friends at Cobb’s on Saturday night as part of SF Sketchfest 2013. Eichner has been a rising star on the New York comedy scene for several years, building his uniquely abrasive brand through popular YouTube clips that gradually led to getting his own show, the Funny or Die production Billy on the Street, currently airing its second season on Fuse. The vast majority of the show’s content features Eichner and a cameraman running up to strangers on the streets of New York and screaming at them; sometimes it’s pop culture opinion/trivia, and occasionally it’s something absurdly basic that somehow proves challenging given the intense nature of the situation (he once famously stymied Rachel Dratch by asking her to name 20 white people; a clip he showed on Saturday showed a young woman failing to meet Eichner’s command to “name any woman”). He has become a talk show staple, and is turning into a regular on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live, on which his gay-leaning cultural obsessions seem to find the most receptive audience. So given all this, what kind of performance did Eichner have in mind for Sketchfest?
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