“Happy Saturdays” is the story about a group of friends who help each other get through it all and just enjoy life. Johnny, Rusty, Kay, Gabrielle, Billy, and Mr. Jonez (with a “Z”) all work at a neighborhood theme restaurant on Long Island called Happy Saturdays. This story takes us through one insanely busy Saturday night and shows how lives can change when friendship is put to the test.
Beautiful, but accessible due to her caring ways. Kay is still trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. Working at Happy Saturdays has been a good "band-aid," but she realizes that it's time to move on. She just doesn't have the courage to follow her dreams. Her past relationship with Johnny isn't helping much. She still cares for him, but she just can't date him anymore ... and she finds it hard to leave the restaurant. Confusion is the main emotion ruling her life at the moment.
Johnny is a regular guy who knows how to have fun. He's a man of habit who has carved a nice little niche for himself at the Happy Saturdays restaurant. Johnny is a "power behind the throne" type of guy who hates to be a leader. He'll manipulate events so that he has none of the responsibility, but all of the benefits of power. Johnny won't let anybody know why he's still at Happy Saturdays, but he knows that one of the reasons is his attraction to Kay.
Johnny's sister. Intensely straightforward .. and she's one hell of a waitress! Gabby lives with Johnny in a gigantic house that was left to them by their deceased parents. Gabrielle also wants more out of life and she's got a plan to make that happen. She's sick and tired of watching Johnny waste his time at Happy Saturdays and will do anything to wake him up to reality. You never know when Gabrielle will spring a trap on Johnny!
Sort of an "aging frat guy" who loves to party! Rusty lives in the moment and never worries about the future. He doesn't plan on advancing in his job, he doesn't plan on moving ahead,.... he just doesn't plan. Rusty is Johnny's "right hand man" and his devil's advocate. Their friendship is sometimes adversarial, sometimes dangerous, and most times demanding. However, they make a great team. Rusty was the one who trained Johnny how to be a waiter. It's something Johnny always thanks him for ... and sometimes hates him for as well.
Billy has just broken up with his girlfriend and is looking for a new start in his life. He's really nervous about starting a new job.... especially this one. He's never been a waiter before and is struggling with this new situation. Billy took this job for a reason and is hoping that nobody finds out what the reason really is. He needs a dose of confidence in love and in life. Gabrielle is happy to give him both.
"That's Mr. Jonez with a Z to you and me!" is his favorite saying. Mr. Jonez is the long-term manager of this Happy Saturdays branch. Very well groomed, possesses a subtle controlling nature, and basks in what little power he has over his crew. Mr. Jonez is the personification of the corporate mentality. You're not really sure if he's evil or not, but he just is what he is ... and you'll learn to accept that!
click the link to watch a compilation of clips about Happy Saturdays
Click the pic above to read a blog and see pics from a video shoot from 2004 of Happy Saturdays. This version of the show featured an entirely different cast from previous videos of the show. The footage has since been lost and this blog is the only record of the show.
THANK GOD IT'S SATURDAY: STEVE STRANGIO SERVES UP A TASTY SATIRE By Kenny Herzog I can still remember feeling ripped off and cheated the first time I saw Adam Sandler demonstrate his low-budget ideas for Halloween costumes like "Crazy Spoonhead." That was a concept I had been humorously perfecting for years, dazzling audiences of peers and friends. "Look at me, I'm Woodchuck Cider Head," I would say, pressing a bottle of Woodchuck Cider up against my noggin. "I've got a Woodchuck Cider on my head!"
This is how longtime Long Island comedian and actor Steve Strangio has to react every time he watches Office Space. After years on the stand-up circuit, the Oceanside native and resident—who's perennially eager to talk and make jokes, softening the initial intimidation of his tall, burly presence—has been a writer and performer on a number of movie, TV, theater and video projects. Most recently, he's written Happy Saturdays, a play that acts out like a wacky sitcom about adventures in theme-restaurant employment, fittingly performed in front of audiences as they dine. While a certain Mike Judge film seemingly sapped that well dry in 1999, Strangio has been brainstorming a comedic exposé into the life of a waiter (he despises the industry-enforced term "server") at establishments like Friday's, Bennigans and Chili's for close to a decade. The one thing he won't divulge, though, is which of the chains he slaved away at for several years.
