Jul 29, 2014

Many years ago I was booked in Ohio, where the Zingelman family ended up settling after leaving Europe and sailing for many treacherous weeks across Lake Erie.  Anyway, I'm doing this one-nighter somewhere close to Cleveland where I think most of my family was living at the time.  (I'm not sure, though. We're not a very close-knit clan.) It's been a horrible week, staying at the worst hotels possible (more on that in a later post) and working with the worst hack comedians possible. (Well, one the worst hack comedian possible. The other one the worst hack juggling magician possible.)

So we're at this gig at some lousy bar.  Tens of people are in the audience.  There are cocktail tables on the dance floor and three nice-looking women are sitting center stage.  Hack One goes up.  There's no way to describe this guy's act except to call it a bunch of jumping around and yelling. (I hear he later went into talk radio, when he must've gotten too old for the jumping around.)  Most of the audience loved him.  A home town kid I guess.  

Then I go up with some sort of clever and cerebral (whatever that means) comedy.  I die. Nothing.  Not a laugh.  Just three nice-looking women sitting center stage, smiling politely.  I go sit in the back of the room.

The "headliner" (Hack Two) goes up and juggles while doing the usual juggling jokes ("You think this looks impressive from there? You should see it from this side!") Idiot. Then a few magic tricks, ending with some lame straightjacket escape. ("Not so tight. I'll be singing soprano!") Idiot.  The audience apparently loved bad juggling, hack jokes and stupid magic tricks.  Along with jumping around and yelling.

After the show I approach the three nice-looking women and pull up a chair.  I tell them I'm sincerely grateful that they sat through the show and politely smiled during my 30 minute portion.

One of the women says, "We had to. We saw your name in the newspaper. We're your cousins."

Show Biz.

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