Saturday, July 23, 2005
1:48 PM

(Please scroll down to read about and see pictures from Iraq as well as the naked people in a San Francisco marathon. Quite an interesting combination some 13,000 miles apart.)

It's around 2 p.m. on Saturday. I'm in my hotel room wrapped in only a towel and sitting against the headboard of the double bed I've called mine for the last three nights. My week's been cut abruptly short due to the air conditioner not working in the comedy club. Last night's shows were amazingly hot. You could feel the furnace-like elements as soon as you opened the door leading to the club. If you think it was hot watching the show, you should've been the show. The lights shined brightly on us the whole time as sweat just ran down my face. I have no hair to absorb anything, so it just poured down my cheeks and forehead. I ran my hand over my head and flicked beads of sweat onto the stage. As much as I didn't want to bring attention it the unbearable heat, I couldn't help it. Some references were funny while others were simply futile attempts at humor, falling flat. Or maybe people thought they were funny, but didn't want to exert themselves any more than they had to.

We were amazed that so many people actually saw both shows. Maybe 125 people between the two shows. But the club also saw over a hundred opt against sitting in an oven to watch live comedy. They instead got free tickets to return on a much cooler night. At least inside.

Initially I wore a long-sleeved brown shirt. I just think I look better in them. But what do I know; I sell thongs and t-shirts that say PREOFESSIONAL douchebag across the front.

When I felt how hot it was, I immediately headed back up to my room and ironed a light green, short-sleeved shirt. That was one nice thing about this week in Fairview Heights - the comedy club is 20 seconds away from my hotel room. It's on the second floor while I'm on the fourth and right near the stairs, too. I used them all week instead of the elevator. Figured that would offset my poor eating and excessive beer consumption.

I also wore jeans and semi-thick tan socks. Half way through my first show, I pulled my pants down after some drunk, old lady in the back hooted and hollared a bit. Of course the hoots and hollars came louder when I stood for a few seconds in my black boxer-briefs. The shirt covered most of me, so hopefully nobody was offended. But if they were, fuck 'em. I was just having fun and trying to cool off.

For the second show I threw on shorts and sandals. Again I drew too much attention to the heat and my regular jokes fell on seemingly deaf ears. They didn't laugh at my best stuff, so I sat on the stool and said nothing, matching the enthusiasm and energy of the crowd. "See, doesn't that suck? Now laugh at some of this shit, will ya?" I said to them. It got a smattering of chuckles at best.

I had the ice bucket from my room on stage with me. It also had two wash cloths in it, buried beneath the melting ice. A Budweiser Serlect bobbed up and down as well.

Before the shows I ate at TGIFriday's last night, adjacent to the hotel's front lobby. I sat at the bar and watched the bartenders work their "flair," which is to say they tossed liquor bottles around. There was no alcohol in them, but there was some water. Although some of them did a few tricks, they weren't overly impressive. Bottles banged off each other and water squirted out. It was weird to eat chicken wings in a helmet and rain coat.

The one female bartender who actually tried some tricks did so fairly well. When she finished, she asked me what I thought. "Well, nice tits."

After the last show we went to Paesano's to meet up with Big Al and his crew. Al and about 8 of his friends and/or staff came to the late show, armed with small fans. Apparently word had gotten out about the hellish circumstances at The Funny Bone.

Even though the kitchen was closed, Al fired up the ovens. "Shit, you coulda brought the pizza to the club and cooked it during the show, right there at your table," I joked. No one gave a shit and kept on drinking. Eventually we were served some out-of-this-world breadsticks and some of the best pizza I have ever had. That's hold a lot of weight. I have eated pizza more than anything in my life, all over the world, and Paesano's is seriously some of the best. Okay. So maybe the fact that it was free helped a bit. But whatever the case, hot damn was it good. I took two pieces back to my room with me and just now finished them off for lunch.

Joey, the club's general manager, called me around 10:30 this morning to tell me the rest of the shows were cancelled. "Come on down in about a half hour and I'll pay you for what you've done so far," she said. I took that to mean we weren't getting paid for the whole week, something they usually do when an unforseen circumstance arises - bad weather, electricity goes out, etc. I figured no air conditioning would be the same thing.

Maybe I few years ago I would've overreacted to being shorted some pay, but having done that and burning bridges in the process, I realized that had gotten me no where in a hurry. "We're gonna try to give you a week before the end of the year. A full week. Just email me your avails and I'll pass them along to Matt (the booker)," Joey continued.

Joey had always been really nice to me. She used to own a club in Milwaukee called Stooges. I played there once for an audition and once as an emcee. The latter was part of a two man show as I opened for a hypnotist. I had never done so before and didn't think much of hypnotism to begin with. But I more than welcomed the work.

At Stooges' first show on Saturday night, the hilarity of the hypnotism didn't work out so well. He only put 2 people under and one of them was obviously faking it. "Tell the crowd that if they want to stay for the second show they can. No charge," Joey told me back in 2000. "Okay." And that was horrible. For me. I only had about 20 minutes of material and blew my wad during the first show. Most of the crowd stayed for the second show and didn't laugh for a second at me. And why would they have? I had just done the same exact jokes 90 minutes before. All hypnotists are fuckin' douchebags now. Write a goddamn joke already.

The Cubs are playing the Cardinals in downtown St. Louis. I tried to get tickets, but with the heat and then originally having two shows tonight, it didn't seem smart. I began writing this with some enthusiasm but have lost it all. Talked to a few people and now just want to leave and head for home.