Author: Chris

I got an email last week asking if I could emcee the Saturday shows at the Columbus Funny Bone, I checked with my wife and was able to pull it off.  Our kid was sick and she had to call off one day, so she was pretty far behind with life, but she’s the best and was able to pull the long shift again for me.  I looked at the schedule and realized it was with Headliner Colin Quinn, formerly of Saturday Night Live, Remote Control, and Tough Crowd, plus countless stand-up specials and movies.

It was a very cool experience – the crowds were sold out for both shows and both Colin and Jay Stevens, the other comic I worked with, were both overly nice to me.  I introduced myself and he said, “Wait, let me guess with that accent.  You’re in Columbus now, but not originally from here.  Kentucky?”  Close, I said.  Before I could say where he said, “Tennessee?”  No, I’m from Southeastern Ohio.  Ohio has three accents and I got the shitty one.  He told me I should use that onstage, so that will likely be my opening joke for the rest of my life.

I did my set and was even more surprised that he listened – the club has a speaker coming into the Green room, which is nice, so you can hear the other comics.  He had some pretty good advice I can use and told me with my voice and story telling material, I could be a really unique stand-up and fill a niche for blue collar crowds.  (Like I said, he was very nice, he should have told me not to look him in the eye and kicked me out of the room).  I also got to hear some really interesting stories about how he got started and how he came up with Adam Sandler and Chris Rock on the New York comedy scene in the 80’s.  Chris got a big break when Eddie Murphy picked him go to on before him, but even after getting on SNL, he was able to reinvent his entire set by changing his delivery style.  Of course, his material was great also – I always love hearing comics take the most obvious things that we can all relate to and finding the humor in them.  He was able to take his entire act from common experiences and make it hilarious.

He even let me get a picture with him, which I told him I would understand if he told me to go to hell, after my shitty intro.  I brought him up the first time and he had told me he wasn’t particular about his intro.  I went through the TV credits and for some reason said, “He’s a staple of the industry.”  He went up and torched me for it – nothing says this next act is funny like calling them a staple of the industry.  It was even funny getting blasted for using a term like I was presenting an employee of the week award.  Oh well, I’m sure I have more duds to deliver down the road.

I decided to recap my worst show experiences by state, and why not start with Michigan?  (Nothing personal, that’s the first show that came to mind).

• I did a show at a restaurant/bar in Coldwater once.  The headliner went to the wrong city, because why wouldn’t he?  About 30 minutes to go time, the owner said, “Where’s your buddy?”  Excuse me?  Ah, you mean the headliner I’ve never met, but already hate because he’s late.  “Well, you have to cover his time.”  Can you delay the show?  “Sure!”  They literally, and not like everyone misuses literally, as in stone cold truth they delayed the show two minutes.  Two.  I whispered to the emcee to please stretch out the announcements.  He went up and said, “Here’s your first comic, Chris Coen.”  I did an hour, ran out of material and started telling drinking stories from college.  I was about to start singing when the headliner walked in, 90 minutes after the show time.  I made him be my DD that night.
• Another one in southern Michigan I was the feature for a man wearing a full body clown outfit, plus makeup and a top hat with sequins.  After the show, he told me my watch was too flashy and distracted the crowd.  He wasn’t kidding.
• I did a show in late December in Sault Ste. Marie, on the Upper Peninsula.  There was so much snow, I got stuck getting off the highway.  On the off ramp.  Luckily, I got out and did the show in a casino cafeteria with no stage or special lighting.  I felt like I died a little that night, but then I had to drive across the UP the next day to get to Milwaukee and then I really felt like I died.  I saw more closed businesses and yeti than people.
• Finally, my favorite.  My pal and I did a show in northern Michigan at a casino.  The stage was on top of a bar five feet over six people’s heads sitting at the bar, then there was a cavernous dance floor with no seating for 40 feet, then about twelve tables in the way back.  The setup was horrendous.  As the show began, I started in, barely looking at the six people in the front, since they were so far under my line of sight.  A man began yelling at me.  I figured he was drunk, but realized he was mentally impaired.  I let it go.  My buddy decided to play the white knight.  As we passed each other, he muttered, “I got that guy.”  I rasped “DON’T DO IT!”  He sat the mike stand behind him with his back to the crowd, but was going after the guy, who he hadn’t seen yet from the back or stage.  “Sir, I’ll bet you’ve been unlucky at the casino tonight, because it looks like (he whirled to face the man at that moment) you’ve been unlucky in life!”  His face completely dropped as he realized he just insulted a man with severe mental handicaps and had the worst set I’ve ever seen him have.  One member of the crowd loved it – I was laughing so hard at the awkwardness I nearly lost my voice that night.

Best picture: That movie you were going to see, but realized it wasn’t in theaters by the time you heard about it.

Best actor: That one guy, he was in that one movie you saw four years ago – no, that other one.

Best actress: Have you co-worker tell you, you don’t know who it is or what movie.

Best director: It doesn’t matter, you’ll never see that movie.

