Youngstown, OH.
Not everyone in Youngstown, Ohio is a fucking idiot but the ones that are will make you forget about the rest.
The Funny Farm Comedy Club is located in the Holiday Inn Metroplex, in the back room of "Choices" nightclub. Only "Chances" or "Cock-Eaters" could sound more like gay bar names than "Choices". Maybe it was an intentional move to lure queers in for an old-fashioned stomping. And if the name won't lure em, the music will. "Billie Jean" and "Walking on Sunshine" are as popular now as they were when they opened this brass-railed mood-hole in the 80's and everyone from 21- 66 is manuvering ineptly on the dance floor.
Don't worry if you're finding it hard to leave that infectious Sisters Sledge groove behind, because it bleeds right through into the comedy club, giving a bowel-shaking bass soundtrack to every punchline. Still, there are plenty of people who can talk over both the jokes and the tunes. These people are called the audience and gosh, do they suck.
Again, not all of them - just the ones you remember.
I remember you, the meth-crippled kid in the front that kept trying to convey an idea in one everlasting run-on sentence until you were shuffled without resistance towards the door. I know you were trying to help - or to get help - but I think you just needed rest more than anything.
And I remember middle-age business guy with his two associates, he was a stereotype movie heckler whose entire life can be read in a glance from across the room. This isn't your first Holiday Inn by any means, is it, my friend? You're position has allowed you to travel the entire midwest circuit all in a newish Ford Taurus provided by the company. Perhaps a cellular provider or an Orkin distributor. You take off your wedding ring when you hit town, more to impress the guys you work with than for any real hope of landing some action.
I can almost see you lean into your cohorts and say with a wink "Watch this!" before bleating out an inane cliche to the comic on stage and then another wink to your friends as they wish they had stayed in the room. You were a high-yeild asshole in your fraternity days and but you traded that in for a life of wrinkle-free khakis and spread sheets. But now and again you can show you've still got it by being a smart-alec at a karaoke night in a Fort Wayne Marriott or by demanding that they take a little something off the bill since the restaurant was out of rice pudding.
You too will have to be walked out in a shuffle, the doormen now more like sanitarium orderlies than bouncers. You will show your Holiday Inn Priorities Club Card in protest and be dumbstruck that it does
you no good.
Don't feel badly. I envy you. I wish it were me being walked out ahead of schedule. In this drop-ceiling convention room, stacking chairs and folding banquet tables on a stage where so many Shriners have auctioned fruit cakes for burn victims. I wish it was me they were taking out.
They say this is a mob town but I can't imagine what is here that the mob would want any peice of. Like seeing gang insignia in a men's room and wondering what self-respecting street outfit would claim a IHOP shitter as it's "turf".
Whoever said "You can't go home again" surely came from someplace great. But I come from a place like Youngstown and always seem to wind up back in those places despite my best intentions.
These girls came all the way from Pittsburgh to see the Youngstown show. Why? Because the one young lady has a wobbly heart for Joe Rogan and since I work with Rogan... well I don't quite know where it was supposed to go from there but they asked if I would kindly put their tits on my website, maybe as a final desperate plea for Joe to see how much they care. So here are your titties, girls. May their exposure to the world bring you all the peace and comfort you desire. |
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