At Least Fake It For Me!

Our view out of our hotel in Houghton, MI

Every year I swear that I am done driving through inclement weather and only taking local gigs during the winter months. But, low and behold, every year when I get offered gigs in January and February, I am too afraid to say “no” and take a chance that I might not get booked at all. So, I end up whoring myself out for the sake of comedy and taking gigs with crazy drives and hoping that there’s not a blizzard the weekend I am leaving town. I have spent over 15-years driving through horrendous weather to tell jokes and have easily seen a routine 5-hour drive turn into an 11-hour drive based on the clouds taking a massive shit on the roads. I don’t know if you’ve ever driven through white-out conditions before, but not only is it incredibly dangerous, it’s also one of the scariest situations you can find yourself in. It’s a white-knuckle, front & rearview blinding, praying to whatever you believe in roller-coaster that has no set-end in sight. Back in January of 2014, Pat Chase and I drove 8-hours to get to the UP of Michigan in 4-hours of straight white-out conditions, doing 25mph in a 55mph zone the whole way. The only way we knew that there was anyone in front of us was once in a while we’d catch a glimpse of a semi-truck’s brake lights. This is scary enough without taking into consideration that there are cars behind you that can’t see you either. We immediately got back on the road the second the show was over and started our long journey home. Somewhere around Green Bay, WI we started seeing car-after-car turned over and run-off in the ditches on the sides of the road. No sooner did we see them did 50mph winds start taking over the driving of my Hyundai Sonata. I managed to battle back and forth with the wind for a while until it finally grabbed a hold of my car like a sail and sent us sliding across all 3-lanes of highway heading right for the non-barricaded side of the road, where we foresaw our car flipping over down a ditch. As we were unwillingly being transported to our inevitable death, Pat Chase started praying to God. Now, I don’t know if Pat is a religious type or not, but all I know is in that moment we were both begging for help. Right before we got to the edge, I managed to regain control of the car and straighten us out on the road. We immediately got off the road and grabbed a hotel to sleep for a few hours and let the storm wear off. We slumbered like little school girls laughing about what bitches we were on the road, swearing we would never do that again.

Mock-up of my new album cover

Cut to January 2020, here I am back on the road in what was predicted to be blizzard like conditions. I know that it goes against what I said, but I’m a laugh-slut. This time, I was headed to Houghton, MI with Ben Hamilton to perform at the Eagle Radio Comedy Club. This is a fun gig as it’s in a college town with nice accommodations and one-show each on Friday & Saturday night. I had first done this gig in January of 2016 (another time I sold my soul to the laughter after saying I wouldn’t), and it was a great time, so I was really looking forward to this. Ben and I hit the road around noon on Friday the 10th so that we would get into MI a little early and rest up before the show. As we were hitting the road, we were told that a blizzard was coming to IL and WI over the weekend - which was PERFECT (sarcasm), because even though we were in MI, we were driving through WI to get to the UP of Michigan. Driving to gigs with other comics is always a fun time and this was really cool because Ben is a great friend of mine and I genuinely enjoy his company. We hadn’t seen each other in about a month and hadn’t really caught up for a few months before that. We passed the time in the car making small talk for a while, and then I dropped the dagger on Ben: “Will you listen to the first edit of my new album Vincectomy and let me know what you think?” Out of the kindness of his heart, Ben said “Yes”, while it took us the next 3-hours to listen to my 1-hour album. Ben would listen and pause the recording to share with me his thoughts on a particular bit and/or how it could relate to him and his life. He was trying to be conscious of this and saying “sorry I keep pausing this to share what I like”, not realizing that I’m a self-involved narcissist who was silently salivating over every compliment he was feeding me. I sat there for 3-hours spreading my legs for his compliments, all the while getting great feedback on how to improve the album before my next edit. One of the items we discussed was possibly removing one of the bits from my upcoming album called “Our Floundering Fathers”, which was a bit I did about Ben Franklin and why I don’t think he’s a genius. I personally love the bit, but I did mess up the order of one of the lines the night of the recording and it ended up delivering the wrong tonality of the bit. It sounded so much better on the road leading up to the album, that it’s almost a downer for me to have it this way on the album. I’m not embarrassed by it and don’t think it would ruin anything to keep it in, but I am going to have make a game-time decision here soon.

