Browsing Tag

First World Problems

Featured, Travel, True Lies

You Had To Be There

April 17, 2014

January, 2008 New York City, the Village Lantern’s open mic.

Weighed down with backpack and jet lag, I stagger into the Village Lantern open mic and sign up, sit down and wait my turn.

From upstairs you can hear a cover band version of ‘Hey Jealousy’ bleeding into the comedy basement.

The next comic walks up to the mic and begins to tell jokes. And he is just bombing.

Set up, punch and audience indifference. Set up, punch and still nothing. This guy is just eating it.

As the comic gets off stage, another comic is brought up on stage. As the new comic arrives and adjust the mic, the cover band upstairs finish their Gin Blossoms cover and begins to cover Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’.

One minute into the song the next comic’s act starts picking up momentum. Jokes are hitting their mark. People start laughing.

The song progresses and the song reaches the chorus of ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ the comic on stage is getting funnier. Laughter and hope begins to fill the basement of jaded pros and hopefuls.

Then the song ends.

You could hear the simultaneous applause from both floors as the comic exits stage left.

Featured, True Lies

The Further Adventures of Al B & Zach Dickson!

February 5, 2014

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“I’m going to punch him!” the drunk fat stripper slurs at me.

“You want no part of this! Now go on and get going!” scolds the grizzled old door guy.

She listens, steps away and stumbles to her truck. Only to turn around, raise her fist at me and slur, “I’m going to punch you!”. Then she almost trips over the chihuahua tied to the chain link fence on the way to her pick up truck.

I take a step toward the strip club’s red door. The door guy takes a step between me and the door, “You don’t want to go in there!”

“I know. I don’t want to go in there. And I know I don’t want to call the cops. I just want my phone. “

“So what happened again?”,he asks me for the third time.

“I was eating wings and your friend grabbed my phone when I wasn’t looking. In fact I was shown video of your friend in the khakis and light plaid shirt doing it.”

“How do you know the phone is here?”

Zack Dickson who’s been standing besides me the entire time pulls out his phone flashes the screen with the GPS signal.

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“According to this my phone is here. I don’t want to call the cops or go inside I just want my phone.”

The door guy disappears behind the big red door. “So what now?” Zach asks.

“Now we play the waiting game.”

We then hear the door guy yell at the guy who stole my phone.

“Look he’s got the tracker! And he has video of you taking it! Give it!”

The door guy emerges from the door with my phone in his hands. “Is this it?”

I type in my password, “ Yup!”.

Zach shake his hand and palms the guy some money, ”For your troubles,”.

We then head back to St. Danes to tell jokes.

A week later, I tell another friend what happened. “Al, that wasn’t a strip club. That was a hooker.”