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Road Comedy Recap: The Pitts-burgh and ChicaGOAT epic

This week I hit the road again for a Thursday gig in Pittsburgh (at this point, based on my three shows in Pittsburgh since 2021, my next audience may actually contain a negative number of people) and a Friday/Saturday in Chicago, with the Friday show being a live Making Podcasts Great Again and Saturday being a headlining stand-up set.  Following our great live show in NYC for MPGA and wanting to keep working out my new hour, this was a week I was looking forward to for a while.  Unfortunately, I have not been this disappointed in Pittsburgh since I heard racial slurs yelled at a Steeler game in 2009. However, I have not been this happy with Chicago since Karl Malone won game 5 of the 1998 Finals with 39 & 19 to send the series back to Utah (in Game 6 Michael Jordan shoved Bryon Russell).  So let’s get into it, as I sit in a downtown Chicago Starbucks waiting for my 6:40pm train back east.

Days 1 & 2: Pittsburgh

The toughest part of any road trip is leaving and having my dog Cookie give me a sad look (she now understands that suitcases mean the big man is going to deeply betray her for 2-5 days).  I made my way to Newark Penn Station and hopped on the Pennsylvanian which runs from NYC to Pittsburgh. It is a cozy 9 hour ride, during which I read the newspaper, the New Yorker, The Atlantic, a little bit of a book and watched a couple of episodes of a Paramount+ show (FYI – Paramount+ is the single worst streaming app and it is not close, in terms of app crashes/failures/etc).

I arrived in Pittsburgh and went and checked into the nearby Hampton Inn.  The woman checking me in was extremely hot, but something about a folksy Pittsburgh accent makes even the hottest woman both approachable and reprehensible.  I mean it isn’t a Philly/Baltimore level accent atrocity, but it is a real boner killer, which does help when you have to walk away to the elevator to go to your room.  I then walked briskly to the Capital Grille before the closed, because I eat for the ticket sales I want, not the ticket sales I have.

I got a decent night’s sleep and then in the morning, after a 2 Belgian waffle breakfast (I have told people that I was made to be in the Midwest – *Ric Flair cadence* I’m a Church-attending, flannel wearing, cheesecake factory eating, fat son of a gun and I’m having a hard time keeping this cholesterol down… WOOOOOO!”) I checked out of the hotel. Now I took a long, thorough shower late that morning because I would have to appear on TV in Chicago before I might be able to shower again. I will explain later…

The show was at Club Cafe, which is a perfect place for someone possessing my apathetic fan base.  It is small enough that 50 people would feel like a crazy party, 40 would feel like a sold out club and 30 would give a feeling of pride.  How many people did I draw? 16, which is a number that gives “Joker origin story, pre-musical.”  The fans that did show up there were great and I am appreciative of their time, money and support and I think I gave them a strong show (it was always meant as a tune up for Chicago), but all I kept thinking toward the end of my set was “the stage is a little hotter than I expected – I hope this sweat doesn’t create a funk that lingers for TV tomorrow.

I said hi to the fans after the show (my third straight show where my opener’s fixed pay was higher than my ticket sales-dependent pay. This is known in the industry as “fucked.”  I then got on the midnight train to Chicago (the Capital Limited featuring the train attendant Carlos, a railroad joy well known to my Patreon subscribers).

Day 3: Trump Arrives in Chicago

When I woke up we were in Indiana, home of gay political icon Mike Pence. And also Pete Buttigieg.  We arrived in Chicago on time and I had a few hours to kill before Windy City Weekend. Now for the promised explanation:

Since the pandemic, Ryan Chiaverini, a TV host in Chicago (think if Ryan Reynolds were the Mario Lopez of Chicago), has been a big fan of my work, but unlike my other fans and my friends, he actually backed up that verbal support with action!  When I told him about my show, he told me he would be unable to make it, but could book me for a segment on Windy City Weekend.  I said yes, of course, and then the producer told me that I would need to arrive TV ready. Well, I was sleeping on an Amtrak on my way into Chicago overnight, so I guessed I would be TV ready, if the show were “Real Homeless Housewives of Chicago.”  Now I have been told that there are shower facilities in the Amtrak first class area of Chicago Union Station and I will leave the mystery of how I cleaned up for TV as a cliffhanger until I post video clips of my set in Chicago.