Best animated film: Zootopia – OH MY GOD I’VE SEEN THAT ONE IT WAS REALLY GOOD!

Spaceship of unknown origin hovers over the Earth; two aliens stare at a screen, watching a woman bawling in front of her television.  A man sits beside her with a twisted grimace on his face.

“See Quagnar?  This bizarre species appears to force their child bearers to watch a show called “This is Us” on the communication box.  Whatever this broadcasts, it makes these creatures leak salt water from their faces.  It is a sign of sadness to these bipedal hominids.”

“Ah, what a bizarre ritual.”

“That’s not all Quagnar, they are then forced to tell people on another public forum called Facebook.  Then people “like” their misery in a great public shaming by selecting it from a menu of choices.”

“Even more strange.  What horrible crimes did they commit?  Did they fire their quantum rays without permission from the Overlord?  Did they not replace the spectra-transport power source?”

“No Quagnar, here is the suprise.  They CHOOSE to do this to themselves!  They themselves volunteer for this torture while their non child bearers appear to suffer in silence instead!  The female units actually actively engage in this behavior.”

“They are clearly too unstable a species to share our technology with.  Let us move on and share our superior science and medicine with another planet.”

Vessel flies off to other worlds.

There are a few things I’ve learned in the last year and a half, I thought it may be useful to pass along.

1. Your tolerance for disgusting is raised 300% a week.  Your kid doesn’t like food?  Spits it out, half chewed wherever it will land.  Blowout diapers are an entire different world, let alone when your little one decides lying still isn’t fun while you are trying to change a diaper full of a third of your kid’s body weight.

2. You learn to communicate in a new language.  I remember my sister having entire conversations with my nieces and I couldn’t pick out one word.  Now I can identify 23 different stuffed animals off key words, including a growl (tiger), an arm raise (elephant) and an action – hop, hop, hop means rabbit.  My wife is even better.  It’s like watching Jane Goodall with silverback gorillas.

3. You can say all the hard ass parenting stuff you want, once you have a kid, it changes.  “I’m not letting my child watch ANY TV.”  Three months later, you’re curled up on the floor begging PBS for a new Sesame Street to DVR.  “Please don’t make me watch Pogo Games again…anything but Pogo Games.”

4. That previous one leads to this one: CHILDREN CAN DO THE SAME STUFF OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER….FOR ETERNITY.  It really is amazing.  My kid can work the Sesame Street phone app.  She’ll click on one, watch ten seconds, then exit out and click it again.  As an adult, you’re thinking – “I need some closure here.  What in the hell?  I must know how Oscar is going to react to this song!”

Of course, there’s the obvious, like the fact they can fill you full of joy and purpose.  Then again, some of that may be delirium from lack of sleep.  I saw an article pop up on my feed about people dying from sleep deprivation.  I would have thought this to be BS before, but now I believe.

I have decided to on occasion go over some of the highlights and lowlights of comedy as I near a full decade of doing whatever in hell it is I’ve been doing.  I can start with something I’m not sure I’ve ever blogged about, the real first time I did stand-up.

I for real started comedy in 2007 – that’s when I actually wrote jokes, hit real open mics, and once I got going, didn’t stop.  However in 2004, my roommate Brady proclaimed to the entire group drinking at our house that there was a comedy open mic at Adobe Gilas that I should do.  Brady had three states 1) Going to work and grumpy 2) Home from work and crushing Natty Lights and 3) Sleeping/sleepwalking.  I didn’t really want to do it, so I hoped he was deep into stage 2 and would forget.  He didn’t.

I can’t remember if he peer pressured me or actually signed me up (he also signed me up for ballroom dancing class one time – quite the dickhead), but I got coerced into doing it.  I didn’t know much about stand up then, as in, I hadn’t watched stand-up at club ever at that point.  So I wrote jokes heavy in shock factor.  90 seconds worth of material, including the always smooth move of an inside joke about my other roommate banging his girlfriend.  Crowds LOVE inside jokes, let me tell you.

I walked into the bar/restaurant on a Saturday afternoon and there was a host and a huge gong behind the stage.  Only three of us were signed up.  Low turnout at 3 pm on a Saturday, apparently.  I was last and watch as the first two got the gong.  One guy looked like Gollum and did three jokes about what his girlfriend (probably made up) thought was funny.  GONG!  I hit the very small stage, proud to have just finished my ninth beer in the last hour and a half.  The stagefright melts away, as does the coherence and likeability.  I did my awful set and the seven people that came with me loved it.  The other nine people hated my guts.  I still can’t remember my set, but I can yet to this day see that large girl at the head of the table right in front of the stage looking at me with a disdain that would stop a train in its tracks.  I didn’t get gonged, only because I had a home team there.

I did the set at a party a week later, but that was it for three more years.  Looking back, I now realize I fit the stereotype of a young white male comic more closely than anyone in history and I’m glad I took a break…and so is anyone who might have seen my next set in that span.  Hey young white guys – there’s shocking and there’s funny.  Not always the same.  You’re welcome.