Viva la Dance Revoluccion

-I did a show at Clemson University on Friday. I brought my friend, and Clemson almost-alumn, Jay Hastings to open the show. The school made shirts for the show, and gave me input on the design, which is a cool thing to do. I sent them this picture:

Now, the funny thing about the picture is the way I'm standing, where I'm standing, and the fact that it says, "I'm with Ryan." Why would anyone want to be "with" someone who does things like that. Any other picture wouldn't work.

Because they couldn't print that picture, they sent me a counter-design, in which they took a sillouhette of my headshot, and put words, "I'm with Ryan," below the picture. This made me look like an asshole. I'm not even going to share this picture. It looked like I was either very arrogant, or running for office. I responded, asking if they can change it to say "Stop Snitchin': A night with Ryan Conner and friend." I could have included Jay's name, but thought it would be a nice kick in the nuts to list him as "friend." That shirt was made, and I am happy.

The people who watched the show were good audience members. However there were distractions. The show was in somewhat of an on-campus Dave and Busters. The stage was in a well-lit room. About 100 feet away was a bowling alley. Next to the bowling alley was about 16-20 pool tables. Just past the last row of seats for our audience was several arcade games. Need for Speed is now one of my biggest enemies. Watch out cancer! The cars in that game are louder than real cars. If you weren't listening as closely as possibly could, you would not be able to hear the show at all. This is why they don't have comics at the Daytona 400/500/?00. To the left of the stage, just beyond the last seats, were two ping-pong tables. On the other side of the ping-pong tables: two Dance Dance Revolution games. Luckily they were turned off. Just before the show started, no one was playing ping-pong. Then two Asian girls started playing. Jay said, "How about that? The only two Asian people in the entire building are playing ping-pong." I said, "That's because Dance Dance Revolution is turned off." Neither of us are racist. Five minutes later, DDR was turned on, and these two girls took to it like flies on shit. Some stereotypes are hilarious.

During the show, there were a couple disruptive cheers from the DDR bunch, which ended up being about 20 people, only two of whom were Asian. This blew my mind on two fronts. I thought that the only people who play DDR are 14-year-old Asians and high-school drop-outs. These people were neither. I still have a problem with naming the game Dance Dance Revolution. A revolution? What are they revolting against? A social life? I don't know. I asked them during the show, while scouring the crowd to make sure people had my back (they didn't), and didn't get an answer. It's a goalless revolution. The best kind.

-It's funny how rhetoric works. When you demonize a group, you lose their votes. Muslim-Americans leaned Republican in previous elections. Not this time. Obama - 89%, McCain - 2%.