Live From Clayton…

Hey there ‘Redheads… Greetings from Tobacco Road, by the banks of the Sweet Tea River. I’m sitting in the hotel lobby in Clayton, NC, mass murdering the minutes before my shows tonight at LOL Comedy Club. Before I get started, I’d like to apologize for the last post. It stunk out loud and I feel bad for even pushing the publish button. After making you wait so long (play along) you deserved something that even slightly made sense. Well, now I’m fueled by pulled pork and sweet tea and ready to mildly amuse you.

A couple deaths to start things off… After being missing since Valentine’s Day, actor Andrew Koenig was found dead of an apparent suicide. You know him better as Boner from Growing Pains. Don’t expect any Boner jokes here. I didn’t make the connection until today, but he also played the Joker in a pretty awesome Batman fan film, Batman: Dead End. Please to enjoy it…

Boner, we hardly knew ye… On the lighter side of death, my buddy Seth tipped me off to this recent passing…

Ronald Howes Sr., the inventor of the Easy Bake Oven that millions of young girls used to bake their first cookies, cupcakes and brownies, has died at the age of 83. Howes, who also created defense weapons and printers, developed the Easy Bake Oven while working at Kenner toys in the early 1960s.

According to his wishes, he’ll be cremated. That’ll be awhile. Then, there’s the big story about the killer whale that lived up to its name at Sea World. I’ve been watching that harridan from HLN, Jane Velez-Mitchell, out shout a trained animal expert about the incident. He’s had 40 years experience with animal training and she’s a bottom feeder. I’m sure these trainers know the risks of getting into a tank with a killer whale, but they’re not allowed to have pedophile whales at Sea World. Think of the children!

Like the rest of you, I’ve been intermittently transfixed by the pageantry of the Winter Olympics. Anyone else disappointed that the Ethiopians didn’t send a delegation to compete in skeleton? There, that slice of evil should make up for the earlier lack of a Boner joke. Some people are also confused by curling. I got a chance to try curling recently, and I have a new found respect for curlers. I was set straight on curling. The sport requires a flexibility normally reserved for Spider-man’s stunt double. Sure, it looks like bowling spliced with the ice capades, but it there’s skill involved. I’m glad that technology hasn’t taken over curling. They could eliminate the sweeping and just toss a Roomba down the ice, but thankfully, tradition has prevailed.

That’s all for now… Back to my room to watch more crap.

To be continued…

Sit In My Lapse…

Hey there ‘Redheads… Well, it’s official. After a valiant two-weekish effort, JOKE/BIT/PREMISE/TAG-A-DAY IN MAY is dead. A week between installments kinda defeats the whole daily thing. Great timing too. The stunt-blogging gets a mention on DCStandup.com, then I decide to let it stagnate. I have the follow through of a thalidomide baby’s golf swing. I think I got a couple decent comedy nuggets out of the enterprise. As my inevitable apology, I offer you a piping hot batch of cutie pie…






…now that I’ve reduced you to a puddle of goo, let’s get this installment rolling, shall we?

Now for some horn tootage. Tuesday night, I won a poker tournament. I made my way through a field of 80 fellow degenerate Texas Hold ‘Em players and won a buy-in to a tournament at the Borgata in Atlantic City next week. The top prize is in the neighborhood of $30,000. I hope to trick or treat through that neighborhood. That kind of money almost makes it worth it to visit Atlantic City. That place is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. One place I have to make sure I stop by on the way up…the HQ of Spencer’s Gifts. I need to take that tour.

A big thanks to Matt, Tonia, Jeanne, and the rest of the groovy staff at LOL Comedy Club in Clayton, NC for a great weekend. The crowds were small (some shows, they felt more like drunk focus groups) but fun. I got a chance to work with the round mound of profound, Mo Alexander.

Here we are, filling a quota…

Comics in Clayton luxuriate in the lavish accommodations of Jeanne’s house. Which has a 60-inch big screen TV…that can vote, it’s so old. It’s one of those rear projection jobs. This one takes about a half an hour before it warms up and holds a steady picture. Oh, and the cable wasn’t working. You haven’t seen scrambled snow, until you’ve seen it on a big screen. I felt like Carol Anne from Poltergeist. And the feature’s room is pink. Pepto Bismol pink.

While we were tooling around Clayton, Mo and I stopped at a local drive-thru bbq joint, Smithfield BBQ. We pulled up to the menu to check out the bill of fare, when the lady behind the speaker popped on to take our order. We had no idea what we wanted, so we asked her what was good. She said everything was good. We weren’t satisfied with what seemed like the company line, but she backed up her statement with, “I’m a 200 pound woman. I know about good barbecue.” She was right. The bbq and cole slaw sandwich was pork-tastic.
The last night in the house, Mo, Jeanne, and I were lounging on the couches in the den, discussing various mysteries of life. The conversation turned to religion, then turned into me answering questions about Jewish stuff. Jeanne then asks the loaded question, “Can I ask you something without offending you?” Well now she had to, regardless of the outcome, “Go ahead,” I said. I prepared to clear up some misconception about bar mitzvahs or having sex through a hole in a sheet. The question she chose was, “Are you really cheap?” WHA?? That was her burning question. Am I a stereotype. It was like asking Mo, “What’s your stance on grape soda? For or against?” I thanked her for the new material then, after she went to bed, I took this picture with her camera…

No promises on the next bit of bloggage, but I’m gonna try not to veer too far off the path of regular updates.

To be continued…