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Road Comedy Recap: Best 12 Hour Stretch of My…

This weekend I was booked almost last minute to headline McGuire’s Comedy Club in Bohemia ON Long Island (I was told after the show not to say I am “in” Long Island).  Now whereas Long Island’s politics range from Trump to Don Jr in the towns I have played, the closer you get to the Atlantic Ocean the more those Trump politics become more Ginni Thomas and Marjorie Taylor Greene.  But with the re-shoot of my special a little over a month away, a decent check for a one show gig and nothing else on my schedule I said I would take it (my first time at this club).  It ended up being a great show for reasons I will detail and the great show was merely the opening act for other great news Saturday would bring.  So without further adieu!

The Bookshelf

My day actually began with a trip to Riverdale in the Bronx to pick up a bookshelf from my Mom’s apartment.  (The Bookshelf also sounds like an awful A24 film that would be nominated for 4 Oscars).  I have exceeded my bookshelf capacity in my apartment (NERD) so I asked if I could I could take one of my Mom’s which would fit my needs and match with my dog Cookie’s color scheme.  So I took a 9:55am bus from Bloomfield to Port Authority Bus Terminal to the A train to 168th street, transferred to the 1 train, got off at 231st street greeted by a 3 minute rain/hail storm (seriously the 3 minutes couldn’t have happened during the preceding 100 minutes I was inside transportation?) and then the Bx10 bus to my Mom’s apartment (a/k/a my childhood home).

As you can see Cookie’s fur and the bookshelf do not clash

I hung out with my Mom for a couple of hours, during which she asked why I did not shave if I had a show, at which point I told her 4 days of Islamic teen stubble on my face (the closest I can really get to a beard) would be the least of my worries performing for the OAN fan club.  Then the guy with a truck I hired to move the book shelf arrived. We put it in his truck, which he delivered to Bloomfield, NJ and I made my way back to the A train to catch a 4:24 train to Oakdale, Long Island.

Long Island Dominance

Both legs of my Long Island RR trip were not very crowded, but on each train I managed to have mask-less MAGA dudes sitting next to me, one of whom apparently though that even covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze was too much of a concession to the woke mob.  When I arrived in Oakdale I ventured into a Dunkin Donuts to kill time before ordering my Lyft to the club, which was approximately 4 miles away.

When I went into the Dunkin Donuts a woman was talking to the clerk as if she knew him (like the mother of a friend type dynamic, which is also how a lot of porn starts) and she said “How’s school going?” to which he replied, “Well I am actually not enrolled this semester because of the booster requirement.”  Now before I became fully aroused with erotic patriotism for this American hero, I thought “if the choice was between a degree and donuts, maybe you should have gotten the shot?  And if it was the booster you had a problem with, does that mean you already got the first 1 or 2 shots?”  Well, after drinking my coffee and saluting this icon I hopped into a Lyft to the club.

When I arrived at the club I saw that it was pretty packed (Free Ticket Energy) and I gave my intro to the manager. I decided Howard Stern and Billions would be well known and helpful credits when performing in front of Newsmax Plus and the manager immediately deflated me when he came back to me and said “Now Howard Stern is a radio show?  And – ohh Billions is a TV show!”  And yes, my name was wrecked at the top of the show as well giving me the triple crown of “Who gives a sh*t who the headliner is” vibes.  Everyone was very nice though so I sort of didn’t give a sh*t either.

After the emcee and feature both got the crowd going I went up and had one of the best sets of my life.  I don’t mean it was the funniest I’d ever been or it was the tightest set I’d ever had.  But over the course of an hour, while never ceding any ground or trying to run from the fact that I am a Biden-voting Democrat that thinks the Trump family is a huge pile of excrement, I won them over big time.  Like Johnny Lawrence handing Daniel the trophy at the end of Karate Kid level respect.  I got big laughs, a few harmless heckles, zero slaps and fairly robust merch sales after the show.  I also had a discussion that probably turned into a podcast with a group of hard core MAGA dudes that loved my set.  And one of the keys to my success, which I loathe to give away, is that I have come up with the perfect way to untighten right wing crowds when they hear stuff they don’t like (which was like 4 times during my set).   By the end of the show I felt like I had gone into an opposing team’s stadium and dropped 45 on them (points, not Trump hats).  Even better analogy, I felt like Rocky in Rocky IV in Russia (and not just because half of the crowd probably supports Putin) as the crowd realizes that what they are watching from the Italian (looking) guy is undeniable.

