Paleo Indians + History = Comedy

I was enjoying a lazy Saturday morning at home when I missed a call from a friend of mine who shoots films for the History Channel. His message said this:

"I need someone of your build and your look to be a Paleo Indian; you know, the first people on this continent. It'll be a bunch of running around, simulating mammoth hunts, fun stuff. Give me a call."

If it's anything like the last shoot I did for him, in which I played an ancient Habiru warrior, it should be a hoot. It all started when I answered a craigslist post seeking actors who are "athletic, long haired, unshaven, and semitic looking." Ding, ding, ding, and ding!

Coming soon: footage of me being a Habiru.
Coming later: footage of me pretending to hunt a mammoth.

Vitamin Teeth

This is what happens when we don't have a show for a few days and I start drinking eggnog.

My First (and Last) Stripper

I may never have seen a stripper if it weren't for touring. Why else would I have been at a rodeo cowboy bachelor party in South Dakota?

Seeing a stripper has never been a priority of mine, as I'm both a feminist and stingy. But after my experience, strippers are in fact a priority in my life, in that I hope to never see one again.

We'd been hiking in the Badlands all day and were persuaded by Seth to stop for "just one drink" at a bar. And that was it's name: "Bar." Little did we know that we'd wandered into a wild and crazy last night out for a rider on the rodeo circuit. When we walked in, it was definitely a little weird. "It" mainly being Zach's hair. But by the end of the night, the cowboys had bought us so many drinks that one of us ended up throwing up on the side of the highway. I won't say which Late Night Player it was, but his name was "Seth." (There were two then.)

Despite the fact that I used to dress like they do for real on Halloween, we all found enough common ground to develop a real camaraderie with the bachelor and his "pardners." It went a little something like this:

Them: We hate big government!
Us: So do we!
Them: We tour the Western half of the U.S.
Us: We tour the Eastern half of the U.S.!
Them: We're ranchers!
Seth: I'm a vegetarian!
Them: We're going to f*cking kill your p*ssy *ss!

When Seth clarified that he wasn't an "environmentalist," tempers died down.

There was much talk about how the girls had come all the way from Sioux City, which I think just meant that they weren't overweight. Still, I found their display unarousing and somewhat embarrassing. Instead, we all turned our attention to a naked girl who made us feel right at home: the owner's dog.

Off Kilt-er

Besides peeing at Tim Horton’s, the LNP have yet to go “international.”

It’s a shame, because we’re a perfect fit for audiences abroad. At least that's what the students at one school in rural New York thought. When we walked into their cafeteria, everyone stopped what they were doing and someone whispered “Who are those international guys?” The answer was “Jews.”

Maybe it’s because we haven’t done the outreach, but maybe it’s because we were so burnt by our first, and last, attempt to stretch our borders. Here is an actual excerpt from an e-mail I received from a Scottish theater owner back in '03. As a fresh faced college graduate new to the entertainment biz, I was surprised at how quickly Interpol and Scotland Yard were dragged into things.

“Interpol are now asking for all the evidence i have eg e mails etc this is for their investigation… on a fun note im really looking forward to seeing you guys here… i still think you lot are a hoot he he he anyhow see you soon you owe my company £1000.”

As you may have guessed, we didn’t end up performing at his theater. And he didn’t end up getting squiggly L 1000 dollars from us.

Now here's a creepy picture from a how-to-tie-a-kilt website:

Turkey and Rice

Today the New York Times ran the following:

"Rice in Baghdad as Tensions With Turkey Rise"

The skirmish between Kurdish rebels and Turkish troops is a serious international conflict in an area that is no stranger to violence and political turmoil. Still, if you pretend that a "Baghdad" is some type of cooking vessel, the headline sounds a lot like a casserole recipe. In fact, here are different images that come up as "turkey and rice."

More Bizarre Google Searches

Here are even more weird phrases that people have searched for on google only to end up at LOL, USA. Bear in mind that these are all since my last post on the same subject:

-haircuts for toddler springfield mo
-difference between scuppernong and muscadine grapes
-gayest sketch comedy time travel
-Gandalf is gay
-chafing on my vagina

Judging by these searches, one can only assume that I run a blog about vagina haircuts for gay toddlers who live in Missouri and like grapes. Ironically, I do now. Because if anyone searches for that phrase, I think I know where they'll wind up.

What Is Awkward Turtle?

