Colon The Barbarian

Friday April 18th, 2008 - Chicago, IL/Kenosha, WI

Still sick. Still miserable. I don’t get flu bugs or colds very often but I’ve got something that seems to fall somewhere between the two and it’s trying my patience. I am coughing and wheezing and my head is pounding and I am not thrilled about any of it. I need to get this out of my system but how? I’m in a business where I have a lot of public interaction.

I took some flu medicine last night that knocked me out for a few hours but I still felt as rotten as I did yesterday when I woke up. I had a lunch meeting with Rick Gieser lined up and I didn’t want to cancel it…again. Rick is a P.R. whiz and I’ve known him forever. He has helped me a ton over the years and I have been able to get business for him in return.

We try to get together for a lunch and idea exchange session every few months but we’d missed each other a few times due to things coming up on both ends so today was the day and I didn’t want to blow it off again. I drove over to Woodfield Mall and we ate at Sweet Tomatoes which is a salad bar restaurant. We both needed to clean out the plumbing a bit.

After lunch I came back home and laid down for a while because I still felt horrible and I was booked for a gig tonight in Kenosha. I did it as a favor to my friend Joe Sanfelippo who I’ve known for over 25 years. He books a lot of casino gigs and has always been one of my favorite people to deal with so when he asked me to do this gig for him I said yes.

It was in a nice restaurant but everything about the gig was wrong. The owner didn’t get how a comedy show worked and it really wasn’t my place to tell him. The show started a half an hour late and people were impatient and they were already drunk when they got in the place. There was a big party of people who sat right in front and were very boisterous.

The opener tonight was an ex student of mine named Tony Talley. He’s one of my very favorite students of all time and he’s come a long way in only a few years. This was good experience for him because he got to stretch out a little in a safe environment and practice doing 30 minutes. That’s a big deal and a milestone and he passed with no problem at all.

Tony is a great guy and I am glad he was there to get the experience but by the time the torch was passed to me they were losing sobriety at an alarming pace. These are the drunk rude Wisconsin audiences I remember so well from when I started. I didn’t have fun at all and just plowed through my time. I was sick physically and sick of dealing with boozers.

The thing that made my whole night was about 40 minutes into my 50 minute set I felt a little gas buildup in my stomach. It must have been from all that salad I ate for lunch and I let loose with some of the nastiest flatulence I have ever unleashed . It was pure uncut evil and it was crawling through my lower colon and out in public for everyone to deal with.

I could see the front row’s noses wrinkle and they suspected each other but not one had a clue it was me. Then a waitress walked right through it and I thought she might lose her lunch right there. It was my own little victory on a night I wanted to stay in bed. So there.