DAY THREE AND DAY FOUR

(Sho) Boston. Home of the Boston Red Sticks. Oops. I mean Red Stacks. Oops. I mean Rod Stocks. Wait, what? Oh. I got it. Rod Stewart. Boston, Massachusetts hometown of the great baseball team Rod Stewart. Mac and I (I call Mike “Mac”. He hates it but I don’t care because I think it’s really HI-LAR-IOUS!!!!!!) So anyway, Mac and I drove into Bean Town and set up shop at a Starbucks where we typed away at our computers and didn’t speak to each other. It was another beautiful day and the fall leaves were in full bloom, like a blooming onion.

(Black) Boston is my town. I grew up there, of course, and have fond memories of sculling on the Charles. It’s worth mentioning that I did not grow up in Boston, and have never been sculling. Moreover I am afraid of water. Boston was founded in 1958 by Mormons looking to escape persecution, and it still retains it’s old world charm. For example, I noticed that several of the shops used this spelling: “shoppe.” Very cute. Michael and I spent the day at Starbucks tip-tapping on our computers and looking at pedestrians. Michael ate nineteen mixed berry scones.

(Sho) And Black ate his boogers. It’s true. I saw him sneak some into his craw.

It was a really packed show. Michael Ian Black’s name was high up on the marquee and my name was…n’t.
So, that was cool. But it’s okay because I love my friend Michael and was really excited to see his name up in bright lights.

Many colleges were represented including: Northeastern, Harvard, BU, BC, and of course Brandeis. I predicted that the BC and Brandeis kids would have a religious war after the show.

There was a heckler in the crowd. I do a bit about getting candy at the movies and he screamed out that I should order “balls.” I assumed he meant “Whoppers.” After a heated exchange we agreed that I’d put my balls in his mouth but in a nice way. Michael dealt with him too. He’ll tell you all about it.

(Black) The heckler was obnoxious with Showalter, but at least coherent. By the time I got on stage, he was just shouting syllables that sometimes were words and sometimes not. For example, during my set he started yelling noises. When I asked him what he was yelling, he said something, which I eventually understood to be: “You suck otherwise!” Normally, this would hurt my feelings because I’m sensitive, but then I became confused. Otherwise what? Other than this show? In which case it’s okay because he likes the show but hates every thing else I do. Or did he mean that I just suck? But if he meant that, why the “otherwise?” We talked about it a little, but he wasn’t making sense. Finally, I told him to “shut up,” which was my witty way of saying “shut up.” Amazingly, he did shut up, but I found out later it wasn’t because I scared him but because security threw him out.

Otherwise (that word) it was a good show. Great crowd. Lots of attentive and attractive people. Afterwards we signed a bunch of DVDs and said hello and then I went back to the hotel and watched “The World Series of Poker” for eight hours. I wish there was a way to beat off to “The World Series of Poker,” but there isn’t. I’ve tried, and it doesn’t work.

DAY FOUR: NEW HAVEN

(Sho) We had some time so we drove to Black’s house and spent the day at his beautiful country house on 174 Newbie Street, in Skilling, Connecticutt. He’ll be pissed I gave out his address but fuck him. He stole my iPod and claims it’s his when it so obviously isn’t.

New Haven is where Yale is. As such, there’s many smart people shuffling around in sweaters and scarves with backpacks full of books and cups of coffee. Michael and I threw drive-by water balloons at them from our rental car and had a grand time.

The show went off without a hitch: unless you consider my computer going dead in the middle of my set and me stopping for five minutes while a tech guy crawled on stage and tried to fix it a hitch. (He fixed it.)

Afterwards we signed lots of DVDs, including two sets of heaving breasts, and took a bunch of pictures.

We went our separate ways. I to Brooklyn and Michael to Connecticut. Next day, we will meet in NYC and drive to Baltimore.

