Blake Reiter's Dream: Stand(up) and Deliver

Rosetta Stone's got nothing on Blake Reiter, who nurses a Jack on the rocks while tutoring a scribe on his latest contributions to linguistics.

A bar of soap so thin that you can't even work up a lather is a tagerleaf.

But, put two tagerleaves together and you have a stobling.

Huh?

"We like to think of things that don't have a word," standup comedy greenhorn Reiter says of the process he likes to share with fellow Syosset High alum Matt Perlmutter. The contents will appear on the soon-to-launch website WhatIRealized.com. "We just sit around, make a sound and ask, 'Does this work?' As they always say, 'When life gives you tagerleaves, make a stobling.'"

Such a sophomoric endeavor conjures up memories of Knocked Up, when Seth Rogen's crew logged naked celebrity movie scenes in the pursuit of online fame and fortune. Ostensibly, it seems a sketchy move for Reiter to go part-time at a Manhattan Big Four financial firm--where he analyzes the viability of hotel projects--simply to flex his creative muscles.

Then again, Knocked Up was written and directed by pop culture icon Judd Apatow. Long ago Apatow lent his talents to Syosset High's radio station, 88.5 FM WKWZ--the same activity that gave an admittedly overweight and overlooked Reiter his voice.

Can lightning strike twice?    

An hour after that drink, Reiter is center-stage at the New York Comedy Club. His set is often reality-based, noting that when a fat kid joins the track team to attain fitness generally the only thing he loses is his self-esteem.

Those who saw him then might not even recognize him on the street, as a 50-pound weight loss (he went the Jared Subway route) combined with a five-inch growth spurt while at Cornell left him downright lanky. But Reiter proves that change really does start on the inside.

Initially at WKWZ his only shot was co-hosting a hip-hop show with Perlmutter, a stretch for a confirmed classic rock aficionado. But instead of running for the hills, Reiter adopted the alter-ego D.J. Shakin' Blake and offered "my best white Jewish boy freestyle" to accompany Perlmutter's beat.

"The radio station got me speaking my mind," the 25-year-old East Village resident says. "It got the wheels turning on my creativity. The creativity was always there, but the confidence to go with it took time."

That confidence eventually extended beyond the broadcast booth. He and his cash-strapped high school pals passed time with "Mmm-Bopping," where they'd pack a car and cruise a populated downtown like Huntington jamming out to the Hanson fave, Aqua's "Barbie Girl" and other bastions of bubblegum, as a video camera recorded the reactions.

Even classmates sporting BMWs couldn't compete when Reiter would roll into a party, his 1992 maroon station wagon supplemented with blue tube lights around the roof's interior.

"I just love to put myself out there and see how people react," he admits.

These days getting in front of folks requires a lot more effort. As a newbie comic he pays his dues by "bringing" (getting friends and family to come in and pay cover) and "barking" (hawking shows in NYC's streets, often to annoyed tourists) to earn time onstage.

But he just went part-time in December, and has already earned one Tonight Show tryout. "I put a check mark next to that as one measure of success," Reiter says. The early returns are promising enough for him to dedicate at least two years to his calling.

That's a lot of stoblings.