Motown, Old Roomies and a Star Wars Wedding

I just got back from Detroit (well the Detroit area) where I worked at Joey’s Comedy Club in Livonia, MI. Worked with two great guys, the very funny Johnny Beehner out of Milwaukee and Ed Buehner who was based out of the Detroit metro.

I visited the Motown Museum.

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It was AWESOME. So much history in such a small space. I can’t believe I was standing in the studio where Stevie and The Temptations and The Four Tops and  Marvin Gaye and Smokey and Edwin Starr, etc. recorded so much awesome music. No photos are allowed inside, but that’s OK. I remember it all. There was also a great movie they showed there. Way too many people at the shows this weekend said they’d never been. I couldn’t believe it.

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At our Thursday show we met a young lady named Grace (above) who was having her bachelorette party at the club.  Her wedding was Saturday and after the show she told me that she and her fiancee were having a Star Wars wedding, where they and their guests would dress in costumes from the movies. I immediately began to picture her in the Princess Leia white robe-y costume — but NOPE! Continue reading →

Dear Homestead Suites in Auburn Hills, MI: You suck. Sincerely, me

On Friday I had my very own ‘who gon’ check me boo’ moment. I was seriously sitting in my hotel room thinking: “What ever happened to customer service?…”

Why? Check out the Facebook status below for the short version:

click image to see all the status comments

click image to see all the status comments

Here’s the thing: I know it was a small thing to be upset about, but my anger was borne out of the extremely poor customer service — not the fact that I didn’t have any batteries. My feet work. I could (and did) change the channel manually. But I could tell that this guy had just decided he didn’t want to help  me. Because he was an asshole. And that pissed me off. This douche told me that he couldn’t swap my remote control out because if they filled the rooms that were currently unoccupied, then when those people came they wouldn’t have batteries.

WTD?!?!?!? I’M HERE NOW! What the hell do I care whether people who may or may not decide to come to  your hotel have a working remote control if and when they arrive? Why aren’t you equally concerned with a customer who’s already in your establishment? Send someone up the street to the CVS and buy some. At least pretend that you’re trying to accommodate me.

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I called and went out to the front desk a total of 4 times. I couldn’t believe I was even having this conversation, but I wasn’t willing to let it go. On the way to the show that nite, I told the adviser at the school that I was playing that evening what happened so he’d know how his money was being spent…

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He apologized, promised he’d call them about it, and gave me some batteries to take back to the hotel.

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I took them with me when I left. Continue reading →

Buy a belt

I absolutely hate saggy pants. I thought this trend was fading out a few years back, but I’m realizing that was probably because the men I saw and dealt with on a regular basis had more sense than to leave the house and show their ‘literal’ asses. I remember a few years ago there was this movement to criminalize sagging in a lot of states… Not sure how many actually adopted it. But I found this chart online. It’s from the PD in Flint, MI where sagging has been outlawed.

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I love how the option for the penalty is a $500 fine or 93 days to a year in lockup. I bet after just one day in jail these fools would have their jeans belted up around their necks. I wonder how this is working out. Being relatively familiar with the population in Flint, I imagine they would quickly run out of room in the jails if they were diligently enforcing this. Plus there’s a lot more work the PD there could be doing instead. Tu sabes? I dunno. I just thought this was funny.

Country clubbers don’t get ‘poor’ jokes and the basketball players didn’t have dads

Pt. I

Yeah, so I was in Jackson, Michigan over the weekend–not to be confused with Jackson, Mississippi. At all. Ever. Jackson, Michigan is the birthplace of the Republican Party… and the birthplace of Tony Dungy. Right… Anyway, I was performing at a country club, which turned out to be a pretty sweet gig. The audience was cool — nice mix of young rich people and old rich people. But they were all rich. Or rich as far as I’m concerned. Haha… I was doing a bit where I talk about looking at my checking account balance online and seeing parentheses around the number and initially thinking, “Oh how cute, they put a smiley face by my account balance!” and then realizing that it meant I was in the negative… And when I hit the punch I got nothing. Not so much as a chuckle. Until I explained the joke. “See parentheses mean you’re poor. You’ve heard of poor, right?”

Comedy Rule #1: Know your audience.

Continue reading →