UpLyft for the Soul

So after a show that went great and the fact that my next possible train out of Oakdale was in an hour, I decided to check the Lyft app and saw that a car from the Atlantic Ocean back to Bloomfield, NJ was only $108.  It would also get me home before the beginning of SNL. So I said – “fu*k it – I am treating myself after this perfect day of book shelf moving and comedy crushing.”  My driver arrived, a young, eager to please Indian (I believe) fellow.  He accepted the ride, but seemed sort of nervous about going what would be a very long drive.  I assured him I would give him a big tip.  At that point he pulled over to a rest stop and I had to tell him I meant money.

So as he drove at a fast, but still controlled speed I could see that he was on pace to get me home in 70 minutes instead of the estimated 90.  So with 30 minutes left in the ride I asked my Twitter followers to Venmo me money for the driver and I would add their money to my $50 tip.  Well when we got to my building at 11:08pm I gave him $50 tip on the app (the max it would allow which seems stupid) and $141 in cash representing the donations from fans.  He was very grateful and I thought, what a great end to the night. Little did I know it would get even better

 

 

From Bookshelf to Booker

When I got upstairs to my apartment, I looked on my phone and saw that a video I had posted earlier of me impersonating NJ Senator Cory Booker had been retweeted… by Senator Cory Booker!  So the video has been blowing up for the last day (I just added an Eric Adams video to Twitter and YouTube).  And as the cherry on top of an absolutely perfect 14 hour run, I did not think SNL sucked!

NJ legend recognize NJ legend
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Road Comedy Recap: Do You Even Lyft on Juneteenth…

This weekend I celebrated Juneteenth in Levittown, Long Island, opening for the great Roy Wood Jr.  I feel like that sentence alone packs so much I could just end the blog there, but as a sign of progress Levittown did not move to another town once Roy and I arrived.  Any set of gigs in Long Island can be a pain for someone commuting from New Jersey  because you have to coordinate two different train systems. Door to door it is just as fast to fly to Denver as it is to go from Newark to Levittown via the NJ Transit-LIRR double trouble.  Rule of Thumb – if your commute consists entirely of populations that like to include “strong” as a description of, or moniker for their community, you are in for an inefficient commute.  Roy was gracious enough to ask me to open for him when we were both on the same bar show in April, so no amount of awful infrastructure was going to stop me from saying yes.  So here we go!

 

Friday: Only a Historic, Catastrophic Basketball Loss Could Ruin This Night!

On Friday, in honor of Juneteenth Observed, I went out early to see my friend Brian.  We had burgers at some well regarded burger stand in Massapequa, where the price of items had apparently been frozen since 1983.  Tasty and cheap, I picked up the tab, assuring Brian that thanks to my web cam girl side hustle I could cover our combined $1.14.

 

We then made our way to Governor’s Comedy Club.  Only one show on Friday and I crushed it. It was a good thing I did because a friend and colleague that I have not seen since March showed up with some friends and realized I was not just “I hate work, so the guy who sits near me is funny” level funny, but funny funny.  A recurring theme of my career for the last 6 years – fans of The Black Guy Who Tips showed up (to 2 of the 3 shows over the weekend, more for Roy than me, but still for me too) and my favorite type of fan also showed up Friday: The “I did not know you were going to be here, but I follow you and am a big fan” fans.  Once again, thank you social media algorithms for rendering my fan base a total crap shoot.

 

After selling a few USB cards (all 6 of stand up albums are on one USB card that I sell), Brian gave me a ride to the LIRR.  The 10:29 back to NY Penn would give me breathing room (i.e. Haagen Dazs kiosk milkshake drinking time) before the 1141pm train home.  When I exited the train in Penn the Utah Jazz, my favorite team for 34 years, was winning 72-50 at halftime, on the road.  My former doorman texted me a gif of Jordan Clarkson. My girlfriend texted me “jazzzzzzzzzz,” which meant the Jazz were either winning or falling asleep.  Then, like all things NJ transit touches, the Jazz game went to shit as soon as I got on NJ transit (but my doorman friend and girlfriend jinxing it deserves some blame as well).  By the time I exited the train 29 minutes later in Bloomfield, NJ the Jazz were up 2 points going into the 4th quarter.  I arrived home in time to see one of the worst quarters of basketball in franchise history and watch my team’s season end.  However, I felt a small sense of relief.  I had one less place to story my anxiety and stress so I ended up getting an above average 6.5 hours of sleep that night.  It also obscured the fact that Jazz legend John Stockton had recently come out as an an anti-covid vax type weirdo.  June 18th should just be known as Black Friday for the Jazz organization (which is also what most people in Utah call the movie Friday, to distinguish it from Joe Friday in Dragnet).