Vulture walking the stage saying “it’s gonna be ok!”

We got to the gig about 10-minutes before it started. The venue was an old theater called “The Orpheum” - which felt cool to be a part of. Normally, we do clubs or small rooms with the audience right on top of the stage. I love those types of rooms because it feels more intimate with the audience. However, to be in a small theater for this particular gig also felt a little bit like the big time. ..if the “big time” was performing in front of 100 people spaced out in a theater after they spent a full day of snowmobiling and chewing on deer. There was a local radio personality that went up first and did a few stock jokes about the town and surrounding parts; the crowd seemed to enjoy themselves. Ben went up on stage and had a pretty good set. The audience never had that wild, raucous, energy that you hope for, but they gave him their attention and laughed at the right parts. Ben then introduced me to the stage, where I had to do roughly an hour. The directive at the beginning of the show was that the show was to be no less than 90-minutes total. I went up, launched into my rants and could tell from the start that it was going to be touch & go with this audience. They didn’t overly get on board with my ranting right away, almost as if they thought I was being more “serious” than “funny”. I’ve been in this situation many times over the years and I know that all I can do is simply battle through it and commit to my comedy with the hope of bringing some of them onboard as time goes on. As the laughter started to mount, I went in for a killer bit off my newest album called “Peeling the Onion”, which is all about me sharing how my Saturday morning went while talking to a stranger. The bit is a 4-minute, no-coming up for air, rant that has left audiences folded over in laughter across the country this past year. I got to the end of the bit and I got a very tepid applause. Imagine giving it everything you’ve got in the bedroom…going longer, faster, and harder than you ever have before, and then you get to the climax and not only does she not orgasm…she doesn’t even fake it. She just says “that was cool”, gives you a thumbs-up, and rolls over in her non-wet spot. That is what this felt like to me on stage. And right when I started coming up for air after this boner-killer of a response, some lady in the crowd goes “It’s gonna be ok” as if she thought my rant was a serious anger-issue versus a comedy act put in place for entertainment. Call it my pride being stung, or just an ignorant drunk, but that comment got to me and I snapped back with “It is gonna be ok if you shut up”. Now, I knew immediately when I said it that I shouldn’t have said it. The audience let me know as well by giving me an “ohhhhhhhhh” response, which is always the worst response. Nothing exasperates a situation more than that type of response, because it indicates that something is wrong. I didn’t want to start shit with the crowd, but I also wasn’t in the mood to be fucked with. However, I took a breath, regrouped and then proceeded to mock her by saying “it’s gonna be ok” in an annoying voice about 15-different times, with other comments in-between each take. I took the situation from “ohhhhhhh” to hilarious in minutes. I took the crowd from feeling awkward and pushed them right past awkward until it became funny. That is where the experience of being on stage all these years helped. At one point after ripping on what this lady said for so long, I looked at her and said “I just want you to know that I regret saying that to you…but I also am willing to bet that you regret saying “it’s gonna be ok”, so I think we both walk away learning something here”. And upon saying that, the crowd erupted, I went back into my jokes, and they went right back into their anorgasmia. Ben and I went back to our hotel, lied to each other about how well we did for the night and then went to bed. We still had another day of bullshitting to get through and we needed some rest. My buddy Jim Flannigan was doing a show in Des Moines, IA that same night and around 12am he hit me up via text to check in. That part of the road never gets old. Knowing that you have buddies all over the country that can relate to you at any hour. For the next 90-minutes we gossiped like grade-schoolers about our shows. There were lots of “lol’s” and “haha’s” until almost 2 in the morning. I don’t think he found me that funny either, but at least he had the decency to fake it!