                                                    Ryan, Val, Amtrak Hobo

I arrived at Windy City Weekend 10 minutes early and met Ryan’s co-host, the lovely Val, then Ryan and then Ryan’s friend who I had done a cameo for a year or two ago (seriously folks – I am the cameo GOAT).  My segment went great (watch HERE) and then I met film critic Richard Roeper who was there for his usual segment and we shook hands, Twitter follower a Twitter follower.  I then made my way to Oak Park, IL to check into my hotel.

I killed some time, got some BBQ with my MPGA co-host, Jay and then we went over to the club. The club is new (and the town feels very new or refurbished) and really nice.  The show went great and it will be up on podcast platforms this week.  Without giving anything away, I believe the loudest laugh in show history may have been to Trump’s answer of “Narcan” to a question that was asked.  I then went to have a beer with some fans (the trio of gentlemen Andrew, Aaron and Kevin (gents – please correct me on names if I am wrong) who I met after my St Paul shows and they said they would be at an Oak Park show. They showed up 10 or so deep!  Promises Made – Promises Kept!) before retiring to my hotel room to watch Bill Maher complain for an hour.

Day 4: ChicaGOAT

When you have God and Trauma-given talent you can always be assured of delivering a good performance.  But you aren’t always guaranteed to set a suburb of Chicago ablaze. Well, Saturday night, Oak Park, Illinois was blessed to have me at my best.  The new hour of material killed (and I finally did the huge chunk on the NHL that I have been dying to do and it crushed) and the fans were great (i.e. no one had tips for me on how to improve jokes, but they did have money to buy merch!).

Nothing to see here – just a comedy icon taking the train like non-iconic people in Chicago

Opening both nights in Chicago was my friend, comedian Nick Cobb, who I probably have not seen in somewhere between 5 and 10 years, so that was a nice added bonus to working Comedy Plex.  Sadly, weekends like this are rarer than I would prefer (meaning I am not getting the bookings I desire), but they are so great when they happen that it keeps me going on my quixotic journey for sustained comedy success.

I felt especially generous complimenting the Chicago crowd on being home to the second best basketball player of all time #KingJames

Day 5: Mass and the Midwest

After a rise n grind meal of bagel, chocolate long john (the more homoerotic, the better the Dunkin Donut – hence why my favorite is one I have only found in Boston – the “chocolate glazed stick”) and coffee from Dunkin Donuts before walking to St Edmund’s for 9:15 Mass.

I will say this about the people of Chicago. More immature J-L would often comment that downtown Chicago just felt like a land of 5’7″-5’8″ 8s (in other words, if there were a draft of men for cities, like they were sports teams, Chicago would have me high on their draft board as someone who would fit in perfectly to their system of Midwestern values and breeding nice looking power forwards and left tackles).  Now while this remains more mature J-L’s assessment of the women of Chicago, he also noticed that people just seem friendlier here than in New York and New Jersey (not a big surprise I am sure, but it is deeper than just a cliche). Strangers of all races and genders said hello (to be fair this was also the case in St Pete’s Beach, FL). A woman broke off from her husband to ask me how I liked the book I was reading and told me the author has a new one out.  And the husband did not even ask to watch while we made love! Midwest values!

That said, it was not all perfect. When I went to see Smile 2 on Saturday afternoon, the theater machines would not let me order a milkshake, so I had to settle for a popcorn and water – disgraceful.  And the man sitting next to me in the theater was eating his wings  in a manner that led me to believe he was told it is rude to close your mouth while you chew.  And he went “mmm mmm mmm” every time something suspenseful happened, which in a two hour horror movie is pretty much all the time.  He would have been the worst, but for the woman who had her baby at the hard R-violent horror movie. Naturally, the baby cried at multiple spots until she finally stepped out of the theater (its almost like a baby instinctively recognizes that a woman having her eyeball cut out with glass is a “bad boo boo”).

But all in all, I had a great time on this trip and gave three good performances for 2.2 audiences (yes Pittsburgh – you are the 0.2).  I guess come see me in Emporia, Virginia or Princeton, New Jersey if you want to experience the same!