(Black) Our New Haven venue was weird. It’s called Toad’s Place, and it’s run by very nice people, but there were some annoying and strange things about it. First of all, the floors were sticky. Not regular sticky like you expect when you go to a place where people spend a lot of time throwing up, but extra sticky. To the point where I was wondering if they mopped the floors with tree sap. I thought maybe they were trying to figure out a way to freeze us all in amber so that millions of years from now scientists could discover us. Even the stage was sticky like that. Why was the stage so sticky? Every time I took a step it sounded like I was unfastening something made from Velcro. It was terrible. The other annoying thing about that place is that there is giant fence in the middle of the room. I am not being metaphorical when I say this; for all ages shows, rather than give people bracelets or whatever, they erect an enormous fence in the middle of the room so that the drinkers and non-drinkers are separated by a giant metal barrier. This is in no way at all a fire hazard. Giant metal fences are not necessarily conducive to great comedy. They are conducive to segregating large segments of people from each other, and on that front they succeeded. I was hoping that we could play “Border Crossing,” but nobody was up for it. As far as my performance goes, I did not do a very good job. Sniffing all that model airplane glue before the show probably did not help matters.

It was great, however, to spend the day with my kids. They kept calling me “Larry.” I don’t know why. I asked my wife if somebody named Larry had been coming around the house. She said she had no idea what I was talking about.

Tour Day One.

(Sho) I met Eugene at my house. He brought the projector and screen. He is driving with us to Northampton to see his gf. I was at the nearby coffee shop grabbing lunch. Black pulled up in our car and after loading up the car, we were off.

(Black) I picked up our rental car at Hertz in Fairfield and was a little dubious when the woman handed me the keys to a Hyundai. I asked her if she had any other cars BESIDE a Hyundai. She told me she did not. What about a Camry? She did not have a Camry. I took the Hyundai.

Showalter, annoyingly, asked me to pick him up in Brooklyn, sixty miles South of where I picked up the car, even though we were heading North to NORTHampton.

(Sho) My lunch I got was mac & cheese soup; chicken salad sammich; bag of chips; can of Coke; and, of course, pickle. I would have taken the train to Fairchild to meet Black in Conn but we have Stella DVD boxes and there’s too many to carry on the train. Black is a whiner for not wanting to come to Brooklyn.

(Black) Getting to B’klyn (B-Lynn, Bookline) was not a problem. Leaving Brooklyn was a disaster. It took us two and a half hours after leaving Showalter’s “house” to return to the place where I had started. Traffic was terrible and Michael was singing James Taylor songs at the top of his lungs the entire time. (Not true.) What IS true, though, is that his mac-n-cheese soup smelled like the underside of my scrotum after sleepaway camp.

(Sho) There was traffic (traf-FUCK!) on I-95 all the way from Brooklyn (in the hizzy!) to Springfield, Mass. I-95 Northbound sux dix! We took a long snack stop and hit the golden arches for some snerious snackage. I got two cheese boogers and a small fry (word!)

(Black) I got a #8 (Chicken Selects and a fry). I asked for five Chicken Selects, but I think they recognized me because when I opened my box, there were SEVEN chicken selects!!! That’s how a McDonald’s employee lets you feel the love – by sneaking you extra Chix Selex. To thank them for their generosity, I let them take turns blowing me by the fry cooker. In full disclosure, I also got a McFlurry (Oreo). How did it taste? Ah-May-Zing.

(Sho) We arrived in Northampton around 6:30. Show at 8:30pm. Doors at 7:30pm. When we got to the “venue”, at 7:15pm, there were, like, two people waiting outside to see the show, which kinda bummed us out, ‘cause we were hoping for a little more of a turnout but, as they say, “The show must go on.” That was a long sentence. Typically, Black catastrophized about it and I cheered him up, but then in my alone time, I catastrophized about it and Eugene cheered ME up. I wonder who cheered him up. The good news is that by the time the show started there were over 20 people there!

Michael Ian Black backstage playing internet poker.

