“I told my agent, look, if I’m gonna do an HBO special. . . it’s gotta be in an old church near the freeway by Rohnert Park!”

Is Dana Carvey really 52 years old? The nimble little guy who bounced all over the stage last night, unreeling rapid-fire impersonations and quick-witted jokes? Really?

For the most part, the adoring, sold-out crowd last night would have never guessed it. In youthful spirit, Carvey delivered fast-paced marathon descriptions of “the kind of religion that a Scientologist would find weird” (must be seen to be believed) and a spot-on impersonation of Andy Rooney firing up a fat joint and ruminating at stoner’s length on the exact meaning of the phrase “you’re shitting me.”

And yet Carvey, who appears to be in great health, spent a good portion of his set in older-man’s land: keeping one’s body from deteriorating, developing an “S”-shaped posture, performing special exercises for getting up off the toilet. This resonated with a crowd whose average age matched his, and when Carvey compared the music that “kids listen to these days” (a typical death metal impersonation with the growled lyrics “You’re gonna die, you puny little bitch / I’m gonna skin you alive and wear you like a hat”) to his generation’s music—the Beatles and Neil Young—the audience roared their approval.

Repeated concessions to age aside, Carvey last night was the same masterful comedian who most know from his Saturday Night Live days, almost 20 years ago.

Carvey’s slam-dunk impersonations alone were side-splitting, not least of all because he himself seemed to be having such fun doing them. He repeatedly cracked himself up in the exaggerated mannerisms of Deepak Chopra, Al Pacino, Tom Cruise and Jimmy Stewart. His famous Ross Perot and George Bush, Sr. impersonations drew wild applause in an athletic free-for-all called the “Reagan Oracle,” a fantasy scenario wherein Ronald Reagan, in 1988, assigns the presidency for the next 20 years—Al Gore, John Kerry, John McCain, Dick Cheney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Clinton (“the horny one”) and George Jr. (“the drunken one with the coke problem”) all made hilariously accurate appearances.

Lots of comedians in the last few years have stated outright that they won’t do George W. Bush material—it’s just too easy, they say. But Carvey dove right in, expertly aping the failed president’s garbled speech and smug self-satisfaction, the kind of comic brilliance that isn’t easy at all. Followed by an inspired routine where Kim Jong Il grammatically diagrams Bush’s tumor-riddled sentences, it was a perfect example of why Carvey films HBO specials instead of YouTube clips.

Carvey didn’t outwardly take sides on the current election, but let’s add it up: he made fun of Hillary Clinton’s bulging eyes, large cheeks, incessant pantsuits, and droning speeches, and he had Bill Clinton pleading sympathy for the Lewinsky affair because, “I mean, take a look at my wife!” He was much less vicious to Barack Obama, about whom the harshest line he could muster was that the Illinois senator looked “like a cross between the Mad Magazine guy and Urkel.”

This no doubt rankled some Hillary supporters, but it wasn’t an entirely irresponsible treatment; that’d be saved for later, when Carvey gave a groan-inducing monologue about keeping sex hot after 25 years of marriage to his wife. “You’ve gotta speak her language!” he instructed, simulating sex with dirty talk built around domestic chores like doing the dishes, carpooling the kids, and getting the mail. Lame.

Carvey was at his best in off-the-cuff moments, like when he dropped the microphone and it stopped working (“I’d like to thank Showtime!” he immediately quipped) or when he assumed a sprinter’s stance to receive the replacement microphone from the wings, following with TV-announcer Olympic Games-style commentary on his second attempt (“same joke, same position, 3.2 difficulty”).

This on-the-spot ability spilled into an encore where he singled out a couple in the audience, collected some background info, and sang an impromptu guitar love song, “Take Me, Winery Man,” to Dick and Ellen. (Dick Arrowood, by chance?) A gracious Q&A with the audience followed, with Carvey patiently answering questions, mostly about the old days (“Do you miss SNL?” someone dorkily asked, to which he shot back, “Do you miss high school?”).

An old neighbor of Carvey’s from Montana introduced himself, and Carvey could barely contain his excitement (“Mr. Davenport! Oh my God, I got laid in your poolhouse!”). At other questions, he beatboxed, impersonated John Lennon, and joked about someday making Wayne’s World III: The Viagra Chronicles.

When asked why he chose Santa Rosa to tape the HBO special, Carvey heaped praise on the people and the intimate theater. A resident of Marin County, he flipped when a couple people started chanting “Sebastopol!” and holding up peace signs. “That is definitely a healing-crystal, hemp-watch, spirulina-bar neighborhood!” he howled.