Only the coolest phrase/gesture combo since "schwing!" Watch and learn. If you still don't know why the kids are saying it, check here.

Seek and Ye Shall Find

While many paths lead to Rome, it turns out that many google searches lead to LOL, USA. I have no way of knowing exactly who reads these words, but I do have the power to look up what people have googled to find my blog. So I thought I would share with you some of the more interesting actual search terms that people like you, or perhaps you yourself, have used to get here.

The most random search that directed people here was for the phrase "springfield mo usa turkish foods in market." Well, either that or "India vagina cream." I’m proud to be the fourth hit on google for anyone searching those words. Same goes for "moles on my vagina."

Someone discovered me by way of searching for "seth, arrested,” and apparently I’m also very popular for those looking for info on the town of Cheesequake.

I’m flattered that someone out there recently searched for “Comedian Aaron Kagan,” and that I’m one of the top hits for “relationship between comedy and tragedy.” And a hearty welcome to all those seeking "guys and exercise.” I trust you’ve found what you were looking for.

In the end, I’d like to say that the biggest draw for my blog is the sparkling wit with which I parlay my adventures on tour. But it’s not. It’s Elizabeth Berkley. On 11/19, I embedded a photo of her licking a stripper’s pole from the film “Showgirls,” and my numbers have never been the same. So without further ado, I’ll just give you what I know you came here for:

Naked and Alone

I don't know what it is about touring, but whenever I get my own hotel room, the first thing I do is take off all my clothes. Somehow, it helps.

Festival of Light(ers)

While the snow piled up on the waterslides outside, we were snug in our hotel room after a long day of touring on this, the third night of Chanukah. But when we gathered around the travel menorah, we realized that we only had two matches left. If you’re Jewish, you know that means we wouldn’t be able to light the menorah for the next few nights. And you knew that because Jews are good with numbers.

But just when it looked like all was lost, a miracle occurred. The miracle of butane.

Apparently, the previous renter of our Altima had forgotten their lighter under the driver seat. This modern day miracle was just as impressive as the one that started it all so long ago. After all, wether it's olive oil or lighter fluid, the price of fuel is a lot higher now than it was back then. Plus matches aren't as easy to come by as you think. Many restaurant foyers only have toothpicks and mints.

The View

There are a few things that I find strange about the view from our hotel window here in Columbus, OH. It’s strange to see waterslides in snow. It’s strange to see waterslides next to a highway. And it’s very strange to see a sign that says “How the West Was Wet.” The West has been notoriously dry since the Pleistocene Era.

But the strangest thing, and the saddest, is that access to the water park wasn’t included with the room.

It's Not the Hewlett Packard Alliance...

Sorry printer fans, but the "HP" stands for Harry Potter. Yes, the HP Alliance is a project of Andrew's which "is dedicated to bringing together Harry Potter fans from everywhere to spread love and fight the Dark Arts in the real world." Also, their logo looks like a lot like the icon for a defibrillator. Check out their latest here:

http://cdn.libsyn.com/pottercast/HPApodcast2.mp3

http://thehpalliance.org/darfurfast

Politics!

Now that I've got your attention, check out the latest video from MC Mr. Napkins:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=wPVPgYBwGQg

Just kidding, this is it:

Masai Called Life

In her debut show on MTV, Claire Danes faced the trials and tribulations of becoming an adult. At a talk I heard this weekend, the speaker faced similar difficulties when, at the age of eighteen, he had to kill a lion.

He was a fascinating speaker and managed to mix in moments of levity while talking about the challenges faced by his tribe: the Masai. When he accidentally knocked over the mic stand, he said "I'm sorry, I don't know machines, just lions." He also said that when you kill your lion, you get a woman. He then gave a knowing look to the crowd. I imagined those sensitive Cantabrigian men sitting around me being instantly devoured.

It happened at the annual Cultural Survival Bazaar in Cambridge this past weekend. There you can buy such indigenous handcrafts as llama wool socks and buffalo toe dream catchers, all while drinking fair trade hot cocoa and mingling with people who seem to hate make-up.

You can visit the website of the organization the Masai fellows works with here: http://www.quenchthethirst.org/ . They focus on drilling wells so Masai women don't have to walk fifteen miles every day to draw water. The organization started when a young college student donated enough for the first well, which in her honor is now referred to as "Christina."