(Black) I think whiskey cheered Eugene up. The truth is, we had a very good turnout (“turnout” is also a ballet term for walking like a penguin). I think by the time the show started there were probably 400 people there. Showalter wants me to say there were 423 people there, but he has that “Beautiful Mind” thing where he needs to count to five over and over again. I have to say, the staff at Pearl St. was very good. They came back several times to ask if we needed anything. But we already had bags of pretzels and popcorn, so the answer was no. If there had been no bags of pretzels and popcorn, and somebody had come back to ask if we needed something, I might have said, “Do you have any pretzels or popcorn?” As it was, though, that question was unnecessary because, as I said, there was plenty of pretzels and popcorn. I should clarify a little bit: there was only ONE bag of pretzel and popcorn, but there were only two of us, so it seemed like there was plenty because the truth is, between us, we weren’t going to go through all those pretzels and popcorns. Some of it, yes. But not ALL of it. Maybe you think, “How could they be so wasteful?” but honestly, there’s no way to buy HALF a bag of pretzels and popcorn. There was really no choice for them – they HAD to buy full bags of pretzels and popcorn. They were really in a no-win situation vis a vis the snack foods. Anticipating your next question: I had a few pretzels, no popcorn. Showalter had both pretzels AND popcorn. Eugene, as I said, had whiskey.

This is one of my many photographs of Eugene setting up the projector and screen before the show.

(Eugene) Before the show I had a piece of salad pizza and organized a quick rally to meet chicks. It worked. I almost stopped war! One person can make a difference, probably. Here’s an example — Churchill. Bye, everyone. During the drive up Michael and I decided to call the show we’re doing at Union Hall “Tearing The Veil Of Maya.” See you there gang!

This is a funny picture of Eugene, Michael and I at the hotel. I think we look like three husbands on a camping trip with three women who are childhood friends and we’re just a bunch of dudes who don’t know each other and are trying to be good sports about letting them take a picture. Though Black and Eug holding hands kind of gives that away.

(Sho) Being that I don’t really drink or do drugs I decided to get “fucked up” before every show by smoking a clove cigarette. That’s really smart because I used to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day so this won’t at all make me want to start smoking again after having not smoked for over four years. Not at all. I’m not playing with fire at all in any way. Way to go Sho! Way to revert back to being in high school and trying to get high off of nutmeg and magic markers.

Here’s a shot of Black doing his act. It’s a very Lenny Bruce like backlit shot.

I rate my first performance as a solid C+. I rushed through my material. After not performing on tour for a few months, and this is typical, you forget what you’re doing and, in particular, think that all your jokes aren’t funny. I got through it though. For the most part, I just wanted to get my “sea legs” under me. “Sea legs” is a lumberjacking term, it has nothing to do with the sea or legs.

This morning I wrote a joke about how gang members should use spinach as a weapon. Maybe I’ll use in the show tonight at Lupo’s, Providence.

(Black) I question Showalter’s assertion that “sea legs” is a lumberjacking term. I actually think it’s a seafaring term, referring to the fact that on long sea voyages, sailors often used to eat their own legs to fight scurvy.

I think Showalter is being generous when he rates his own performance as a C+. I thought he was terrible. Just terrible. He rushed through his material.

(Sho) Black’s show was awesome. His act was really tight. Tight like his butt, ‘cause he’s a tightwad.

This is Erik Braund. He’s the enterprising young gentelman/promoter/benefactor who brought The Comedy From Tomorrow out to Alaska. Erik is the redhead. The other gentelman is his friend from Denver who flew out to Alaska just to see our show.

We did our show in a nice theater on the campus of University of Alaska. It had wonderful acoustics and a state of the art tech system. (I actually have no idea if that’s true but it sounds good.) Here’s a photograph of Eugene tekking. *Please note that I have the time embedded in the photo. This is significant because it stayed light out until close to midnight. Keep an eye out for embedded time.

Out on the bustling metropolis of Anchorage. I went into a tourist shop and purchased a hundred bucks worth of T-shirts and sweatshirts. They have lots of bear related items in the tourism shops. Here’s Eug(ene) Mirman standing out on the street where the sweatshirt shops are.

I saw this dude with a really fuckin’ huge plate of NACHOS! I had to take a picture.

I had to get a closer shot. He was irritated by me and seemed like he was going to kick my ass and so after taking this photo of his HUMUNGOUS plate of nachos I high-tailed it outta there. (You can see his angry/twitchy little moustache twitching angrily in my direction.

Anchorage is on the water. This is a picture of a boat floating on the water. (Pretty cool, huh?)


