TURNED MY LIVE SPECIAL CANCELLIN' FROWN UPSIDE DOWN IN FRIENDSHIP TOWN!!!

If you subscribe to my Substack, then you most likely already know that I had a live special taping that was canceled last Saturday (July 18) due to a torrential downpour/thunderstorm that caused flooding in the venue.

The Bell House is cozily and unfortunately nestled in a flood zone near the wretchedly filthy Gowanus Canal.

I’ve done so many shows at The Bell House over the last fifteen years. It was one of the venues for the always fun as hell Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival.

I did a book launch party there for my book My Dead Dad Was In ZZ Top.

Did a Neon Joe Werewolf Hunter fan show there:

And I’ve done my dog show there a couple times for my comedy album Soothing Meditations For The Solitary Dog:

The Bell House is a very special place for me. And while the cancelation of my very first live special taping was a stunning bummer, it is what it is. No use crying over spilt hazardous canal water.

I got a text around 2PM about the flooding, and how they were drying the place out and might be able to have it ready, but with more storms in the forecast we may still have to cancel. They’d assess in the next hour and get back to me; etc. From Bart Coleman, an old pal who’s the head of comedy at Veeps, who were live streaming the event:

All my ‘thon training had hardened me mentally to the potential disappointment of something going wrong the week or even day of a big event, whether it be illness, injury, or in this case, the brutally unforgiving power of Mother Naytch. Happens all the time, unfortch. It’s all how you handle it, etc.

It sucked and still sucks, even though it was clearly the right call. But what really took the sting out of it was the night I ended up having instead.

After the first call at around 2PM from my reps, I just kept moving forward as if the show was still going to happen, even though I thought it was most likely going to cancel. Trimmed my beard. Took a shower. Packed up the stupid outfits that you’ll hopefully see down the line if you make it to the show or watch it on-line.

I had set the costumes on our couch, and my human son fell asleep beneath them, while my dog son slept at the other end of the couch. It was too much of a precious dad-photo to pass up, but my human son would (rightfully) be annoyed if I posted it. So he got covered here forever in jet ski, which also happens to be one of my favorite Neil Diamond songs.

Nothing was going to top the “Hot August Night” album cover photo to put on the jet ski, but I still did a search for “neil diamond bathing suit”, which began and ended here:

I got another call around 3:30 or so saying that with more flood-inducing thunderstorms in the forecast, the show was officially canceled. I took Gatsby for a walk before the next round of rain came rolling through. During that stroll, I started thinking about what I was going to do to make my now-free night devoid of as much sulking and feeling sorry for myself as possible.

There was the World Cup consolation game between England and France at 5, which I was now planning on watching. I had not one but TWO delicious #4’s from Russo’s - both purchased for the show - just sitting in the fridge.

As I was walking Gatsby, I started getting a few texts from concerned friends asking if everything was okay. They were coming to the show and had gotten vague notifications that the show was canceled.

That included this text, from an old pal who was in the sketch show I did in college, at the University of Michigan (again, jet ski protecting the innocent’s last name):

While I would have much preferred that they all saw the show and then surprised me, and we all went out for a drink afterwards, that’s obviously a hypothetical, and I have no idea how that would have played out. Maybe we don’t get quality time to hang because I’m too busy after the show saying hi to other friends and selling merch.

Maybe I get Lettuce Diarrhea right as the show ends and have to rush home. All that mattered in the moment was that a bunch of old friends, who I shared some very formative comedy/life years with, had organized this outing - which included some people coming in from out of town - and my night was immediately course corrected. As I wrote in the mini-post about this main post, it all left me feeling like Marshawn Lynch.

The college sketch show in question was a biannual, very generically named undertaking called Comedy Company.

I acted in it my sophomore, junior and senior years, and directed one show my senior year. Most of the guys in the show were a year older than me. Upon graduating, they were going to take the show on the road. They asked me to join.

I took my senior year of college off to do it. I may write in more detail about that some day. Maybe not. But as Kurt Russell said, as legendary coach Herb Brooks, in the movie Miracle, about the 1980 USA Olympic hockey team that faced the daunting Russian juggernaut, who might beat the USA nine times out of ten:

Suffice to say, that year off was one of the greatest years/experiences of my life. We called ourselves “Just Kidding”, an admittedly not-so-great name, even if ironic, that joins the pantheon of horribly named sketch troupes. That’s my take, at least! Not the worst name, and not the best! It was still a fantastic year! Maybe I just ruined the good vibe of this story! It would have been better had we come up with these mugs. But we didn’t

ANYWAY…we lived in an apartment complex in Ann Arbor, off-campus, and rented a 15 passenger van that we toured in. This was 1989. There’s no internet. We didn’t have an agent. We bought a huge, thick book of college financial aid listings and cold called a bunch of schools, asking for their entertainment division, or whoever the right person/department would be to talk to about booking a comedy sketch troupe. It usually took a bunch of calls to reach the right person, and it usually ended in ‘No.”

But we still managed to cobble together a tour over the course of a calendar school year, September through May, sometimes on the road for weeks, ranging from schools as big as Notre Dame to as small as South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

I had a bunch of t-shirts and sweatshirts that I wish I never got rid of. Especially the Walla Walla College sweatshirt from this week’s prologue post, posted here again for good measure.

But I did save a bunch of small pins and a hockey stick pen!!!

I remember us showing up to the campus of Clarkson University (upstate New York), greeted by a bunch of huge, handwritten signs hanging from trees, wishing the hockey team good luck that night in the college hockey tournament. Thus the pen and pin. We laughed as we imagined no one showing up for the show. We were right!!!!

But over the course of the year’s tour, we basically broke even, which felt like a huge victory. Many of us still keep in touch. Some of us have a group thread that’s mostly about University of Michigan sports. Two people live in San Francisco, and we always get together any time I’ve done Sketchfest, like this live Delocated show from 2012 (!) where Ben Gibbard threw on a cut-up t-shirt in place of a mask and sang a couple songs acoustic.

And me and Paul Rudd wearing some kind of fake beard. I do not remember the bit! I quite literally went to the recap page tonight and saw this photo for I think the first time!

Will do some sleuthing on other pics. But later.

As for my friends from Comedy Company and Just Kidding, we’re all middle age now. Most of us have kids that are older and/or out of the house. There are pending grandparents in our group of pals. Some people have passed away.

There’s always talk on the text thread about making some kind of plan to get together in Ann Arbor for a Michigan football game. But of course, it’s always tough to make a plan with so many people who are spread out all over the country, etc etc etc, and it’s yet to happen. But hey. That’s just:

So while it fucking sucked that my show got canceled, and while it wasn’t everyone from the group, this text about a surprise outing to the show, which lead to a group dinner, which transitioned to hanging out deep into the night, turned out to be the perfect tonic for a big huge bummer. Elton John might even say it saved my life that night!!!!