CHRIS COEN

Check me out on the “Bill and Dan” show – returning after a brief hiatus.  If you like this one, another to follow soon.  http://billanddan.libsyn.com/

My youngest niece had her song recital tonight.  She was clearly the best and quite frankly, I felt bad for the other children who had to be onstage with my prodigy of a niece.  I learned a lot, like from the song “Party in the Jungle” I found out that snakes go “sssss”, lions go “roar”, and alligators go “chomp.”  I then, through deductive reasoning, learned that a party in the jungle sounds absolutely terrifying.  Who picked this awful venue?  The drinks are warm and all these damn animals are trying to eat all the guests.  The scariest thing at my last party was when people got in their cars to drive home.  The tires go “squeal” and the car goes “smash.”

I awoke from my slumber/pass out on Sunday morning/afternoon and noticed the stupid clock stole an hour from my life.  Pick one or the other – there is no such moronic practice supposedly benefitting farmers in Indiana, right next door, and according to John Mellencamp, there are a shitload of farmers in Indiana.   “Blood on the Scarecrow” was about foreclosures, not a lost hour of sun.  Now I lost an hour of my life and I feel like an even bigger lump of dump for having slept until noon/one.

Tonight I did a benefit show that raised over $250,000 for COSI in Columbus.  I tried to hide my white trashness, but I was drinking scotch out of a martini glass, so I probably failed.  I also had to bust through a sheet of sugar glass (I have no idea why) and followed a drag queen.  He/she stole my whole act.  I was totally going to dance like Mamie Van Doren to the Pussycat Dolls’ “Don’t Cha.”  OK, maybe not.  Whatever.  It went pretty well, but absolutely no one bought that I was supposed to be Dean Martin offstage and I’m fine with that.  Dean is super cool, but I look about as Italian as Sammy Davis, Jr.  Regardless, I’m pretty sure that Columbus’s millionaires feel better about the fact that they don’t know anyone from Zanesville after my act.  Plus, I noticed rich people have the same dumb conversations that I do, but they have a lot of cash, so hot chicks pay attention to 5′ 5″ dudes with horseshoe hair more than me.  Blah blah blah, capital investments, blah blah blah, Ohio State sports, blah blah blah, my BMW…alright maybe I don’t have the same conversations other than the OSU sports.  I can, however, funnel a beer in under two seconds on a good night.  Impressed, fake boobs?  Of course you’re not.

Tonight I will be doing stand up as Chris Coen, but then I will be chumming with the crowd as Dean Martin, the King of Cool at a benefit at the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus.  This is either going to be awesome or I am going to make a total fool of myself in front of Columbus’s power elite and millionaires at a $360/ticket event.  I have been watching Dean Martin clips, songs and bio info as prep and even have been tanning to make my German/Scot-Irish self look as Italian as possible.  I do however have the southeastern Ohio heritage and the heavy drinking down pretty well.

I did a show in a seedy dive near my house, which makes me rethink my condo purchase…  The show started with a guy with a face tattoo heckling while (props to Jeff Burgstrom) Biscuit Jones smoked a cigar and occassionally played a trumpet.  A white trash princess yelled the whole time and commented on jokes that were told at least two minutes previously, but I went up anyway.  I got a Busch Light (which should tell you what type of bar it was) sent up to me and got paid.  For anyone that thinks comedians do open mikes for a month then tour the nation, sorry.  When I first started, a woman came up to me and said, “When are you performing in Dallas?”  See you in a decade.  Maybe.  If things go well, in two years I’ll be in a room where I don’t get stabbed.