This is another shot of the water. The temperature, btw, was pretty temperate. It was warm and hazy. Eugene and I walked to the water and had a look. (Zak and Leo were back in Portland eating sushi and thoroughly enjoying themselves.) We learned a few interesting things about Alaska.
1) In Alaska, they refer to the main part of the US as “The Bottom 48″. (Eg: minus Alaska and Hawaii.) They also call it, “The Contiguous United States.” Eugene made a joke at the show saying that he was excited to be doing a show at the, “Upper 1.”
2) Alaskans frequently go fishing for their dinner.
3) The government pays people an annual fee to live in Alaska.
Eugene and I had King Crab (a local delicacy.)

Look at that! It’s like eleven pm or something in this photo. The sky was SILVER! In the summer it stays light out most of the day. There’s only 3 or 4 hours of darkness. It’s like that movie with Al Pacino “Insomnia.” It was really quite beautiful, but also strange and disorienting.

Here’s another photo of it just cause it’s so cool.

We attended a roof party. It’s 11:30pm or something like that.

Here’s the view of the street from the roof. More natural beauty, blah, blah, blah.

And then it kinda got dark.

The End. (Alaska Overall Rating: 8.7; Alaska Show Overall Rating: 7.6; Alaska Nacho Size Overall Rating: 9.4; Alaska Light Most Of The Time Overall Rating: 9.3)

Tour Day 4: Final push towards Portland. Many moments of beautiful landscape.

Zak told us all about the superflood and how the superflood is what causes the landscape out here to look the way it does.

I can’t tell you anything about what a superflood is other than that Zak told us all about it and that he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Maybe you could Google it or something. We saw a Mountain and we thought it was the volcano Mt. Rainier…

…but then we saw a sign which said it was called Mt. Hood. We were way less impressed by it when we realized it wasn’t a volcano. Here I am taking a nap/doing my best impression of a vagrant. We wondered if lots of crystal meth addicts lived in Idaho and if so what did they do all day? (Besides snorting crystal meth of course.)

We arrived in Portland at around 3pm. We found our hotel – The Hotel DeLuxe which was very deluxe. It was Old Hollywood themed. The beds were like clouds. Very nice hotel. If you’re ever in Portland I highly recommend you stay in the Hotel Deluxe. They had 24 hour room service. Flat screen TVs. Very nice. We went to Dante’s to do our set up.

Funny sign. The guys thought it was funny that it said Trainwreck next to my name. Trainwreck is Kyle Gass from Tenacious D’s band. Dante’s is a cool club in Portland.

Storm Large performs there every Wednesday night and people love her.

Now she’s one of the finalists on Tommy Lee’s awesome reality show SuperNova. But first we did this great show in Portland called “Live Wire!” This is Portland’s version of Pairie Home Companion. The show is hosted by an old college chum named Courtenay Hameister.
They do live sketches with old timey radio sound effects and they have poets and musicians on the show. Leo, Eugene and I each did about 4 or so minutes of material.

Leo and I went first and were going to do Eugene’s jokes but chickened out. There was a fantastic fiddle player named, I think, Darryl Anger…that could be wrong, not sure.

It was really fun. They asked us questions. We tried to answer them in a funny way, sometimes we succeeded, sometimes we didn’t so much. Here’s the website address, maybe you can listen to the show http://www.livewireradio.org. Then the Portland was fabulous. I’m not bragging but the show was sold out. Okay, I’m kind of bragging. Portland is a GREAT city. It reminds me of Brooklyn but on the west coast. It was very hot though too.

Over a thousand million degrees. My nose melted off like Inspector Clouseau in Pink Panther. JK. It didn’t melt off and it wasn’t a thousand million degrees, it was only over a hundred degrees and i did sweat like a sow pig but nothing melted off. After the show we went out to a local bar and started a few fist fights. I pummeled some fuckin’ dick cause I didn’t like the way he was eyeballin’ me. I learned him somehting good. I rearranged his face. Before he met me his face was a Botticelli. Now it’s a Jackson Pollack. I’m just kidding. I didn’t get into a fight. In conclusion: Portland is good. It rains there from October to July.