Finally, an Organic Fake Blood!

Everyone knows that corn syrup and red food coloring makes the best fake blood. But you may not know about the looks you get when you regularly purchase these items in small towns across America as an unshaven man in his late twenties who looks none too little like a terrorist.

I do. I also know how red my teeth turn when I have to hold the stuff in my mouth for too long. The more Seth ad-lib's, the darker they get. Also, to eco-friendly, liberal guys like us, over processed agribusiness products like corn syrup and food coloring are like edible Fox News.

I began to wonder if there was a more just way to pretend that I was bleeding. Believe it or not, I found an environmentally friendly alternative that was just as good and for just twice as much money.

The solution (get it? solution!) is organic agave nectar and pure cranberry juice concentrate. It's tarty, fruity, sweet, and even mixes well with homemade Febreze.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

In the interest of fair and balanced reporting, I should add that for every bizarre set-up we may have to suffer through, we also get to go somewhere like this.

Canned Laughter

Speaking of shows at high schools, we were recently the featured entertainment at a canned food drive at a school in New Hampshire. The performance venue? The gym.

While in high school, we avoided that building. Still, it was fun to change in the boy’s locker room as an adult and with no one around to call us gay.

As traveling performers, we’re always the away team. We never have the home court advantage. But with so many miles under our belt, we’re accustomed to performing in all kinds of spaces, ranging from god-awful to endurable.

The audience was divided into two lengths of bleachers facing the basketball court. This might be good for watching a game, but it’s bad for skits that have, as we say in the industry, blocking. We had no choice but to perform up and down the court, always not facing half the crowd no matter which way we turned. It brought to mind images of English Redcoat columns being attacked on both flanks by colonial revolutionaries. It was exactly like nightmares that I actually had in high school.

That said, we were happy to be the entertainment for an event dedicated to such a good cause. And to get money.

The Seth and the Darkness

Two audience members came up to me after a recent show and said that they'd seen us before. When they told me which show they had been to, I almost dropped the “Hi, I’m Seth” shirt I was folding.

I asked if there was a particular moment that had stood out for them at their virgin LNP experience. They looked at each other gravely, then turned to me and said in unison: “The Darkness.”

And yes, they said it with a capital “d.”

It all happened at a high school in an affluent suburb of Boston. I won't say which, but let's just say that there's a fig named after it. Seth and I were on stage leading an audience participation piece. The young woman with whom Seth was bantering said, from her seat in the audience, “I like your shirt!” Seth, squinting in the bright light and unable to see into the dimly lit house, responded with the following:

“Thanks, I like your… darkness.”

Seth squinted harder and discovered, to his horror, that he had addressed the single black student in the crowd.

No Sleep Till Boston

The man next to me in the photo above is the reason I couldn’t sleep on a red-eye flight from Las Vegas to Boston. I guess he thought I chose to fly through the night because I wanted to hang out, fully awake, on an airplane. He must have thought that was strange, because he clearly planned to sleep the whole time. Loudly, odorously, and on top of me.

According to Newton’s laws, my neighbor and I couldn’t both occupy the same space at the same time. But this would have been news to 26D. We exchanged pleasantries during taxi, take-off and landing, but as soon as his eyes closed he turned into the proverbial 500 pound gorilla, and “anywhere he wants to” seemed to mean “on my shoulder.”

His plump, warm arm hung well past his half of the armrest. His top half teetered precariously as though he were of those inflatable clowns you see at children’s parties. The only difference was a social one, in that I wasn’t allowed to repeatedly punch him the face.

Fortunately, revenge is even sweeter than Biscoff. The act of publicly outing my travel companion has so rejuvenated me that I feel like I’ve slept the sleep of ten red-eyes, or half of one normal sleep. Good night, sweet prince. Flight of angels indeed.

PS – Why is Delta’s in-flight magazine available on-line?

The Most Interesting Local Organic Tomato on Earth

Here are two interesting things about this tomato. First, it was delicious. Second, it was grown with one hundred and fifteen degree water piped straight out of the earth.

Seth and I bought a bunch of them in Hooper, Colorado while in the area for a show at Adams State College. We got in the night before and were delighted to find that the local hot springs was open until 10pm. We were even more delighted to find that they use the naturally heated spring water to grow organic tomatoes and cucumbers in their greenhouses.

