Say CHEESE!

Thursday September 13th, 2007 - Toledo, OH

There have been idiots since the birth of humankind. These complete wastes of a sexual encounter have managed to survive throughout the generations and continue to dilute the gene pool on our home planet to this very minute. I don’t know why we can’t exterminate these jelly headed halfwits but for some reason like the cockroach they continue to breed.

There was a perfect example of it tonight at Connxtions Comedy Club in Toledo, OH. It was otherwise a really enjoyable evening and we were all having a lot of fun until SHE had to start inflicting her total stupidity on everyone with her uncontrolled vowel movements.

‘SHE’ was a twenty something sorority looking prissy missy who had an annoying little whiny squeak for a voice and for whatever reason starting babbling like an auctioneer right in the middle of the show. I don’t know if it was alcohol induced or clinical but it made the show a lot more difficult than it needed to be. I was doing quite well until SHE piped up.

It was college ID night and also open mike night and the crowd was very young. Usually I don’t do well in college age audiences but tonight they were really good. They were very polite and they listened and were good solid laughers and I started strong and got on a roll in a short time. I slowed it down and was animated and laid back and they were all into it.

Everyone but HER. She was a good looking blondie with her two tan blonde friends and I’m sure she’s never had to worry about anything in her life. Daddy buys her anything and her boobs sprouted early and boys liked her so she never had to learn any kind of manners.

She just started talking loudly to her friends and I called her on it politely and then later I saw her checking her cell phone messages and after that she decided she wanted to be part of the show because evidently something ELSE being the center of attention bothered her.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life it’s how to handle a heckler in a comedy show audience. I’ve had plenty of practice and I’ve seen just about every possible scenario that’s ever been imagined actually happen in real life. Sometimes it can get ugly and it’s not fun.

It didn’t really get ugly tonight but it certainly could have. It’s THE most delicate when a woman heckles because even if it’s her fault if I’m too mean (or perceived to be) then I look like the villain. I’ve seen it go the other way many times and then I’m in a big hole. It took a lot of years to get the experience and savvy to pull off tonight’s scenario but I did.

After about the twelfth time I slammed her (as always MUCH to the delight of everyone else) she just started yelling the word ‘CHEESE’ over and over again. I assumed that that was a reference to me being from Wisconsin but to hear it every fifteen seconds for several minutes didn’t make my job any easier. I fired off some more ad libs and they got a strong response but it just gets very old in a short time. What finished her off was when she threw it out one last time and I answered back ‘Cheese. Yes, I heard you. Is that what the doctor was sandblasting out of your crotch this morning?’ The audience’s roar drowned her out.

I love the ones that paint a vivid picture and come together on the spur of the moment. I was as nice to her as I could be for as long as I could be so when I nailed her with that one it was like Nagasaki and Hiroshima all rolled into one. The audience went into hysterics. It was delivered the right way at the right time and I didn’t get angry or cross the line with it.

When I first started I would look forward to teeing off on hecklers because it was a little jolt of therapy. I have always had a quick wit and even as a kid I could verbally lay out just about anybody I came in contact with. I didn’t want to do it but if I had to I could hold my own and defend myself. Comedy gave me the chance to make a few bucks while doing it.

There were times when I’d verbally batter a drunken moron so badly that audiences and even a few club owners would take the side of the heckler. He or she would fire up a lame little attempt at an insult and I’d fire back with a personal assault on their entire family tree that more than once got them out of their seat and had them heading for the stage. I never backed down from anybody who yelled out from the crowd and that comes from my past.

My father was a bully and I learned that bullies back down when you push back. What I was doing when a heckler yelled something out was fighting back against my father, NOT the drunken goof who probably had issues with his own father. I learned how to harness it over the years and now I am very comfortable with any situation and no longer take any of it personally. That is what now makes it so enjoyable for me. I know I’m going to win and I can just play with them for a while before going in for the kill. That’s what I did tonight.

I have no idea how this skill will ever help me in my life but as I have come up the ranks in comedy clubs it sure has helped me defend myself. Many a night when I’ve lit into some bumbling soup head I’ve had people line up to tell me it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I guess I’ve always been willing to say out loud what most people only think about.

My big yap has gotten me into plenty of trouble. One booker said to me once ’You have the outspoken big mouth of a star without having gone through the pesky trouble of being successful first.’ I guess he was right. If Sean Penn or Madonna say something they have a few million bucks to fall back on. I get to fight heckling bimbos in Toledo to pay my bills.

I was talking to my friend Byrd from the Loop the other day and he’s a big Beatles fan. He said John Lennon was very similar and just said whatever he thought which many times got him into big trouble. I wish I could have hung out with him. I bet we’d have hit it off.

Why does everyone have such a problem with the truth? No it isn’t always pleasant but I think that sugar coating it is even worse. It’s like dating. If someone doesn’t like someone else wouldn’t it be much easier if a person just knew the truth rather than hear all the ‘Call me next week’ twaddle which just wastes everyone’s time? Life doesn’t make sense to me.

At least I don’t have to live my life as that babbling bimbo from tonight. Her boobs are a shield from the real world now but when they drop like Michael Vick’s fantasy draft status she’ll be all alone and have to fend for herself with just personality. What an unfair fight.