Last night I performed on two sets.  Each paid $0 dollars, but only cost me $11 in cab fare getting from one to the other, so it was a relatively big financial success given my track record in the comedy business.  But it was a night of good comedy for me because not only did I discover a  couple of new jokes, which is great news for the people of Wilkes-Barre, PA, who I will entertain for a net gain of $62 this Saturday (the comedic equivalent of swimming in gold coins a la Scrooge McDuck), but I also experienced something really weird on stage, which is good for blog stories.

Starting with the weirdness first.  I have been working out a joke on the Nigerian Sesame Street television program (actual tv program).  It is a solid premise, but is still giving me inconsistent results.  So last night at Dangerfield’s, as I was going through the joke (which I have told at three open mics and zero clubs u to that point), I noticed something had been thrown at me on stage.  The set had been going well, but I was baffled because I assumed when things are thrown at you on stage it is a bad thing (given the fact that I am not Tom Jones with a time machine back to the 1970s).  When I looked down it was a Grover doll.

A woman threw a Grover doll at me.  This threw me off in so many ways:

1. Why does a woman in her late 30s have a Grover doll?
2. Why does a woman in her late 30s have a Grover doll on her?
3. What are the odds that in a crowd of 20 people at a comedy show that one person will have a Sesame Street doll?
4. Why did this person throw the doll at me?

Well it was strange, but it allowed me to fill up 500 words of a blog today (self-imposed deadline of Thursday for me).  But that was just one discovery for me yesterday (and the woman asked for the doll back after the show, which I thought was sort of rude).  But what would a blog by me be without examining the future of my comedy with a bleak outlook.  Well, thanks to a joke that I did off the cuff (because I am witty) I now know when I will make it in comedy.  This is sort of like the dilemma of knowing when you are going to die.  Some people would want to know and others would not.  Unfortunately I now know that I will be a big star in comedy in the year 2035.

While on stage last night I decided to go off script and discussed how Hollywood is only ready for one uncomfortably tall comedy person every 30 years.  Now if you are a short, bearded guy there is work for you every eighteen seconds right now.  If you are gay or a bitch or a gay bitch there is a reality show actually waiting for you to show up to right now.  But exceptionally tall people come along in comedy with a frequency somewhere between the arrival of the cicadas and Halley’s Comet.  Here is the accidental fortune telling I did during my set:

“Hollywood allows one giant freak in comedy about every 30 years .  We had Fred Gwynne – The Munsters freak, then we got Brad Garrett, the Everybody Loves Raymond freak,  so I guess I will make it sometime around my 60th birthday.”

The joke got a good reaction, but I decided to research it.  Turns out I may be right.

Fred Gwynne was 6’5″ and born in 1926, which was like being 7’2″ in today’s cow-hormone gorging population.  He hit it big with The Munsters, which aired between 1964 and 1966.

Then in 1996 a show began on Everybody Loves Raymond that starred the world’s largest Jewish dude (aside from Dolph and his underachieving son Danny Schayes – former NBA players), but who changed his name – so look out for Charlie Sheen’s next Chuck Lorrie-esque screed or rant to be aimed at Brad Garrett.

That was a 30 year gap.  And with Everybody Loves Raymond lasting until 2005, that means that my Tall Comedy Freak Theory dictates that I will hit it big in 2035 at the age of 56.  But that is no guarantee because I, unlike Fred Gwynne and Brad Garrett, do not have a pituitary condition (I don’t have medical records, but those two had/have long faces and very deep voices).

So by 2035 I guess I will have to finally be content with the direction of my comedy career.  Either that or you will be watching a sitcom starring Georghe Muresan.