Another local entrepreneur decided that the warm water was just right for growing something else: alligators. I’m glad we were swimming in the water while eating something grown with the water rather than swimming in the water and being eaten by something grown in the water.

After a long day of travel, nothing beats a hot soak under the stars in the largest alpine valley in the world. Fully relaxed and only a little woozy from the elevation, I brushed what looked like a black widow off my towel and called it a night.

The Fridge of Fate

Last night we played Castleton State College in Vermont. Our host was one of the formerly four eyed who have undergone “Lasik” corrective surgery. If you thought of the funniest song that could have been playing when she entered the doctor’s waiting area, what would it be?

If you guessed “Blinded by the Light,” you’re both right and funny, or you're her.

After the show, we headed back to The Comfort Inn, which after four years of playing Castleton, we know quite well. Still, the adjective “comfort” doesn’t exactly leap to mind when we think of it. Maybe it’s the barb wired military facility across the street, the bitter cold, or the fact that Andrew was throwing up everywhere the last time we were there. I think I’ll just call it “The Inn.”

At The Inn, Zach asked the man behind the desk if there was a refrigerator he could use. And there was… IF you’re a gambling man. You see, any food put into this fridge may or may not be eaten by a member of the hotel staff. There was no way to know. Was it worth it?

No. Especially because our informer added that he had once “put laxatives” into his own pizza to catch the thief. The guilty party apparently “sh*t themself.” Not the most reassuring words from someone with a master key to your room.

Zach did not trust his food to the Fridge of Fate. I did not trust that the guy had actually baked Ex-Lax into a pizza. We were not comfortable.

Sorbet for Your Eyes

It occurs to me that the last two posts have been, as the middle schoolers once said, a little "grody." So I thought I would put up a bit of a palate cleanser. Here's a picture of Seth that I took with the special features feature of the creepy, Big-Brothery camera in my laptop. We're currently "working" (blogging) out of the Haymarket Cafe in Northampton, Mass. We did a show at UMASS Amherst last night that their school paper billed as "a mid-week priority." We've made it!

Funny Ha-Hah? No.

Our material isn’t the only thing we produce that’s funny. There’s also our smell.

Let’s face it. We’re some guys. And we’re guys who don’t shy from extra-garlic hummus. Some might say we seek it out.

So you can imagine that after a few days of travel in a tightly confined vehicle, there's some pretty wavy lines emanating from us. Plus we think of ourselves as fairly counterculture, or as a member of a frat once put it, “sketchy homos.” And that means that we don’t like products like Febreze, which is said to eliminate both smells and pets.

That’s why we got so excited when our costumer designer Tim Baum told us about a homemade alternative, or "Bathtub Febreze." If you mix equal parts cheap vodka and water in a spray bottle, it apparently does the trick. It also sounds like a fun, slow way to drink.

Pushing the Limits of Refrigeration

Clearly, the above photo portrays a new twist on an ancient method of food preservation. FYI, it's a sandwich on the roof of a car.

I had made said sandwich in Plymouth, Michigan with materials I bought in Kalamazoo, but on the way to Pittsburgh we were passing through Cleveland, where we never pass up an opportunity to eat at the Peking Gourmet.

“If only there were some way to save my sandwich for later so that I could eat Chinese food now,” I thought. As the expression goes, tofu in the hand is worth turkey on the airplane.

I got the idea to keep the sandwich cold when I noticed that outside it was cold. And what better place to keep food fresh than the luggage rack of a Dodge Grand Caravan while barreling down I-275, I-75, I-280, I-80, I-76, I-79 and then I-279? I figured the buffeting winds and smattering of rain would only help lock in freshness. It also made me feel popular, because everywhere we went, people stopped and shouted: “Hey! (There’s something on your roof.)”

In the end, the sandwich stayed cool and dry, and Seth owed me a cool, dry dollar for his skepticism. Who needs refrigerators when you’ve got wind, rain, highways, and friends?

There’s Something Funny About This Exercise Room

Actually, there are three things.

1. The scale said I weighed 102 pounds. The scale is either wrong, or a time machine to 1992.

2. While there is a window, the treadmill faces away from it. Clearly, whoever arranged the equipment has a loathing of nature so deep that they prefer the sight of sweat encrusted beige wallpaper to, say, a tree. To compensate, the different incline levels have names like “Alpine Ascent" and "Hillock Schlep.”