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24 Hours In Pittsburgh

On my way out west I took an eventful 24 hour stop in Pittsburgh, PA to see the New York Rangers take on the Pittsburgh Penguins.  With less than 5 hours to keep my New Year’s Resolution of resuming weekly blogging for the whole year and less than 5 hours until my midnight train to Chicago to see a green river for Saint Patrick’s Day here is my last 24 hours recapped in (mostly) photo format. Enjoy!

The girlfriend and I boarded the Pennsylvanian in Newark, NJ at 11:19 (ten minutes late, not a great start), which traverses the entire state of Pennsylvania, concluding at 8:05pm (835 pm in our case).  I promptly blamed my girlfriend for Amtrak’s tardiness as the Pennsylvanian has never failed me until this time.  We did see something very cool that I aspire to, but will surely never achieve: attached to the train was a luxury, custom-made train car for one man with a guest.  Apparently if you like trains and have time and a boatload of money you can have your own train car attached to an Amtrak and taken on routes.

When we arrived at our hotel we were greeted by news that the credit card machine was down, so I had to fill out a credit card form like some peasant.  Then we saw a man randomly drop 3 forks while walking through the lobby.  We then got in the elevator with a man who seemed unstable and kept cursing about how his room card was not working to activate the elevator.  We left our hotel for the nearby Capital Grille, a good steakhouse of less use to Catholics on Fridays during Lent.  So I ordered salmon and the portrait of Roberto Clemente staring at me the whole meal was definitely judging me for not having a steak.

3000 hits and I have to watch you eat fish at a steakhouse?

I then ordered the Coconut Creme Pie for dessert. I am usually a chocolate cake or cheesecake eater after a meal, but I remembered and told a story about a late friend, David Lee Nelson, who was a comedian and actor I knew for years in NY. He also was one of the few people to reach out to me during the pandemic to congratulate me on my success from a deeply genuine place (i.e. he was pursuing theater in South Carolina so there was no incentive or ulterior motive to his kindness and good cheer). Well before all that and his tragic loss to Cancer he had been a waiter at the Capital Grille near the Chrysler Building in NYC, near the law firm I worked at at the time.  He was not my waiter but he asked to comp me a dessert and he said the coconut creme pie was his favorite. I remember liking it, but after talking about him at dinner with my girlfriend I said, well I have to order it now and my goodness it was one of the best desserts I’ve ever had.

Thanks David Lee Nelson

Another funny story about the NYC capital grille was I went in there with a date within a year of David comping me the dessert and the hostess, an attractive and personable woman looked at me while checking in and asked, “are you a comedian? You’re so funny-” and before I could fully look at my date, puff out my (at the time) considerable pecs and say “should we just skip dinner?” the hostess finished, “David Lee Nelson is my brother.” I could not pretend to be a celebrity any longer and simply said “oh wow!” But I was genuinely happy to hear his name and to meet his sister.

Today we went to a pretty terrible breakfast at our hotel (not really the hotel’s fault as the hotel was PACKED with St Patrick’s Day parade visitors and Penguins-Rangers visitors) where most of it was cold.  We then went to the Andy Warhol museum and to the Penguins-Rangers game, so rather than delay dinner tonight any longer, here is the rest of the day in pictures with witty captions.

The Andy Warhol Bridge where you are guaranteed 15 minutes of traffic

 

One of the many exhibits in the Andy Warhol Museum

 

I found Warhol’s description of my conception offensive and disgusting

 

This piece was entitled bi-racial elephant with dog dick tusks I think

 

2 large heads

 

I was sad to see Anti-Semitism had made the Penguins mascot hide by pretending his name is Irish. DO BETTER PITTSBURGH

 

The game had a lot less feet washing than I expected

 

                                               RANGERS WIN
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Road Comedy Recap: Roethlisberger vs J-L in Pittsburgh

This week I was in Pittsburgh for a headlining gig at the Pittsburgh Improv. When I got the gig a couple of months ago I was thrilled to get a Thursday night (as opposed to a Monday 1pm show, which seems to be closer to my reality with many clubs), which is traditionally a good night to work a club (if you cannot get a Friday or Saturday).  But as soon as I got the booking my J-L Jinx Spidey Sense kicked in and I thought “I bet the Steelers have a game that night.”  Do I even have to tell you that my assumption was correct?  So in a nod to self-preservation and local culture I made my show a 7pm show instead of 8pm, hoping that if the show ended by game time some people who were inclined to both support a twice-accused-of-rape quarterback and an Internet savior to millions in 2020 could have the best of both worlds.  However, Pittsburgh chose decidedly in one direction (spoiler – not me).  So let’s do an epic recap of my Pittsburgh trip – my first time back since 2009, when a white guy called a Black player on the Cleveland Browns a ni**er.  Good to be back!

