Some of These Shows are Not Like the Others!

Walking in to the American Legion Hall in Ft. Jennings, Ohio, I knew it was going to be a fun one! I was scheduled to perform with Hypnotist and friend, Bill Gladwell. The event was an Annual Comedy Night Fundraiser for the Ft. Jennings Volunteer Fire Department. There were more people in the American Legion than there were houses in Ft. Jennings and the alcohol was flowing.



Photo from Lake Superior State University



When I tell people that I tour colleges, they often assume that I perform for drunk people a lot. In reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In the case of 95% of college performances, my show is brought to campus as the alternative to going out and drinking. And many of my shows occur on weeknights anyway (I know, since when did that stop college students from getting flagrantly hammered on four loko!?) In any case, It’s the corporate events that I do where I encounter the drunk audience members. Both the Chicken Trick Volunteer and the Money Trick Volunteer were pretty damn drunk at the Ft. Jennings show.



The volunteer I used for the Chicken Trick was all over the place. I had to really reel her in. After the show, she told me she took it easy on me. I wish she would have let me have it! The volunteer for the Money Trick had a killer line that brought the house down.


Me: What if your $20 bill was back together, still had your name on it…and was in THAT box?



Her: Better than MY box!




Wow. Just….wow. The show was very rowdy and went way long because we were all having so much fun.



The previous night, I had been in Ft. Wayne, IN performing for one of my favorite corporate groups there. It’s a small group of 35-50 therapists – all women. They have a good time and get rowdy in a different way than the Ft. Jennings crowd. While in Fort Wayne, I had a few minutes to visit Dick Stoner’s magic shop, “Stoner’s.” Dick Stoner is a friend who has come to see my show in the past. He’s a legend in the world of Comedy Magic. Dick has been doing this so well and for so long that he’s got clients that have had him perform for their event for upwards of 45 consecutive years. After my show, I also had some free time to visit Dominick at Donny Manco’s New Republic Tattoo Studio and get a tattoo I’ve been wanting:




Before heading to Ft. Wayne (not sure why I’m doing this blog post in reverse chronological order), I got to perform in my hometown of Urbana, OH. Photos here! I talked about Urbana in my previous entry, so I won’t get into it too much here. We got a good turnout for a small (900 people) school! The night before that, I was all the way up in Sault Ste. Marie, MI. Sault Ste. Marie, or “The Soo,” is on the Canadian border and has a bridge shaped like a moustache. I got a tour of the city and got to see the famous Sault Ste. Marie Locks.



The TSA played a trick on me on the way up to The Soo. I had something like 200 promotional microfiber lens wipes in my luggage in one of the pockets. The un-nested my nest of boxes and put the lens wipes in the smallest box – as many as they could fit…along with the little TSA “we went through your shit” note. It was funny and I laughed, but TSA really pisses me off sometimes. They put the boxes back inside one another incorrectly and could have damaged them. I once tried to file a claim when the TSA incorrectly re-packed a case and damaged it. It went nowhere. When you file a claim with the TSA, they just blame the airlines. And because I will launch into an angry rant that will make me sound like a crazy Libertarian (I am not), I won’t get into the TSA’s use of invasive and potentially dangerous back scatter X-ray scanners or groping pat-down procedures.



Regardless of the TSA’s antics, they didn’t stop me from having a killer show at Lake Superior State University and after the show, the students took me out for bar food! Also at the last two college shows, I wore a fun new purple jacket (as seen above).



Wednesday night I head to Pittsburgh, PA to perform at Duquesne University then I finish out the year with a couple more colleges, trip to the middle of nowhere (near Fargo!), a show in Brooklyn and a handful of local corporate events! Looking forward to every one of them!



peace, love and drunken chicken choking,
MK