3. The Health Rules sign declares the following:

“If your doctor recommends that you refrain from exercise, take his advice.”

That inspired me to create a riddle. It is:

"If a doctor recommends that you refrain from exercise, how can the doctor be a woman?"

Answer: If you aren’t sexist.

Gandalf the Gay

Extra post today to congratulate our good friend and former/kind-of-still LNP Andrew Slack. He has supplied the LA Times with a great cover story on the Harry Potter character who is now officially gayer than any other: Albus Dumbledore. Zach did the anagram and adds that instead of saying "That's so gay," people should now say "What a Dumbledore."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-showbiz7-23oct23,0,5726083.story?coll=la-home-entertainment

Bad Routing

I’m writing from Chicago Midway, en route back to Boston after a show in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, it was a one-off performance, which means we traveled roughly 2,522
miles for every hour of comedy.

The only thing less desirable than a one-off show is a daytime show. This was both. To add insult to injury, upon arrival we were chastised by an art teacher.

Her: Where are you coming from?
Us: Boston.
Her: Where are you going to?
Us: (sheepishly) Boston.
Her: Don’t you understand how block booking works?
Us: Yes.

But sometimes that’s just how the schedule crumbles. Despite the imperfect circumstances, our brief experience at the college was still a rich one. We were surprised to find a display of student drawings about the graphic novel “Maus.” Speaking about the professor who created the project, our host said: “Oh yeah, he’s really into the holocaust.”

The “theater” (cafeteria) where we performed was called the Marauder’s Cove – a fitting name for a landlocked technical college’s dining hall. In the serving area hung a sign proclaiming: “Taco must be able to be taco without a fork, or else it will be taco salad.” Apparently, people try to make off with more taco than they pay for. I guess they’re the “marauders.”

When I asked the cook what the best thing there was, he said “the girls.” When I asked him what the best thing that he cooked was, he said “nothing.”

It's Tough Eating on the Road

It's tough eating on the road, but somehow we manage.



Note the veins.

-ak

Don't Eat Here

I should have known by the pop music blaring from the speaker outside The Plain and Fancy that it’s not as Amish as it’s cracked up to be. In fact, a more apt name would be "The Plain and Crappy, and Expensive."

If the music hadn’t given it away, our “Amish” host’s lavalier mic should have. That or something they had called "Amish Experience F/X Theater." In all fairness, the place doesn’t claim to adhere to the strict doctrine of the Amish. It’s just Amish-ish.

I enjoy things both plain and fancy, but for some reason the combo proved deadly. As a ravenous consumer of local foods, I was optimistic about my odds at the P&F. I figured that even a copy of a cuisine religiously mandated by an Ordnung had to be good. I was wrong.

As Seth quipped after our meal, "If I were Amish I would hate this place." Well I'm not Amish, and I do.

Also, don’t eat at the Red Avocado in Iowa City. It’s everything meat eaters say about vegetarians come true.

Gas Station Salvation

Seth was getting gas when I noticed something strange on the oily concrete next to the pump. It turned out to be the cutest animal I have ever seen - an abandoned baby mouse so young it's eyes were still shut. It's head was roughly the size of it's body, placing it in the developmental phase known as "Cartoon-Like Cute." The biological function of this is to make others want to care for it. As Gallagher once quipped: "God makes babies cute so you don't kill 'em." Then he probably smashed something with his giant hammer, perhaps a baby doll, or something juicier.

Nature's strategy worked on us. Me, Seth, a mechanic, and the cashier from inside were all gathered around the tiny, shivering creature in no time flat. The mechanic summed up what we were all thinking when he said: "I know people kill mice, but it's just a baby."

The cashier ran inside and returned with an empty Dentyne Fire "Spicy Cinnamon" box, and the mechanic gently pushed the mouse into it. I covered it up with shredded Panera napkins I had in my pocket.

We took it to an animal hospital about three quarters of a mile down the road, where the attendant said it didn't look too dehydrated. She seemed sorry not to have any mouse milk on hand, and recommended that we feed it some other kind. The she saw the look on our faces and said: "Oh, I see. You just wanted to drop it off."

I then pulled out the trump card. The excuse that has delayed the return of countless voice mails and e-mails. The bane of concerned family members and friends. The wedge between us and our girlfriends.

"We'd love to help, really. But you see, we're on the road."

Happy anniversary, Jack Kerouac. Good luck, little mouse.

