sounds like a good idea...

And as befits a city where Andy Kaufman got his start, it has a grown man acting like a hyperactive boy who thinks the audience members are guests at his birthday party, as well as a woman who, explaining that she is too sick to talk, lip-syncs her act to a recording of her own voice.

Those performers, Ryan Flynn and Charlyne Yi, are among the eight finalists competing tonight at Carolines on Broadway, one of the festival's producers (the City of New York is also involved), for the Andy Kaufman Award. First presented last year, the award is for the performer who best reflects Kaufman's "originality, humor and courage" and who most forcefully "breaks the barriers of conventional stand-up comedy." The competition is both an answer to the question "Where are the new weirdos coming from?" and a sign that Kaufman, once known as an iconoclast, has become an icon.