So last night was a blast. The show was held at a place called the Crazy Horse Saloon, and it was just like what you'd expect from a place with that name. It's a redneck bar, the kind of place where men wear cowboy hats without a hint of an attempt at irony. There was even one guy wearing leather chaps over his Wranglers, something heretofore exclusive to only gay bars or biker bars. They do comedy there one night a week, and it draws a pretty good crowd, but the rest of the time they have a band that plays there and all of their equipment is still on the stage. That left the comics with a space about the size of a phone booth to stand in while performing. Not a great setup.
The guy who was opening for my friend Don was....well, horrible. He was exactly what every real comic hates - young, hip (or trying desperately to appear that way), high energy and very loud. The kind of comic who thinks that volume makes up for lack of original material. He's the kind of guy of whom other comics say, "I don't know him, but I know his act" - your basic sitcom larvae. The kind of no-talent hack who does jokes about having a small penis but telling his girlfriend, "Even a Greyhound bus looks small in the Lincoln tunnel." Jesus, that joke should come with a toteboard like the Jerry Lewis Telethon for how many hacks have used it. But hey, he said it really loudly, so that makes it funnier, right? And after the show, this guy is bitching because the equipment on stage prevented him from being as "high energy" as he usually is. Go back to Atlanta until you learn that jumping up and down and screaming doesn't make a joke any funnier.
Sadly, the audience missed the real performance of the night, which was at our table in the back as Ted Norkey, the living legend of road comics, painstakingly eviscerated this poor kid as Don and I wiped tears out of our eyes. Ted was as cranky and brutal as ever, rolling his eyes and announcing, "This guy has no business being in my business. And it's not even my business anymore." It was a virtuoso performance, prompting Don to tell me I better tell him what he says about him while he's on stage too.
Don was great, as he always is. He really is one of those rare comedians whose material is both smart and accessible. Most comics can work only on one of those levels, not on both. What makes it especially funny is that with Ted and I there, he was trying very hard to find something that would just make US laugh, a much more difficult task than making the audience laugh. He was pulling out obscure bits, including a thing he and I wrote a decade ago about an Amish comedy club ("These two guys walk into a bar...heathens") and an out of the blue callback to a sick joke I did years ago ("Hey, candy does taste better with your shirt off"). He'll often get lost in his regular act because he's searching for that one moment when the audience is silent but I'm cracking up at some inside joke. Or as he puts it, "I'm like a rat in a BF Skinner expirement - hit the right lever, get a pellet of food."
Other than that, it was a typical night of getting caught up with an old friend. When old comics get together, they tell and retell old road stories about the worst comedy condos (like the one where the TV knobs were missing and someone replaced them with knobs from the stove - "Hey, let's see what's on bake" - or the one where someone actually had written the word "death" on the wall, and it was reasonably certain that it was written in human feces), the booking agents they hate (Yes, John Yoder does cause cancer as well as homelessness and poverty), the embarrassing things other comics have done (at some point, someone mentioned having seen Chuck King in his underwear - that'll take years of therapy to erase from my brain), and so forth. Ted doesn't perform anymore, but if you ever get the chance to see Don Reese as he travels the country, take it. You can find his schedule here.
- Log in to post comments