Cheesequake?

Does you realize there's a town in New Jersey called "Cheesequake?" Cheesequake!? Like a cheese earthquake? Why this isn't talked about more often I cannot understand.

Brew Ha-hah

After years of talking about it, today we finally did it. We stopped at a brewery.

We decided on a little place in Jersey called Climax Brewery, which turned out to be the oldest micro-brewery in the state. The owner swears that the name has nothing to do with sex, though their T-shirt design is dominated by a scantily clad cartoon woman straddling a keg, holding a foaming mug, and showing no remorse for the carefully drawn nipples poking through her shirt.

When I spoke with Dave, the owner, he was conflicted about our stopping. He seemed torn between meeting the demands his busiest season and sharing with us what he referred to as “a shit load of Oktoberfest I have laying around.”

When we asked to do a tasting, Dave warned us that Climax was more like a factory than a vineyard. German yet hamish, his operation was a nice balance between science and art. Dave spoke with clarity about his complicated machinery while betraying a truly emotional commitment to his craft. We developed a great respect for him and his work as we got drunker and drunker.

I was surprised to find that most if not all commercial beers are force carbonated, since natural carbonation is too unpredictable and can result in either a flat beer or shards of glass in your face. I was not surprised by his diatribes against what he calls “The Big Three.” Like most small businesses, his was severely limited by competition from the giants of industry and by bureaucracy. In other words, by red tape and Red Stripe.

Both Dave and his beer had real character. He was full of pithy observations about brewing and life in general, and told us several different things that were the number one thing a brewer would say if you asked them about beer. A passionate man, his love of beer was matched only by his hate for a strain of yeast called “Pugsley.”

Orca Carrot

Today I discovered something startling in my soup. It happened while I was enjoying the soup and sandwich special from one of our favorite food stops, the Honest Weight Food Co-Op in Albany, NY. The dish was designated both "Vegan and Vegetarian," so you can imagine my shock when I found in it what was clearly the severed head of an orca whale. See photo.

Don't Rent a Chevy Aveo

I don't want what happened to us to happen to you. So please, don’t ever rent a Chevy Aveo. Based on my experience, when you do, Zach will wake you up in the middle of the night to show you the enormous welts on his hands and stomach. He will then sleepily guide you to the culprit, a bedbug he has trapped under a plastic, hotel drinking cup. Then you’ll feel shamed for having stayed at the Super 8, especially after the guy at the Hampton Inn told you not to, even though it was cheaper. Sure, you feel better when they pick up the tab based on a serious of incriminating cell phone photos of the bugs crawling around on the otherwise characterless sheets. But still, there’s no legroom.

Spoils of Tour: Part 2

Everyone knows that the best Farmer’s Market in the country is in Ithaca. Well, anyone who knows me. Which is everyone reading this.

Where else can you get a Cambodian omelette, hard cider, a shitake inoculated log and macrobiotic tapioca pudding in the same place? Heaven.

Admittedly, finding a nice FarMar in a hippie town surrounded by educated farmers and fertile land is like shooting fish in a barrel. A small barrel, full of enormous fish. This is precisely why I like the Springfield, Missouri market so much. The Springfield market doesn’t seem like it should exist, and yet it does, and it’s great.

When comparing markets, one must take into account certain regional differences. For instance, the Ithaca market shares a postal code with Cornell University, which features degrees in both viticulture AND enology. In contrast, the Springfield market is just a stone’s throw from the Precious Moments factory. (And I do wish more stones were thrown in that direction.) It’s not exactly acai country.

Housed in a handsome, wooden structure, the Ithaca market is on the shore of Cayuga Lake, and many shoppers arrive by sail or paddle. The market in Springfield is in the parking lot of a mall. It looks like a refuge camp, or a dog who knows it’s not really supposed to be on the bed.

I have sampled delights there that I have seen nowhere else. In a nation that looks and tastes increasingly similar no matter where you are, that’s huge. Missouri is what “coasties” refer to as a “fly-over state,” but the local foods movement is just as alive in that mall parking lot as it is in Manhattan. Also, “coasty” is a really stupid name.

I sampled some incredible wild plums when I was in Springfield last Fall. A truly wild food, they are not grown but gathered, and the woman selling them told me it was a race between her and the deer. I didn’t see her or her plums this time around, so I’m afraid the deer ate them both.

