Old friends, new friends and a very cool birthday

Try not to sweat my du-rag too hard…

Yesterday was my birthday! I turned 33. Which no matter how you look at it is better than the alternative. I’ve been on the road for about a week and half now so I spent the first part of my birthday in NYC and the second part in Hazelton, PA. I had a show in NYC on Wednesday nite and I was staying with my BFF Loren who lives in the city. It was sleeting and gross outside and I had to trek all the way across town and back in it. I hadn’t eaten anything all day so on the way back to her place after the show I stopped at the pizzeria on her corner to get a sandwich. The guy in line in front of me was buying desserts and I said I deserved a piece of chocolate cake too because it was my birthday. So the cashier gave it to me for free. SCORE! Who says New Yorkers aren’t nice?

I got back to Loren’s at about 11, jumped into my PJs and crashed on the couch. But at midnite she cued up Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” and we danced around the apartment til the song went off. Then she put a tealight on top of my cake and told me to make a wish! Pretty cool start to a birthday…

Yesterday afternoon I got up and drove to PA for a college show. After spending all afternoon on the road and then going straight to my show, I decided to find the nearest Applebees — there’s always an Applebee’s — and have a few birthday drinks. I ended up sitting at the bar where there was a great bartender named Nicole. We chatted for a bit and then a few minutes later this really nice guy named Brandon comes in and sits down next to me. The three of us ended up talking for hours about family, pets, our favorite books, and eventually our jobs…

Turns out Brandon is an amateur MMA cage fighter. Brandon “The Mixed Breed” Cruz. In the video below, he’s the one in the white shorts.

It was so cool talking to him about what it takes to make it in his industry. There were some similarities between his hustle to advance as a fighter and mine as a comic, but at least I don’t get pounded in the face on my bad days. For years I did (and often still do) comedy for no money. But I can’t imagine going thru something like this and there not being a check on the other end. Man that takes some serious dedication. And also some serious guts. If the test of how much we all wanted to achieve our goals was measured by our willingness to be pummeled inside a locked cage, I think we’d all — yes you too — look like quitters.

All in all I had a pretty good birthday.When I had a day job, I never worked on my birthday. In fact my co-workers used to laugh at me because I’d say it in the third person: “Erin doesn’t work on her birthday.” But now that I don’t get paid for my days off, working is the best kind of birthday gift I can give myself — the gift of mortgage. Hahaha.

Til next time…

Taking the big leap


My birthday is in about a week, and I’ve ALWAYS wanted to try skydiving. I looked into it some and I don’t think I’ll be able to do it this year because I’m too puffy right now. They’d let me jump but I’d have to pay a surcharge. And there’s nothing like paying a ‘fat tax’ to ruin birthday fun.

I’ve got a few more days to come up an alternative way to celebrate. All suggestions are welcome.

Bad Dates and Bearded Ladies

Here are a couple clips from my recent visit to The Bob and Tom Show. In this first one, I tell the crew about my worst date ever. You regular readers have undoubtedly heard about this one. It happened a while back, but I’ve only started talking about it on stage recently.

And in this clip, listen to us discuss the lack of racial equality within the ‘circus freak’ industry.

Bob & Tom, Big 10 and Broken Feet

I’m back in Indianapolis this week at Crackers Comedy Club. And while I always have fun in Indy, some of you may remember that the last time I was here, it ended pretty badly. My foot has healed nicely so I’m planning to push my luck and go ice skating tomorrow — what could go wrong?

I got the opportunity to do The Bob & Tom Show again this morning.

It’s been over a year since I was last there and I’d been itching to get back. Bob and Tom is just one of the best nationwide promotional vehicles there is for comedians. And we had tons o’ fun this morning. Also in studio this morning were Dan Cummins, Nikki Glaser, Gabe Kea, Mark Viera, and the AWESOME Kevin Smith! I’ll try and post the audio if I can over the weekend.

I’m trying to see if I can magically score some tickets to one of the Big Ten tourney games. I keep asking from the stage, but I haven’t gotten a bite yet. I’ll keep working on it. Talk to y’all soon!

My neck, my knee… my neck and my knee

So I just got back from a week doing colleges in Michigan and Iowa. And I couldn’t stop praising the folks at Cedar Rapids Airport Security because instead of asking people to toss their brand new toiletries and unopened drinks in the garbage as they pass through security, they had a donation bin for a local homeless shelter there so that new, unused items didn’t go to waste. Great idea, right? I wasn’t even angry about having to get rid of my apple juice. It seems like a no-brainer now, but I travel a lot and I’ve never seen that before. I heart midwesterners. I even bought a super cute t-shirt that says “There’s more than corn in Iowa.”

Even though there isn’t.

I had fun at all the schools and though it snowed every day in whichever state I was in, it didn’t interrupt my driving or flying. By all accounts it was shaping up to be an incident-free trip. But on Monday morning when I was boarding my flight, I slipped on a patch of African-American ice on the Delta jetway and fell really hard. They radioed for help and didn’t wanna move me. I thought I had just scraped up my knees and elbows really badly but later that day I began to feel an awful pain in my neck. Had me lying on my bed screaming like Ezal from Friday.

By the next morning I was pretty much immobile and I filed a claim with Delta to pay for my medical expenses.

Long story short — my neck still really hurts, my knee’s still sore, and I now own Delta.

So where are we going, y’all? Flight’s on me.

Just kidding of course. Totally not suing Delta. Yet.