I was in Cuyahoga Falls this past week performing at the Funny Stop. This was a blast for many reasons. The biggest one is that all week I got to hang out with my buddies Dave Merheje and Jeff Ford. The three of us started around the same time in Detroit. Dave since moved to Toronto, so I only see him once every year or so. Although, he and I were the two final comedians to work at Chaplin’s!
I stayed in the comedy condo with my buddies and it was just crazy. It’s a two bedroom condo, so Jeff and Dave ended up sleeping in the same room…actually the same bed. Okay, I come from a small family and am just not used to that. Dave apparently does that all the time and it was no big deal. Jeff is just the easiest going guy in the world, so who knows how he really felt about his sleeping arrangement. I will say, by the second night, Jeff apparently built a barrier of blankets and pillows to separate himself from Dave. I guess all the talk about “finger blasting” during the day maybe freaked him out at night!
The comedians in the greater Cuyahoga Falls area were pretty awesome! Our MC for the week was Justin Cash. He had some pretty sharp, self deprecating jokes. It was his first time hosting at the Funny Stop and he did a good job. Tuesday night Pete, the owner, runs the open mic show and follows it with a short preview of the weekend show. I was pretty impressed with the line up. Thursday, local comedians Brian Mitchell and Anthony Savatt came back to do guest sets. Oh my God, I thought they were both super awesome! I’m glad I got to see both these guys and look forward to seeing them more in the future. I was really hoping to spoof the homeless man with the golden voice video with Anthony because he played the homeless man in Mike Green‘s Book on Tape video. I wanted to do a follow up, but I forgot my video camera.
Friday morning Dave and I did radio at WNIR. It was the most pleasurable radio experience I’ve had in a long time. Local morning guy Stan Piatt also hosts the open mic show at the Funny Stop, so he’s a big comedy fan. His cohost Maggie was a lot of fun too. They ended up having us on for over an hour and instead of doing the stale setting us up to do segments of our act, Stu just had a conversation with us that was chocked full of some really great moments! One of the sales guys in the office had a Jedi robe that his mom made him, yet he thought I was still a bigger nerd than him. Well, I argued that on the air! A guy from the Tuesday show called in and congratulated me on how I handled a drunk heckler. I ended up pulling her on stage and put her on a time out off the the side of the stage on a chair. It’s remarkable how people shut up once they’re under the spotlight!
I’m really grateful that Pete let me put this week together. I had been feeling really down the past month. Lots of bad news in my personal life combined with the fact that the last time I did a full booked week of comedy was that week in Madison, which so far is the high point of my comedy career, just spiraled me into a horrible depression. So it was good to be back on the horse along side old friends and new ones too!
Saturday night as I was leaving, Jeff Ford said he’d see me the next day at the Mike Green Roast. Kris Peters invited me to Mike’s surprise birthday party, but this was the first I was hearing of it being a roast. Well, Sunday after noon sometime Kris confirmed it with me and I had about three hours to put together a few minutes of jokes.
So this was a surprise party for the wonderful Mike Green at the Comedy Castle. His friend Craig, wife Michelle along with comedian pal Kris Peters organized the whole thing. It was really nice watching Mike walk through the entrance legitimately surprised. He thought he was showing up to perform at a corporate party. When we yelled “surprise” he looked like he was genuinely going to cry. I joked that it was probably because he realized he wasn’t going to get that big corporate gig paycheck after all!
The roasters were a mix of Mike’s closest friends in comedy including Bill Bushart, Jeff Dwoskin, Steve Lind, Bob Phillips, Tim Rowlands, the aforementioned Kris Peters, Stu McCallister, and of course me. It also included some of Mike’s oldest and dearest friends too. Oh yeah, even Mark Ridley did time! It really was a fun night. I’m honored to have been a part of it.
My busy week wrapped up with doing ADR looping over the first episode of Deadpan. The people behind the scenes are paying super close attention to detail, which is making me super happy. We have about 30 days before our deadline to get it in this IFC festival. I think we’ll make it. All that’s left now is a lot of the fine tuning as well as a special effects shot that will hopefully be completely unnoticeable. I also cut audio for a three minute trailer that’ll give more of a feel about what the show is about. It was pretty silly standing in the hallway of the place where I did the recording last night breathing heavily and making grunting noises into the microphone. I was dreading the process, but it ended up being a fun time.
Finally after having been on the go from Tuesday morning through Sunday night, I came home, popped in Louis CK’s Hilarious that came in from Netflix and I passed out.
Posted on May 16, 2011, in More Misadventures! and tagged Comedian, comedy, dave merheje, funny stop, mike bobbitt, mike green, off the mike. Bookmark the permalink.	Leave a comment.