“It was the blackest of club, it was the whitest of clubs…”

So I just wrapped up a two week stint at the Cleveland Improv and it was a fun, eventful and unpredictable time.

The most interesting thing, as I had predicted it would be, was opening the first week for Rodney Perry, an African-American comedian who is on the Mo’Nique show on BET and recently appeared in Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family, and opening the second week for Matt Braunger, a Caucasian comedian who has an alternative vibe and appears on Chelsea Lately on E!

Here is a statistical breakdown for the two crowds per week:

Number of audience members who jumped up and testified during bits as if it was a Pentecostal Church:

Perry – 31

Braunger – 0

Number of Audience Members Entering at least 25 minutes late for the show:

Perry – 77

Braunger – 10

Number of times I had to say fu*k or b*itch to save my set:

Perry – 11

Braunger – 2

Black/White Audience percentage:

Perry – 95/5

Braunger 15/85

The trip was fun throughout and both Rodney and Matt were awesome to work with.  But the trip’s two milestones can be summarized through two bits I told.  One was a bit I came up with a few hours before one of the shows because I needed something light and easy to get the crowd to laugh at during the first week.  I only had one set that really displeased me so as a response to that I resorted to a bit of recent news that forced me to dust off an impression that I had hoped to bury forever (even though it is good).  Well, of course they liked it and I hated myself a little bit more for telling it:

The other bit, which I told the last day of the trip (and is completely true) concerned my experiences walking around Cleveland during my two weeks there:

So even though I had to dig up an impression like a bad horror film, in between Dicks Gone Wild! in Cleveland, I still had a great time in Cleveland.