Interviewing sketch comedy foursome the Vacant Lot is like being trapped in a burst of punchline crossfire. The best thing to do is keep your head down.

This group of twentysomething sketchmeisters -- Rob Gfroerer, Vito Viscomi, Nick McKinney, (brother of Kid in the Hall Mark McKinney) and Paul Greenberg -- has had four years to build an arsenal of around 300 scenes, monologues and songs. It's impossible to have a conversation with a single Lot-ician; they act and speak as one.

So how'd you guys first meet?

"A lack of ability to do anything else."

"We all went to Ryerson together for Radio and Television Arts and they do an annual comedy show and we all met during that and then we met Nick at a party. He was drunk so we had second thoughts even before meeting him."

"[Mark McKinney] said, 'Hey, why don't you guys meet up with Nick?' "

"So we did."

"We all like jokes about narcolepsy."

The Vacant Lot are drawn to humor with a dark edge. Greenberg says they've done shows with eight or nine guns and plenty of death. As far as he's concerned, "The sadder, the funnier."

The Vacant Lot do not confine themselves to the club circuit. They've done two shows at the Theatre Centre: Eat My Jung, directed by ex-Frantic and Kids in the Hall head write, Dan Redican, and We're All Going to Die, directed by Kid Kevin McDonald. They say they're outsiders in both the theatre and comedy communities.

"We've made a really consistent effort to stay away from 90 per cent of the comedy that's out there," says Greenberg, "because we don't even want to get lumped into it."

"We don't want to be four stand-ups sitting in a hotel room in Banff watching porn and doing coke."

"Speak for yourself."

"There's something to be said for it."

The Lot finance their shows with capital raised from "Rob's Mom."

"Rob's mom is rich. She invented Liquid Paper."

"Yep."

"No, that was Mike Nesmith."

"Was it?"

In October, they'll be opening at the Rivoli for friend Sandra Shamas, of My Boyfriend's Back and There's Going To Be Laundry fame. Shamas will be workshopping the show's third instalment.

Meanwhile, the Lot are content to work patiently at honing their craft. They rehearse in Gfroerer's basement and play bridge at Viscomi's place.

Their first album is due out in August. They've just finished a script for Joe Flaherty's Maniac Mansion and have a manager in L.A. pitching their pilot series, Be There with Belzon, a surreal journey through the mind of a cat-owning couch potato.

The Vacant Lot are popular in Toronto -- so much so that they even have their own fan club in St. Catharines. "There are three people who run the fan club. I don't know how many people are in it."

"They come to every show and they do the door."

"We've had nine-foot mock-ups of Rob up in the Rivoli."

"It was above my bed for a long time until a friend of mine ripped it down in a drunken rage."

The Vacant Lot perform as part of the Rivoli's new Monday night comedy series (July 27) organized by the Left Hand of Frank (featuring Frank and Dan Redican) which runs through July.

(The remainder of the article does not relate to TVL and is cut from this page. The entire article can be found at Eye's website.)