If A Show Happens In the Forest
As I sit here, trying to stay safe from the virus, my personalized cutout has been touring every baseball stadium in the country. It’s a trip I hoped to do myself someday, but the travel is brutal. With him I only have to put him in the mail. This week’s planned trip to the West Coast had to be put on hold because of the fires raging out there. You know…him being cardboard and all.
Anyway, it’s been six months now since I’ve been able to perform. There are some outdoor shows and areas of the country where they are doing social distancing inside. Around here, we’re shut down.
Some of the acts I know have taken to doing Zoom shows. I just can’t bring myself to doing comedy to nobody. Yeah, I know there’s somebody watching, it’s just comedy needs a live audience. I can’t do something that makes me look stupid.
Comedians can be a nasty group when we get together. We enjoy watching bad comedy. Psycho Comedy, even better.
I just feel like a Zoom show could look really bad. Why should I care? Because the guys I hung around with had a collection of bad and psycho comedian videos. We would watch them at parties. We watched them enough times to learn them off by heart. Some of us would do it along with the tape.
It was kind of like Psycho “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Ok, probably a bad example.
We got the videos from bookers and club owners. When you get that kind of video, you want to share it and they did.
One of them, I got from my friend who booked me on Star Search. I won’t mention any names, because she was nervous about it. It was a long time ago Mary, get over it.
She had all the videos that had been sent to her as Star Search auditions. Another friend of ours was putting together a compilation video.
“The Best of the Worst of Star Search.”
Bad singers, actors, dancers and of course comedians. At one point a video starts and,
“I know him.”
It was an awful comedian who used to show up at the open mike nights in my hometown. Instead of taking the camera out to a club on one of those nights in front of an audience, he decided to do it at home.
Behind him, he had hung a sheet with “Comedy Club” badly painted. He also had a stool and a microphone…Yeah, I don’t know why.
There was also a one person laugh track, who from the way the laughs sounded, was probably his grandfather. That’s it, drag grandpa down to the basement for some bad comedy…and it was bad.
He did a whole piece on going into McDonalds and they’re giving you the Mc speak.
“Can I have your McOrder?”
“Would you like McFries with that?”
“How about a McPie?”
As a person who worked at McDonalds as a teenager, I can assure you there is no McSpeak.
The punch line was,
“I tell them to Mckiss my Mc Ass.”
The old guy is busting a gut laughing, which is where I realized he was a relative. If not he would’ve said,
“You Mc Suck!”
Like I said, my friend was nervous to begin with. Once she found out I knew the guy, no way was she letting me have that tape…I had to sneak it out behind her back. I returned it…after I made copies.
Of all the bad comedy and nut job videos, there is one that stands high above all others. Let’s call him Gunder.
I changed one word in his name to protect the innocent. You figure out which.
This guy didn’t have a grandfather. He was all alone in what looked like his living room.
He didn’t have a sheet hanging behind him. Just a sofa.
He did have a microphone…Yeah, I don’t know why.
This wasn’t just bad, it was bad for a long time. It took us awhile to figure out how to fast forward to the best parts. Like when he starts working the crowd.
He makes an offensive remark about a woman’s breasts.
“Hey, she’s got some nice headlights on her.”
Before you get offended, there’s nobody there. Also, right after that he says,
“I was kind of rough on them. Give them a drink on me.”
So, he was buying a drink from a non-existent bartender, to give to a couple that’s not there.
Classic.
Of course he had a big ending.
“You’re probably wondering how I can only have one name, Gunder. This when there are famous one named people like Cher, Prince and Madonna. You remember those people, but you’re going to remember the name Gunder as well.”
That’s when he turns around, drops the sweat pants he’s wearing and shows his ass.
“Goodnight.”
Pure psycho and we were entertained by it. That was back then, we don’t watch those videos anymore…We had them transferred to DVD.
I swear I remember the Mc Joke guy…I don’t know from where but I remember that routine. I think I’d be afraid to watch that tape!
I don’t even know if I have it anymore but, it was brutal.
I Love You More Than Air