Outside of that, he's open to discuss anything, from his love life and its influence on his comedy to the genius of his favorite B-grade horror films, such as Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. As we become comfortable on the conference-room couch of his management company's office, he's eager to share anecdotes and witticisms, speaking in a booming and articulate voice that has clearly been trained for the stage. He's even quicker to mock my movements as I trip spastically over what appeared to be a small child on my way to the water cooler, but was in fact a life-sized doll. Strangio hands me a brochure for Happy Saturdays. The document is a color-photocopied, mock restaurant menu advertising "Barstool Olympics," "Nude Trivia Hour" and other faux happy-hour events, in addition to information about the play and Strangio. It describes the experience of his dinner-theater presentation as "a place where people can be rude, crude, lewd and anything else that rhymes with those words."
Strangio's journey began in the early 1980s, a fruitful time for Long Island comedy, highlighted by well-known stand-ups like Bob Nelson and Jim Myers. "I've always been a comedian in a way, and always liked to have a good time," says Strangio. But it wasn't until enrolling at Nassau Community College and attending a comedy event at the Student Union that he was encouraged to first get up in front of hundreds of people and try to make them laugh. "They said to me, 'Steve, you're a funny guy, can you do some comedy for us?'" he recalls, switching his intonation and vocal pitch whenever adopting someone else's persona. "I went away for a couple of days, I got all of my friends together, and we just rehearsed and rehearsed, and I wrote like 20 minutes [of material]. First time on stage in front of 300 people, and I killed. It was such an amazing, amazing experience." It was also an experience that immediately came crashing down on his next attempt, which took place at the now-defunct East Side Comedy Club in Huntington. "I went there and bombed," he laughs. "To the point where my friends were heckling me. So, I went outside and beat up my car, and I went back the next week, and I bombed again. And I bombed consistently for three months, until one day, I just started killing."
His philosophy on comedy and success is as simple as your mother's recipe for doing well in school and achieving your dreams. "If you fail, don't give up. Because you don't fail, you learn," he shrugs. "I knew this was what I wanted to do. I knew this was where I wanted to be at the time."
And while he's confident that a new local comedy boom is on the horizon, Strangio can't help but be nostalgic for the environment he came of age in. "The cool thing about comedy back then was a lot of comedians were really supportive of you and always there for you," he explains. "And even if you bombed, they would say, 'Steve, come here. Here's what you did wrong. Don't do that next time.' And little by little, they helped get me to where I wanted to be, and in turn, I help do that to a lot of other comics." When asked what some of his advice might be to younger amateurs, he talks about the arrogance of the occasional newcomer. "The stage is the great truth," he says. "If you get up there and you're bombing, don't say you didn't bomb. Face reality. You bombed. Learn from it."
Eventually, the stand-up stage wasn't enough to keep Strangio happy. He made the jump to acting, playwriting and screenwriting in the mid-'90s, at 31 years old. It was around this same time that employment at theme restaurants came calling. Relationships between lovers and friends are a recurring theme in all of Strangio's work, starting with his first play, This is Love, and equally so in Happy Saturdays. "It's a universal thing that everybody goes through in everyday life, and it effects and drives everybody," says Strangio of romantic entanglements. "And when you're [working at a theme restaurant], you're trapped in this big group of a lot of attractive people, a lot of whom have great personalities, and since you have no other life beside that, you start dating them."
Of course, the play also deals with the humorous intricacies that only a "server" would be privy to, like being told to "turn 'em and burn 'em" when a large Saturday night crowd comes in. He also delves into detail about the nightmare that is "singing the Happy Birthday song." "I have to stop what I'm doing, I have to get the cake ready and everything, I have to stand to the entrance of the kitchen, and as people are walking by, go, 'Can you sing? Can you sing?' And they don't want to sing, because they're gonna lose their tables. So by the time you get everybody, they're angry, and now we have to walk over to you..." he says, breaking out into a jokingly frustrated rendition of the famous tune.
