Laughs In Space
Laughs In Space
If you’ve ever dreamed on vacationing in Space…and who has…your dreams are about to come true. The news this week is that by the year 2027 there will be a space hotel that will actually be more like taking a space cruise.
Yeah, it should be a lot of fun to be there when some space virus breaks out and people start turning into mutants. Although if you’ve ever been on a cruise ship, it’ll be hard to tell the difference.
Cruising in space is not going to be cheap. I read where the trip could cost as much as 25 million. Even if I had an extra 25 million laying around, I wouldn’t blow it on a cruise.
When you book something like that, there’s no guarantees. It doesn’t happen often but, I’ve been on cruises where the weather sucks the whole week. It’s like the rain cloud followed us from one island to the next.
It’s one thing to shell out a couple grand for a cruise and get crappy weather. Do you want to take that chance with 25 million?
“How was your trip to space?”
“Terrible, it was dark the whole time.”
Just because I don’t have the twenty five million doesn’t mean I won’t be going. They’re going to need entertainment. Which means, we’ll be comedians in space.
I’m already going over in my head some of the things we will have to deal with. As a traveling comedian, you set your expectations low and if the accommodations are above adequate, it’s a pleasant surprise.
There will only be so much food in space so, they won’t want to waste it on comedians. You get used to it. Working places with nice restaurants they would usually give us a meal in between shows.
You would sit down and the waitress or waiter would hand you a menu. Then before you got a chance to even glance at it, they would tear it from your hands.
“Oh, you’re the comedian.”
Then you would get handed a piece of paper with the comics menu. It was always the same three things. Cheeseburger, Chicken Tenders or Caesar Salad with chicken. Even if they weren’t on the regular menu, they did it special for us…God bless them.
Window Laughing
Window Laughing
(Shaking Off Some Rust)
I recently did the strangest show I’ve ever done in all of my years in comedy. Since that would be over the span of 38 years, you know it’s got to be very strange. Then again, these are strange times.
The last real show I’ve done in front of an audience was March 14, 2020. I’ve done a few minutes hosting shows for my graduating classes. I also did a short set in October at one of my students open mikes. That did not go well.
I was rusty as hell, it was the first time I was doing my act in ten months. I would do a line and forget what came next. What came naturally wasn’t coming. I was on top of my game when everything came to a halt. Here I was like I was starting all over again.
My point is, if you’re not doing it, you get stale. I need to do it a few times to get back into a groove. Hey, The Rolling Stones always rent a rehearsal space for a month or so to practice before they go out on tour. This despite the fact they’ve been doing this for almost sixty years.
Sixty years, seriously? Man, those guys are old.
Anyway, let’s get to the strange show. It was a drive in show but, not at a drive in. It’s January, in Pittsburgh. To do an actual show at a drive in, we’d have to stand outside, In January, in Pittsburgh.
The Drive
The Drive
They say when you die, your whole life passes in front of you. Having never experienced death, I can’t say whether that’s true or not. With a couple of stand up classes starting this week, I’ve decided to let my life in comedy flash in front of me.
Actually, I thought it might be a good time to share my own experience. This way my students won’t make the same mistakes I did and end up unemployed, like I’ve been since March.
Since this is the first of the series, I guess we should go back to the beginning…I really don’t remember much from the womb…I’m kidding, we’re not going back that far. We’ll start with my one year old birthday party…
I am going to include some of my childhood, because it’s an important part of the way we develop a sense of humor. For the majority of comedians, it comes as a defense mechanism. There’s some feeling of inadequacy we are trying to disguise.
For me, I was an overweight kid before video games. The invention of sitting on a sofa and holding a remote has greatly increased the amount of fat kids today. In my class, I was it.
I was shy and unpopular and the few friends I made was because I could make them laugh. It was never anything I would say out loud. I would just say it quietly to the kids sitting next to me in class. Some would laugh, others would say,
“Shut up fatty.”
The laughs were worth the tradeoff.