Wednesday

I departed for my gig on Wednesday because I was taking Amtrak. Since I have a busy day job that I refuse to leave as long as comedy continues to be the dumbest business on the planet, I decided to work on the train Wednesday. Hotels were cheap so two nights were doable and I could be available Thursday morning for press if any were available (LOL – I would think a stand up comedian with a decently large following who can do lots of impressions would be a slam dunk for local radio, but apparently Jack Off and the Cum Dump on FM 101.69 could not be bothered).  So I busted out the WiFi hotspot in the café car on the 9 hour train ride to Pittsburgh and got to doing legal work while eating my sandwich.  And then 10 minutes in the café lady said I had to leave because the car closed in Philly when the train switched engines from the 20th century electric on the east coast to the coal powered 19th century train system the interior of the country runs on.

So while muttering expletives (you saw me bust out both the computer and the sandwich at noon, but did not think to warn me that the car would close? One of the great things on some Amtraks is when the café is not selling food it becomes impossible to continue sitting at the tables near the café.  Because as you know, tables do not work if food is not available) I went back to the business car, which was only about 15% full for most of the trip, which was lovely.  I decided to watch a movie I downloaded from HBO Max on my new tablet called Never Rarely Sometimes Always.  It is about a Pennsylvania teenager who goes to NYC with her cousin to get an abortion.  I figured, “when in Rome!” It was dark, powerful, excellent and a perfect way to get me in the right frame of mind for one of my comedy shows.  Because my career often feels like a burden I am carrying to term even though the humane thing would be to end it.

I eventually returned to the café car for several hours of work until we entered the part of Pennsylvania where the telephone signals no longer exist.  At that point I began reading Gommorah, a book I have had for years but was never motivated to read until friends started hyping up the show.  That way, after I read it I can watch the show and be morally superior to my friends because “I actually also read the book.”  But back to the dead zone of communication known as central and western Pennsylvania.  To be fair, I think the world would be better off if these Trump loving, mask burning, gun toting turds had no cell service or Internet, but in 2021 it is pretty startling that you can travel for 100 miles in a US state and not have a signal.  That reminds me of a joke I just wrote – “How many central Pennsylvanians does it take to put up a cell tower?  10 – One to climb the ladder and 9 to call him a communist fa**ot for wearing a safety harness.”

Pittsburgh Arrival

I arrived in Pittsburgh at 8pm, got in a cab and headed to my Hampton Inn near the club.  I walked in wearing a mask but noticed no one else was. Not staff. Not patrons.  Freedom!  I went to my room, dumped my stuff down and made my way to get some PF Chang’s.  When I walked in not one staff member was wearing a mask, but the restaurant was almost entirely empty except for a meeting of the 3 Percenters at the PF Chang’s bar and a few families.  I sat down and almost on cue, my brother, Pro Publica’s Henri Cauvin, sent me an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer that stated that Pennsylvania was leading the nation in daily Covid hospitalizations (and that was with Philadelphia doing things like being run by Democrats and not being stupid with vaccines and masks).  That meant central and western PA were doing the lion’s share of owning the libs and the ventilators.  And as I kept noticing, no one wearing masks over the next few days I kept thinking “1/3 of you are obese, 1/3 of you are ugly and 1/3 of you are obese and ugly – all of you have plausible reasons to be masked up!”

the view from my hotel room was apparently of the location where Pittsburgh area criminals dump dead bodies

Thursday

The next day I woke up at 645am, my version of sleeping in. I went downstairs for breakfast, mapped out my set for that night and then went for a 4 mile walk around the malls near my hotel.  I then sat down for an 8 hour workday at my computer in my hotel room.  When that was done I went to Burgatory, a brilliantly named hamburger restaurant near my hotel. When I walked in I was wearing a mask so the host brought me to the quasi-outdoor area filled with nice torches that made me feel like I would watch a virgin get sacrificed while I ate my meal.  I sat there by myself until some other lib cucks were seated in my area.  I ordered a burger and fries and my God – it was great!  I felt like it was an omen for the show. (spoiler – it wasn’t).  I then saw they had a chocolate chip cookie sundae dessert. I made a note that if my set were really great or really awful I would come there after for the dessert.  I then left and went to the club.

