"Dying is Easy. Comedy is Hard."

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Where we’re at, it’s not even a coffee shop. It’s this funky food shop. But tonight it’s where we find a handful of comics belting out their yuks to a crowd of college kids. The room is made tougher by the fact that you can’t even get a beer here. And the “stage”? It’s a plywood box less than half the size of a coffin. As for the comics, most’ll never get the wet out from behind their ears. (Me? I’m not wet behind the ears, no. I’m soaked through. My sopping shoes squeak with every step. Odds are, said squeaks’ll garner the only giggles I’ll ever get.) There was one washed-up hack, though. He’s fast becoming a buddy of mine. Let’s hope he’s saving his best bits for the paying gigs—assuming he gets those. Let’s hope he’s just here to test drive new material. And the last comic of the night, he wasn’t a “headliner,” no, but he was the best of the lot. I caught his act at a different venue, last Wednesday night. Even bought his CD. But this funky food shop was all wrong for a night of stand-up, unless you’re looking for a perfect place to die (in the comic sense). By the third act, the crowd, what was left of it, wasn’t even paying attention. 

9 April 2005

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