And of course, the Church Lady made a few appearances too. There’s now a Church Lady slot machine, believe it or not, and Carvey finished the night with a great story about walking through a casino, noticing a lonely guy playing a Church Lady slot machine, and not being able to control himself.“I don’t usually do things like this, ever,” he explained to the crowd, “but I crept up behind the guy and whispered in his ear. . .”—in the Church lady’s famously pious voice—“. . . Jesus doesn’t like what you’re doing!”

Carvey returns for a second show tonight. It’s totally sold out.

Here’s what you do if you’re Larry Ellison: You buy a 23-acre site in Woodside for $12 mil. Invest another $190 million “improving” your new property, and then, in an era when middle-class homes values plummet but rich folk “luxury” estates like yours are still going gangbusters, you go hat-in-hand to local officials begging for a devaluation of your property by more than 60 percent—and get it!  Save yourself a retroactive $3 million, and another cool mil a year from then on. And, believe me, you really need that extra loose dinero, since you’re only worth $25 billion.Here’s what you do if you’re J.P. Morgan: Conjure up a plan called Zippy Cheats & Tricks. Foist off sub-prime loans on as many suckers as you can. When you run low on marks, illegally goose the income figures on no-pay-to-play losers you’d normally not give the time of day to in order that they, too, are victimized by you and your fellow rapacious home loaners. You get your commission, and quickly get out. Oh, yeah—and don’t worry about the law, we got Republicans in that thar Department of “Justice.”Here’s what you do if you’re 22-year-old American arms dealer Efraim E. Diveroli: Make up a name for your business. Call it AEY, Inc. Hire a buddy as your company VP whose “arms” experience consists of rubbing limbs in his former profession as a licensed masseur. Next rent yourself an unmarked office in a gawdawful gaudy building in Miami Beach. Score $300 million in contracts from the U.S. government because you and your brand spanking new business are, well, time-proven and certifiably reliable. Now fulfill your U.S. government contract, sans oversight, shipping our faithful Afghan allies half -century-old “junk” ammo from former Soviet bloc countries, the same ammunition that our own government is actually paying these former commie governments to destroy because it’s worthless crap. Beat up two girlfriends and claim immunity from prosecution due to the “national security” nature of your quarter billion dollar-plus taxpayer rip-off. Know you’ll never get caught by the government, but hope and pray that by the time you launch your next criminal venture, the profession of investigative reporter will have been entirely eliminated from the media landscape.And finally. . .Here’s what you do if you live on Mars, but just happen to be the current President of the United States of America: You stand behind a podium at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force and tell everyone who will listen just how wonderful things are turning out in Iraq on the very day a major oil pipeline has been hit, the number one spokesperson for your Iraqi puppet regime has been kidnapped—in broad daylight and despite his own onsite armed bodyguards—and major fighting has escalated in Basra while Bagdad explodes into widely scattered violence and the Green Zone looks like London during the Blitzgrieg. Ignoring all that, you say: “When it takes time for Iraqis to reach agreement, it is not ‘foot dragging,’ as one senator described it. . . . They’re striving to build a modern democracy on the rubble of three decades of tyranny.”

I hate to disagree with the prez, but just maybe the Iraqis are actually striving to simply survive in the rubble of five years of unprovoked illegal invasion and brutal occupation.P. Joseph Potocki

The employees at the Rialto were up to some shenanigans of their own tonight for the 9:30 showing of Funny Games, in which Naomi Watts and Tim Roth are tormented for a couple hours, mentally and physically, by two boys dressed in New England tennis attire—white sweaters, polo shirts, shorts, and gloves. I could go on and on about the film, but I won’t give away too much, except to say that a golf ball plays a recurring role. And that all in all, watching Funny Games is a fairly agonizing experience, leaving the viewer 1) drained, and 2) totally horrified of the tennis guys.

Never ones to miss out on an excellent joke, Matt and Jeff at the Rialto got together and dressed the part completely tonight. White shorts, sweaters, polo shirts, gloves—almost the same hair, even, as the tennis guys. It was an exact, eerie resemblance.

And when the movie got out, they stood in the hallway directly outside, bouncing a golf ball, waiting to deliver a menacing “have a good night” to the utterly shellshocked exiting the theater.

I missed most people’s reactions, but I’ll tell you this: Matt and Jeff each had one of those fantastic “we don’t get paid that much, but fuck it, we’re having fun” grins on their faces.Funny Games ends its run on March 27. I can say with all honesty that it’s better than the original.