Category: Comedy Zone

Hey there ‘Redheads… Sorry for the lateness on my blogness. A combo of being busy and being lazy has left the blogging in the lurch. If you’ll allow me to shed some light on recent events, I’ll allow you to pretend to care. Deal? Cool. You’re tough, but fair. I hope everyone got their taxes in on time. As per usual, I waited ’til the last minute to get my return signed, sealed, and delivered. Once again, I’ve limboed under the poverty line. Just to ensure a decent refund, I declared all of you as dependants. If you didn’t get your taxes done before the deadline, I hope you got a chance to appeal to a higher power by throwing yourself in front of the Popemobile during his visit…I hear that counts as a blessing. In preparation for the Pope’s visit, all Popeye’s restaurants are adding a comma after the first “e” and an exclamation point after the “s”…

Wow…that was stupid. I’m rusty…lay off.

Last weekend, I hit the road on a two stop trip that took me to exotic ports of call Prestonsburg, Kentucky and Charleston, West Virginia. A seven hour road trip, just in time for gas prices to go higher than Woody Harrelson on April 20th at 4:20. The prices on the gas station marquees were posted with numbers cut out of magazines. When a tank of gas costs as much as an X-Box game, you try to savor the flavor and not burn through a tank in a day.
One thing about driving when the weather gets nice, bug guts. I had so many insect entrails splat on my windshield, it became a big buggy cataract. The first stop was the Preston Station Comedy Zone at the Prestonsburg Inn, just off Country Music Highway 23. This was my first time playing this room, and I was more than a little worried it was going to be like the scene in The Blues Brothers…”What kind of comedy do you usually have here?” “We have both kinds. Country and Western.” Thankfully, it turned out to be a fun crowd and a great room. According to Mike, the manager, it’s the longest running one-nighter in the country. They haven’t missed a Thursday night in 18 years. The first comic on their stage was Jeff Foxworthy…the second was Carrot Top. I had the pleasure of working with the affable Monte Allen. Very funny guy who never saw a shot he didn’t like. All it took was the mere mention of tequila, and the crowd sent so many shots to him, the stage had an undertow. And he had a toast for each one he took. After the show was done, they took away the stage to reveal a dance floor for some boot scoot boogie. While I was packing up my CDs, I noticed this sign posted outside the door:

“Drinking alcoholic beverages during pregnancy or prior to conception can cause birth defects.”

This sign is a little off point. Yes, drinking during pregnancy can cause birth defects. Drinking prior to conception just helps you ignore the defects of the person you’re *ahem* conceiving with.

On Friday, with only a two hour drive to my next stop, I went in search of an implement to kill some time with. I found a perfect place to draw a chalk outline around a couple hours, the East Kentucky Science Center. Stop laughing. What seems like an oxymoron is home to a planetarium. I haven’t been to a planetarium since I was about 8, so I figured it why not sit back and take in some space. Turns out I was the only one who did that kind of figuring…I chatted up the ladies of the EKSC, caught up on all the office gossip, played with the crap in the gift shop, then got a private showing of The Planets. I sat in the theater’s sweet spot, let my pupils dilate in the darkness, and listened to the dulcet voice of Kate Mulgrew tell me about the weather patterns on Jupiter. Two hours successfully dispatched…onward to Charleston, WV.

I pulled into the South Charleston Ramada Plaza hotel, home to the Charleston Comedy Zone. I was met with good news and bad news. The bad news: the hotel was full and they didn’t have room for the comics. The good news: they were sending us to the Hampton Inn about 20 minutes away. Twist my arm, why don’t ya? Sure, it stunk that we wouldn’t be staying on-site, but Hampton Inn is the Park Place of Ramada properties. And the wing where our rooms were was brand spankin’ new. Couches, flat-screen TVs, the works. The first night of shows, attendance was a little thin because of the Carrie Underwood/Keith Urban concert in town, but those that did show up were a fun bunch. Saturday was pretty uneventful. Nothing good was playing at the nearby multiplex…seriously, there’s some shit in the theaters right now…

Anywho, I feel this blog losing some steam, so I’ll just say that a good time was had by most. I’m looking forward to hitting the road again next weekend to play Cozzy’s in Newport News, VA, then in a couple weeks to play the LOL Comedy Club near Raleigh, NC.

Once again, it’s Passover. Another in the series of Jewish holidays with the theme: They tried to kill us. They didn’t. Let’s eat. So, once again, here’s one of my favorite Passover songs…won’t you sing along?

To be continued…