Vince Carone & Jimmy Roberson aka Ben Hamilton

Saturday morning came around fast as I had to be downstairs before 10:30am to make sure I could get the free breakfast that came along with the room. Free breakfast is a nice easy road hack that you learn early on in this business. When you are living on the road as comics do, the dollars spent can add up quickly and all of a sudden you start to devalue the worth of the trip you just took. If you can get a good breakfast in for free, and eat it late enough in the morning, usually you can fill yourself up until dinner and not have to spend the money on lunch. Ben and I ended up hitting the local gym to get a workout in. This is something I always try and make sure I do on the road. There is a lot of downtime on the road and if you don’t fill it productively you can find yourself looking at the clock going “I’ve only got 30-minutes to get to the show and I just watched YouTube for the last 8-hours”. After we hit the gym, we went to the store to go buy some snacks to have at our hotel while we watched playoff football. There we sat, turkey lunchmeat on the dresser, football game on the TV, Ben writing jokes for the night, and me sleeping on the bed mid-afternoon. Now, I don’t know what your view of being a comic on the road was in your head before this blog, but I guarantee it wasn’t two dudes eating turkey and not watching the football game that’s on.

View from the rafters

Saturday night’s show was jam packed and the upper-level started filling up as well. I could tell from the buzz of the crowd that this was going to be a fun show. Ben went up and was absolutely murdering the room. I heard that crazy energy and laughter circling the room and was excited to get up on stage. After listening to how well Ben was doing, I knew I was going to have to work my ass off up there to win the crowd over. Now, the crowd was much better than the previous night, but I still never felt like I was in sync with the audience. They laughed, but a rhythm was never established. At one point I had a few people talking in the crowd very loudly to each other. I tried to diplomatically put an end to it only to end up getting riled up again and bitching at the individual talking loud. The crowd started getting on board the more I started to take control of the room. I ended up spending the final 15-minutes of the show on my newer material and ended up catching some good response on a bit called “The Government Giveth, The Government Taketh Away”, and then moved into some material about my son and the parent/teacher conference I had to go to last year. My show ended well on what I am predicting will be the closer to my next album in a few years. Who knows, anything could change over time, but I like where it’s headed.

This was Budster

Ben and I immediately jumped back into the car to head home as I had to get to my son’s 5th birthday party at 11am on Sunday morning. We knew we were in for a battle with the massive snowstorm that was purportedly on its way. We were about 20 miles outside of Houghton, MI, which took about an hour. As we are driving, Ben goes “there’s a dog in that vacant parking lot”. Ben spent the weekend with me shoving any labels two inches from his face claiming “bad eye sight” and now that we are on the road in pitch black at 50 miles an hour he goes from Mr. Magoo to a fucking Bald Eagle. We turn around and go check out the parking lot and sure enough there was a collared dog running around in 12-degree temperature and a pending storm. That turkey that we bought earlier in the day came in handy as we used it like an ET Reese’s Pieces bait-trap to lure that dog into my car. After we got the dog in we noticed that it had two collars on it. One was an invisible fence collar, which obviously didn’t work unless the dog dug a Rita Hayworth hole under his yard. And the other was a regular collar, but neither had tags on them. I called the police and told them where we were and that we found this dog. About 30-minutes later I called the police back and said “nobody is here yet, can we just drop the dog off at the police station so we can get on the road?” The police told me they didn’t have any room for the dog, but there was a shelter in Houghton, MI that would take him. Well, that’s where we just fucking came from. So, if we were to go back up there, it would be in total a 3-hour excursion to wind up back at the same place we were. We were prepared to do it as there is no way the dog would’ve survived the night in the cold, but first I called the shelter, and nobody answered. Just as Ben and I made the decision to bring the dog back to IL with us, the police pulled into the parking lot. We explained that we were going to Chicago and that this was somebody’s dog; if we left, there was slim-to-zero chance that the owners would ever get their dog back. The police said that the Sheriff’s office was 300-yards away and we could drop off the dog there. Ben tried to pass the dog over to the police and the dog freaked out. Apparently, through the turkey and blanket, we built a nice little trust with the dog. We brought the dog over to the Sheriff’s office and put it in a fenced area outside. The police told us that they just had to go in and let the office know about the dog and they would bring it in for the night and feed it. We trusted them and then we left, only to get home at 5am. Ben called the police station the next morning and asked if the dog was ok and they said “The Beagle” and Ben said “Yeah” and they said “Yeah, he’s gone” and Ben goes “Oh, so someone got him?” and they said “Yeah, I guess…” So, that made us feel good (this is sarcasm if you didn’t detect it).

Oh, and in reference to that pending snowstorm, much like Friday night’s show, it never came, it didn’t even fake it…it just never fucking happened.