Tour Day Two.

Destination Salt Lake City. Only a nine hour drive. Yeah ry-ite! Only 500-something miles from Denver. Didn’t get the best night of sleep. Feeling a bad protein hangover from meat overdose on Tour Day One. Zak, heroically, does all the driving. Lots of beautiful landscape. Denver to Utah cuts through Wyoming. Wyoming is flat and kind of spare. Sort of what you’d expect.
Barren Wyoming landscape. Perfect for a Western.

More barren Wyoming landscape. Perfect for a Western too…

here we see the landscape changing towards more mountains and hills and Grand Canyon looking stuff in Utah.

I postulated that there’s lots of Neo Nazis in Wyoming as well as Anti-Government militias. There’s cool people there too though. I have a family friend who lives in Casper. Big debate in van about baseball ethics.
Action shot of Eugene taking a nap.

Guy talk. Male bonding. Extensive listening to music from Zak’s iPod. Zak has given me permission to list some of the artists he played: Imogen Heap; Kid Koala; Danko Jones; Divine Comedy; Boards Of Canada. Discussion in van ranged from comedy to politics: Is Dane Cook funny? I think he’s funny. I do. Do I love him? Is he as funny as Woody Allen? No, of course. Do I like him? Yeah, I like him. Does George Bush experience empathy? We think no. We arrive in Salt Lake City. We check the census report from 2000 and are stunned to discover that the population of SLC is under 200,000. Denver is just over 500,000. Anchorage, amazingly, is bigger than SLC according to census report. Burt’s Tikki Lounge was voted by Stuff Magazine as one of the best dive bars in America. It’s very cool.
here’s some shots of Burt’s. Across the street was just a big mountain range!


This was the view across the street from Burts.

The show that night went well. It was very full.
here’s the dudes hanging around pre-show.

There were some drunken women at the bar who seemed to be kind of heckling though I wasn’t sure. I guess they wanted some attention. I made a joke about Cat Power and one of them gave me the finger. By the way this isn’t a picture of the drunken women. This is just a picture of the great crowd at Burt’s!
Apparently you’re not allowed to discuss Cat Power on stage. I wasn’t even making fun of Cat Power (not that I wouldn’t if I wanted to.) I asked her why she was giving me the finger and she said that it was because I was talking about Cat Power. Okay. You like Cat Power. That’s fine. I do too. Please don’t flip me the bird just because I’m talking about her. I won’t hurt her. I promise. Another one of them told me to “shut the fuck up” which I found strange considering I was being paid by the club to be on stage doing stand-up. I guess I was providing a distraction from the loud, slurry voiced conversation she was having with her friend about how her farts smelled like grapefruits or something. It was a little hard to tell though not for a lack of them talking louder than I was and I was on a microphone mind you. That was truly awkward – to be told to shut the fuck up. Normally I’m pretty good about that kind of thing but it threw me a bit. Another wierd thing happened – Just as I went on stage a young bearded gentelman came up the stage and handed me a cannister of shaving cream and told me to keep it. It was a gift. I didn’t know why he was giving me shaving cream? Maybe because he wanted me to shave? He told me to read the label. It said something about Gary Hall Jr. He screamed out, “He’s got diabetes!” I was very shaken and confused. I told the bearded man who gave me the shaving cream that I hated him (or something to that effect.) Then I apologized and said that I was tired from a nine hour drive between Denver and Salt Lake (though to be fair Zak did all the driving), and I said that I had eaten grotesque sums of meat, and that I was in a strange city and now I’m being handed shaving cream and people are giving me the finger. It was funny. After the show the woman who told me to shut the fuck up told me that she was actually telling the bouncer to shut the fuck up because he had told her to shut the fuck up and I said that either way she was being distracting and that was unfair to me and the other audience.
Also not a photo of the drunk girl

If you’re reading this girl who told me/the bouncer in SLC to shut the fuck up I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have acted so snooty after the show. After the show we went to another bar and played pool with some locals. The bar had lots of peanut shells on the floor and Eugene remarked that it looked as though an “elephant had been there.” I found that funny and laughed mightily.