Catching up...

Here is what has happened in the last five days.

Frank Hong and I drove down to Blacksburg, VA to perform at Hokie House, which does weekly comedy shows on the fringe of Virginia Tech’s campus. It was a long drive. Halfway through the drive, we stopped at an independent record store to buy an album that had just come out. I mention that it was independent for a reason. As I finished my purchase, the sales clerk took a call… “Plan 9 Music, this is Buzzsaw…” Buzzsaw? Is that really your name? Only at an independent record store would a sales clerk find it appropriate to have stage name. “Jeremy sounds too corporate.” Yeah, but Buzzsaw sounds retarded.

The show that night was very cool. The booker/host, Pat Miller was cool and a good host. The crowd was great, with no real dips during my 45 minute set, and it felt like a real college show even though it was off-campus. And, for some reason, people think that comics are alcoholics. Some are, but not most. Sure, we love PCP, and other drugs that I don’t actually even know what they look like. I bring this up because after the show, the bartender slid two double shots of Jager to Frank and I. I looked at her like, “Have you noticed that we’ve both been drinking water all night?” You don’t go from water to Jager. Frank ended up doing his shot and splitting mine with a girl. And for some reason I’m a loser for not drinking licorice flavored motor oil. This reminds me of when I went out with Dave Attell and Sean Rouse after a show at the DC Improv. Everyone in the bar wanted to buy Attell a shot of Jager because he drinks a lot on his show. He drinks a lot without cameras too, but if he actually accepted all of the shots that were offered, he would die of alcohol poisoning every night. But people don’t understand that, and when he turns down the shot, they look at him like, “Attell is so Hollywood.” Some people just don’t want to die. Calm down with the Jager shots.

I headlined the show at Hokie House. The next night, Thursday, I was to headline a showcase at Wiseacres. Usually, when someone asks you to headline, it means that you are doing a lot more time than everyone else, usually 45 minutes, and it means that you will get paid a lot more than everyone else. However, sometimes, as I learned at Wiseacres, it can mean that you’re going up last and your picture is the largest on the flier. On a show where six comics are doing twenty minutes each, last is the worst spot to be in. However, that was my position as headliner.

Before it is misinterpreted, I want to be clear that I love the staff and love performing at Wiseacres and always have. I'm also thankful that Clay Miles asked me to be on the show. This was just an odd night because of the crowd.

Before getting into the details of the show, I want to make a proposal. The government should issue some type of id card that must be worn around the necks of people who think it’s funny when someone says things like, “White people don’t eat biscuits, but black people… we love some biscuits.” As humans, let’s not divide ourselves over biscuits. Everyone loves biscuits… and chicken too. I don’t know where the chicken stereotype came from either. I’ve never met a non-vegetarian who doesn’t love chicken. Anyway, the deal with the comedy ID cards would be that if more than 40% of the crowd has them, the show is cancelled. If more than 70% has them, they should all be forced to eat chicken and biscuits until they no longer think the stereotype is funny. As an added bonus, if you screech like a pterodactyl, like a woman at the show, whenever someone says something stereotype related, especially if it is a black comic doing a joke about getting the light and it reminding him of being interrogated, you would get a forced lobotomy under my new plan.

The fun, during this show, was happening in the back of the room. My friend Quincy, Jared Stern, Sean Gabbert, Tim Miller, Jerry Thomas, Herbie Gill and I were hanging out. The highlight was when Jared (white guy) said something to Herbie (black guy) and Herbie responded, “I can’t talk to you Jared. We’re too different.”

I had planned on going up and saying something like, “What is up with Whitney?” or “Hey, Hey , Hey,” or “2005, lot of crazy stuff going on.” I decided to go with something that I actually thought was funny though and talked about the backdrop on the Wiseacres stage. It’s a silhouette of the DC skyline, but the guy on the capitol is standing like Dolemite. The crowd liked that.

For the next 20 minutes, I lost 75% of my soul. If my ID card plan was in effect, I could have been at McDonald’s at that point, eating a McRib and talking about how I was glad we didn’t have to deal with and pterodactyl laughers. But no… I had to go on. They were weird. A couple jokes killed. They liked some setups on others, but didn’t understand sarcasm. And some things just bombed. I don’t care if something bombs because it’s not funny, or because I delivered it wrong, but when it’s a proven bit that always works, and it bombs, I begin to memorize the faces of everyone who didn’t laugh and mentally file them under “People I Hate.” Most comics don’t care enough to do this. But I care. And I hate. Twice, I got really annoyed with the crowd and let them know. The first time I said, “Okay, that bombed. Cool. 50,000 people who have laughed at that joke must have been wrong.” Then, a couple minutes later, after another proven joke ate it, I took a sip of water and paused for at least 5 seconds, and said, “Okay, I think it’s unanimous that no one wants to be here. I know I don’t. Pteradactyl doesn’t. Let’s just leave and pretend it didn’t happen.”

I finished my set though, and it went pretty well after they knew that I didn’t want to be there. But something happened after the show that’s annoying. A guy came up and said, “I really liked the joke about the gay horse.” I don’t have a joke about a gay horse. No one does. I have a joke that contains the words “gay horse,” but the joke has nothing to do with a gay horse. That’s like going up to Spieldberg and saying, “I really like the movie that you made about the car.” What? “You know, Schindler’s List.” Well there was a car at the end of the movie, but I don’t think that was the point of the movie. Comedy ID cards need to happen.