It Only Takes One Idiot

Saturday February 21st, 2009 - Stoughton, WI

I’m in a really foul mood right now and it all stems from ONE obnoxious drunken goof. That’s all it takes to ruin a comedy show and that’s what happened tonight at a tiny bar in Stoughton, WI. I had hoped to rehearse my TV set some more but there wasn’t a chance.

I was too busy defending myself against some babbling ass pimple who after me telling him to be quiet at least five times just would NOT put a sock in it. He apparently thought I was kidding the first several times and kept right on spewing out his verbal diarrhea and nothing I said could get him to stop. It got to the point where the audience got fed up too.

My patience for these situations is absolutely gone. Not going, GONE. I wanted to walk off the stage with the mike stand and bury it three inches into the part of his skull where it didn’t grow over from his soft spot as a baby apparently. It would have been worth prison to shut him the hell up so we could all finish the show and go about our lives once more.

I was really in a good mood the last few days but this little incident pushed all my nasty buttons and put me back into a mental place I don’t want to be anymore. I have to get this one out of my system and not come back here for a long time if ever. This was miserable.

I’m not sure how to handle this without looking like Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap pissing and moaning back stage about his cold cuts not being able to fit on the slices of bread that were on the tray. That was a funny scene but now I’m starting to see why people have that attitude. It’s a cumulative effect of years and years of things being constantly mishandled.

I don’t even know how I got this gig actually. Kathleen Dunbar is a comedienne now in Las Vegas but she’s originally from Milwaukee. She’s very funny and her brother owns a nice little bar in Stoughton and they’re trying comedy shows. Someone told me they were doing shows and the next thing I knew Kathleen sent me an email wanting to book me.

I was taking it light in February but it wasn’t far from home so I said yes. I did it mainly to help Kathleen and her brother but a few bucks never hurt either. In retrospect it wasn’t worth my time and frustration of having to joust with some boozed up diesel mechanic. It got very old very fast and if it wasn’t for Kathleen I’d have gotten back in my car and left.

This was a very difficult setup. The lights and sound were once again sub par at the very least and that always makes it more difficult than it needs to be. Then the stage happened to be right in the line of fire to the bathrooms. There was no emcee so right when I got on a line of people walked past the stage to line up to use the toilet. I had to deal with that.

They trickled in and out and it was twenty minutes before they were all done. I had that to deal with and it’s extremely tough to get a roll going in that situation. Then I had to put Mr. Flap Jaw in his place all night and it was constant pain in the ass for the duration. I’m not mad at Kathleen or her brother. They’re just trying to make a buck. I’m flattered that I was asked but in the future there has to be more crowd control. It only takes ONE idiot.

The weird part is after the show people were lining up to tell me how funny I was. That always creeps me out because I know in my heart I could have given them a WAY better show if I hadn’t had to deal with that beer sucking mongoloid waste of a birth certificate.

I wanted to get paid quickly and get out of there before the inevitable happened but of course I knew it couldn‘t work that smoothly. Right as I was putting my coat on the goof bag himself had to come over and tell me how he ‘helped the show’. He was rambling on about something and laughing at his own incoherent flatulence as he stuck out his paw.

I just turned my back and put my coat on and walked away from him before he or I said something we’d be sorry for. Nothing good ever comes out of those situations and if he’d said the wrong thing I would have taken his beer bottle and beaten him to death with it.

Why do I have such a disdain for idiots and especially drunken ones? I don’t know but I do and I know I do so I try to avoid these kinds of situations whenever possible. I have no patience to listen to some yokel with no clue tell me he was ‘helping me’ do a good show.

What’s even more frustrating was he was with a very attractive woman. Whether it was his wife or girlfriend she was way out of his league and it frustrated me even more to see her putting up with his inebriated prattle. He must have one hell of a trust fund or be hung like a wooly mammoth and that’s not fair either. The whole evening really turned me off.

Maybe it turned me off because I let it turn me off but that horse’s putz caught me on the wrong night and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with it. I wanted to give the audience all my positive energy and give them the show they came for but I had to waste energy on ‘him‘.

I know this all sounds trivial and picky but unless you’ve ever tried to make a full house of complete strangers laugh consistently for between forty-five minutes and an hour I will reserve my right to bitch vociferously because I have had to deal with this for a lifetime. It really stinks and I don’t think it has to be that way at all. Those idiots need to be removed.

That’s not a pleasant thing either. Kathleen’s brother runs a bar and doesn’t know how a comedy show works. This is just a part time once in a great while thing to him and I don’t expect him to have full security there with tasers in hand ready to squelch any hecklers.

I do expect there to be an announcement made at the top of the show telling people they need to be QUIET during the show. Comedy clubs usually say ‘keep your table talk to an absolute minimum.’ Sorry. Not good enough. Keep your table talk to absolute silence. If you need to talk on your cell phone or discuss the war in Afghanistan please go outside.

This is why I want to play the ‘soft seat’ theatres. Alcohol isn’t the major part of those shows that it is places like this in Stoughton. After all, it’s a damn bar. That’s what they do. I have too many examples of nights like this to draw upon to have any sympathy for that guy tonight but it was also kind of my fault for allowing myself to say yes. I should have stayed home and fiddled with Uranus. It would have put me in a much better mood.