 

Saturday – Can a Half Black Man Catch a Cab in Long Island?

On Juneteenth I headed out to Long Island early because the NJ transit trains are every other hour in my town on the weekends. So I left Bloomfield and eventually arrived in Hicksville, Long Island (a 9 minute drive from the club) at 5:01pm.  I saw that there was a Chick Fil-A a ten minute walk away so I went for some Christian chicken before the show.  Once I was finished I figured I could kill time until 6:10 before getting a cab for the 7pm show.  Well, no Lyfts were available.  So I walked back to the train station which has an old school cabby depot. No cabs available. So as I began to feel nervous about not making it to the club on time (I don’t have Uber on my phone, but apparently they are easier to get on Long Island, presumably because people on Long Island think it is “gay” to spell Lyft with a Y.  So, after contacting the club and the emcee I was able to hop a ride with Roy when his train arrived at 6:55 and we arrived shortly before the show began, albeit beginning about 15 minutes late.  The early show Saturday was the only show I was not happy with my performance. It was fine, but the other two were a lot better.  I think part of it was the 240% humidity combined with the stress of rushing to the club had me sweating like Ron Burgundy when he is racing back to the news station in Anchorman.

 

 

After the show, in addition to more The Black Guy Who Tips fans, I was greeted by a couple that was quoting my Lincoln Project ads back to me. But they were not following me on social media, nor did they know I would be there.  More accidental fans!  But more hilarious, though out of respect for Roy I will be cryptic, was what went on between the shows.  Let’s just say I do not envy the part of Roy’s success that leads to potential Hustle and Flow encounters:

 

 

The second show went well (I am resisting my usual video posting this year because I really want a lot of my bits to be new for most people when I record in October) and then I rode to LIRR with Roy.  Here is where the story gets interesting.

 

Because of the weird train schedules, Roy offered me a hotel if I needed one.  I said I would take one Saturday so that I could stay until the end of the 2nd show and not worry about missing the last NJ train out of NY Penn.  But for some reason, most hotels in the vicinity of the club were all booked, so the best option was a hotel that looked nice to me on the web in Jamaica, Queens (PSA: the Internet is deceptive). Roy’s assistant booked it and I thanked her.  The good news, on top of the catfish hotel photos, is that it was a quick walk from LIRR in Jamaica, which would also facilitate a quick departure in the morning.  Here, in bullet point form, is the rest of my trip (you know I got home safe because this blog is being written Sunday night):

  • Exit LIRR at 1am on Sutphin Boulevard. Look around and see some working folk and some ne’er do wells.  One way looks well lit and the other turn looks like an invitation to go out like Bruce Wayne’s parents.  Of course the GPS points me toward the darkened, abandoned street for 3 blocks.
  • When I arrive at my hotel, the lobby is not air conditioned.  There are two women who look like Snoop from The Wire sitting in the lobby with t-shirts that say “Security.”
  • The guest check in area is behind thick glass (this felt more like bullet protection than Covid protection)
  • I get my room on the 2nd floor and head up.  As I walk down the hallway of this fairly busy hotel I see a couple exit the room at the end of the hall. They seem sort of awkward. I could not tell if this man and woman were a couple or just the occupants of the room for a couple of minutes but they stood at the end of the hall as I approached. At this moment my math was “40% chance she’s a prostitute, 40% chance they are a couple and 20% chance they are a couple and are about to attempt a push-in robbery as soon as I tap my key card.”
  • They did not. I entered my room and proceeded to do my final Father’s Day Cameo (feeling that it might represent my final work). Went to bed at 2:30. Woke up at 6:30 and left at 710 for the 7:22 LIRR to Penn Station.  The night clerk was still up and gave me a look like “leaving so early? Were you not satisfied with your floor’s whore services?”

 

Fun weekend. Lots of reading on trains. Worked with one of the best in the business. And lived to write about it.