Burgatory – never a better place for a Catholic comedian who loves hamburgers and exists in an entertainment netherworld

When I entered the club I noticed a crowd that, in terms of size, resembled the audience of an art house foreign film in its 7th week in the theater.  Ok, maybe not that bad, but when every show you do starts to feel like watching the dying breaths of Christ on the Cross you tend to see things as worse than they are.  More people filled in and it ended up being a mildly respectable crowd for a comedian that people seem to prefer watching in two minute increments on their phones, who was also performing while the Steelers were warming up for Thursday Night Football.

Quiet yet festive was the atmosphere in the mall between my hotel and the club

The energy of the crowd for the emcee and feature was not quite blackout, but definitely at least a brownout.  My set went fairly well (a strong ad libbed clip of me describing the battle for Pittsburgh’s soul that night is on my Instagram) and I met several kind and effusive fans after.  Now in a weird bookend to the night the emcee had to leave for something else after her set so I literally walked my own emcee and then two die hard fans of Making Podcasts Great Again asked if I wanted to get a drink after. I said that I would hang out but had to get my money from the office.  I ended up talking to the assistant manager for about 15 minutes (turns out I broke my streak of only making the minimum amount of money per the contract) and when I went outside it appeared I had been ghosted by my own fans!

Feeling abandoned I made my way back to Burgatory for that sundae only to find out that they closed at 9pm.  Perhaps there was an angel looking out for me and my waistline or perhaps I was in a Greek Mythology Hell where you are never able to both do comedy and eat delicious chocolate chip cookie sundaes.

Friday

I woke up early the next morning to eat breakfast at 6am so I would be in no danger of missing my 730am train home.  I got a Lyft from a guy who informed me that he had a lot of darkness inside of him, which either meant he liked Black guys or was troubled.  To be fair he was discussing how he writes poetry, which at this point I am considering as a more lucrative career than stand up comedy.  I got on the train and watched Moonstruck, another HBO Max movie expiring this month. Other than Olympia Dukakis I thought the movie sort of stunk.  I then went to the café car to continue my legal work.  Hard to pick out what the highlight of the week was: working on a train, working in a hotel, seeing my dream die another day, or working on the train, but it was all a wonderful and fulfilling experience.

The bittersweet thing about some of these underperforming road gigs is that the people who are fans enough to see me live are as bewildered as I am that my crowds are not packed.  After all, I am hilarious, diverse in my skills, and more famous than the average comedian (though to be fair the median comedian is a progressive incel with an annual salary of 17 drink tickets).  I think the answer is that my comedy was viewed as a distraction for most people, not as a mere sample of a robust catalogue of humorous work, which it was and is.  Throw in Twitter’s algorithms treating me like an unclaimed Trump son he had with Omarosa and voila! –  you have a recipe for failure gumbo!  That is why it is always weird when I see comments on social media like “he got me through the pandemic” as if my existence died once you got vaccinated.  Covid is still here and so is Cauvin!

I made it home around 530pm and – you guessed it! – went back to work until about 11pm on legal work.  If there is one lesson I have learned from doing comedy, making a lot of money at it, becoming quasi famous, recording a killer new special and appearing twice this weekend in the preview for the upcoming season of a major cable drama it is this: apparently I should not quit my day job.

Thank you to everyone who came out to see me in Pittsburgh. The irony of constantly disappointing myself is that it really does make me appreciate the people who pay money to see me and to become fans beyond when you need a worktime distraction or a giggle on a group text.  The flip side to the bitter spirit that engulfs a lot of what I do is a deep and genuine gratitude for those of you who do care and have comedy pallets beyond mere distraction.

See you in Washington DC next week folks!  DC Improv Dec 16-19.  I am crushing it – come see for yourselves!