No longer stuck in the mire of the food-service industry, Strangio is still trying his hand at making a name for himself creat-ively. With a screenplay for a feature-length film called Journeyto theStrip Mall being shopped around and Happy Saturdays being received well by audiences across LI, he seems both well on his way and alarmingly patient for a guy who's been going at this for two decades. "It's called the ladder of success for a reason," he explains with what seems to be his trademark calm rationale. "One rung at a time."
*This article originally appeared in the Long Island Press. Copyright The Morey Organization.
THANK GOD IT'S SATURDAY: STEVE STRANGIO SERVES UP A TASTY SATIRE By Kenny Herzog 
This is how longtime Long Island comedian and actor Steve Strangio has to react every time he watches Office Space. After years on the stand-up circuit, the Oceanside native and resident—who's perennially eager to talk and make jokes, softening the initial intimidation of his tall, burly presence—has been a writer and performer on a number of movie, TV, theater and video projects. Most recently, he's written Happy Saturdays, a play that acts out like a wacky sitcom about adventures in theme-restaurant employment, fittingly performed in front of audiences as they dine. While a certain Mike Judge film seemingly sapped that well dry in 1999, Strangio has been brainstorming a comedic exposé into the life of a waiter (he despises the industry-enforced term "server") at establishments like Friday's, Bennigans and Chili's for close to a decade. The one thing he won't divulge, though, is which of the chains he slaved away at for several years. 
Outside of that, he's open to discuss anything, from his love life and its influence on his comedy to the genius of his favorite B-grade horror films, such as Sam Raimi's Evil Dead and Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. As we become comfortable on the conference-room couch of his management company's office, he's eager to share anecdotes and witticisms, speaking in a booming and articulate voice that has clearly been trained for the stage. He's even quicker to mock my movements as I trip spastically over what appeared to be a small child on my way to the water cooler, but was in fact a life-sized doll. Strangio hands me a brochure for Happy Saturdays. The document is a color-photocopied, mock restaurant menu advertising "Barstool Olympics," "Nude Trivia Hour" and other faux happy-hour events, in addition to information about the play and Strangio. It describes the experience of his dinner-theater presentation as "a place where people can be rude, crude, lewd and anything else that rhymes with those words." 
Strangio's journey began in the early 1980s, a fruitful time for Long Island comedy, highlighted by well-known stand-ups like Bob Nelson and Jim Myers. "I've always been a comedian in a way, and always liked to have a good time," says Strangio. But it wasn't until enrolling at Nassau Community College and attending a comedy event at the Student Union that he was encouraged to first get up in front of hundreds of people and try to make them laugh. "They said to me, 'Steve, you're a funny guy, can you do some comedy for us?'" he recalls, switching his intonation and vocal pitch whenever adopting someone else's persona. "I went away for a couple of days, I got all of my friends together, and we just rehearsed and rehearsed, and I wrote like 20 minutes [of material]. First time on stage in front of 300 people, and I killed. It was such an amazing, amazing experience." It was also an experience that immediately came crashing down on his next attempt, which took place at the now-defunct East Side Comedy Club in Huntington. "I went there and bombed," he laughs. "To the point where my friends were heckling me. So, I went outside and beat up my car, and I went back the next week, and I bombed again. And I bombed consistently for three months, until one day, I just started killing." 
And while he's confident that a new local comedy boom is on the horizon, Strangio can't help but be nostalgic for the environment he came of age in. "The cool thing about comedy back then was a lot of comedians were really supportive of you and always there for you," he explains. "And even if you bombed, they would say, 'Steve, come here. Here's what you did wrong. Don't do that next time.' And little by little, they helped get me to where I wanted to be, and in turn, I help do that to a lot of other comics." When asked what some of his advice might be to younger amateurs, he talks about the arrogance of the occasional newcomer. "The stage is the great truth," he says. "If you get up there and you're bombing, don't say you didn't bomb. Face reality. You bombed. Learn from it." 
