Now that the title drew in all the 25-50 year old women, I’ll let you down, it’s just about comedy shows. I got to do a couple of really cool shows in the last week. Most shows I do are show up, do jokes, fill your time, etc. Last weekend in Cleveland I was asked by Chris Paugh to do a joke battle/insult attack show where two comics go burn for burn as the crowd judged the overall nastiness and wittiness of said verbal assaults. I think this is a great idea. I made a drinking Jenga game one time where I wrote “Insult everyone at the table.” The more intoxicated the person, the better the jab. Example – one beer, “Oh, I just can’t do it…umm, you are wearing a green shirt, I like blue. Tee hee. Is that too much?” Six beers later – “Let me tell you why I hate how you talk, you marble mouthed piece of garbage!” Yes. Mission accomplished.
I did the battle as Captain America vs. Iron Man, aka Bill Squire.
I ended up pulling out the victory. Cap’s top three attacks were 1) I called Iron Man an arrogant billionaire. If he had less VD, he’d be Donald Trump with armor. 2) Liberals don’t like him because he’s a billionaire weapons maker. Conservatives don’t like him because he promotes big government over individual rights. Libertarians…well, you’re all high, we’ll talk later. 3) You hooked up with Gwyneth Paltrow AFTER the guy from Coldplay.
I then got to host the semi-finals of the Open Mike Talent Search at the Columbus Funny Bone on Wednesday. I enjoy emceeing because I try to find a joke or callback for each and every set and a lot of people notice the effort. When I did one such show as a contestant many years ago, the emcee said the same intro for every single comic and I could tell he was mailing it in, so I vowed to at least act like I gave a shit. Of course, some of the jokes bomb horribly, but oh well, here’s the next comic. Emceeing is tough work for a 15 person contest, especially when you have to tinkle. Leaving the stage for more than 90 seconds is like leaving your kid alone in a room to grab something. It’s probably going to be OK, but if something goes wrong, it will go WAY wrong. Plus as I put on Facebook earlier this week, emceeing a comedy contest is like being a teacher on recess duty, but all the kids are drunk and talking about their private parts. Well, and the teacher, actually.