If you do fly over Springfield, you’ll miss the opportunity to buy local buffalo jerky, lemon cucumbers, canary melons, and “chocolate” cherry tomatoes. For any coasties who don’t believe me, see the evidence below. Now that’s a precious moment.


-----------------------------
That was the thrilling conclusion to Spoils of Tour: Part 1!

Spoils of Tour: Part 1

There are few things that make more sense than eating local food. For more information, go to any one of the bazillion local food resources that have sprung up this week. It’s hard to say which is popping up more frequently: farmer’s markets, the vegetables they sell, or the erections of foodies.

The only downside to eating locally, besides sometimes feeling like a wimp, is the limitations it places on one’s diet. It’s easy to go too far. Any third grader knows that the closest food to the mouth is in the nose, but you don’t want to give up chocolate for it.

You should find plenty of options at your local Farmer’s Market, or FarMar, as in “You’ll get ‘far mar’ for your dollar there than at the supermarket. But if you wish there were a way to eat local and eat things from faraway places at the same time, there is a solution. Be in the Late Night Players. That way you can dance between growing zones like a Rabbi dances between raindrops to trick twenty-nine witches.

Patronizing FarMar’s is also a great way to get to know your local growers, and to meet weird people. One of my absolute favorite markets is Springfield, Missouri. Why? Because it’s in Springfield, Missouri.

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Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion, Spoils of Tour: Part 2!

Seth Almost Gets Arrested

There’s no other way to show up for a performance than with three police cruisers surrounding you, lights flashing. And there’s no better way to leave a venue than with a court order to appear back in Conway, Arkansas for disorderly conduct. At least that’s how Seth likes to do it.

At every college, we pause before entering to take a photograph of Seth in front of the school’s ornate welcome sign. While we take the photograph, Seth drops his pants to reveal the pallid orb that is his rump. We then use this photograph to blow college students’ minds in a skit we commonly refer to as “Seth’s Butt.”

The strange thing is not that Seth was told he was lucky to have not been arrested. The strange thing is that this was the first time we’d been caught.

They gave Seth a really hard time. It was a regular blue state-red state culture war, played out between beefy Southern men with short haircuts, and a short man who had showed his hairy, beefy buttocks. Maybe we were caught because Seth dropped pants in front of the entrance to the University of Central Arkansas in broad daylight, but maybe it was because we had Massachusetts plates.

Meanwhile, our hosts more than made up for it by giving us one of the warmest receptions we’ve ever had, including buying us “sushi” for dinner and offering to bake us a broccoli corn bread.

In the end, a good time was had by all, including the fire ants who feasted on our ankles as we all hugged goodbye.

Back in the Saddle

I have a cough, I’m listening to country and I’m waking up in Best Westerns again. That can only mean one thing: Fall touring has begun. That, or I’m a sick trucker.

Our summer hiatus has come to an end (see previous entry), and we’re now four days into the Fall ’07 Tour and more than half way across the country. A week ago I was living in a cabin on a beautiful lake in northern Vermont, falling asleep to the silent wooshings of shooting stars and the loud cackling of loons. Now I’m falling asleep to the loud wooshings of my loony partner’s GI tracts, and cackling.

While traveling, the pace of life alternates between fast forward and a grotesque still shot where the actor’s face that you’d just been watching in beautiful fluidity is now unrecognizably frozen into a hideous contortion. There’s a phrase people in theater toss around: “hurry up and wait.” In our line of work, it’s hurry up and drive for 10 hours, while still hurrying.

Fortunately, the travel gods accept mundane suffering as a sacrifice, and reward us with bizarre and beautiful experiences one simply cannot have at home. In the past few days, this phenomenon delivered us the name of one audience member’s father. He happens to work as the profession most frequently volunteered by audiences when asked for a type of job. That’s gynecologist. (Things we also hear: Proctologist and “Shut up, you suck!”) The gynecologist’s name? Dr. Payne. His associates? Dr. Fury and Dr. Butcher. Their nurse? Muffy Beaver.

Then there was the hail storm we drove through just east of Buffalo, and a great boomerang throwing session in a Target parking lot. I’ve had a renewed interest in toys since learning how much the Yoruba orisha Eligua likes them. Eligua, the sweeper of obstacles and a notorious trickster, is as much one of my comedy idols as John Cleese. So far on this tour, the boomerang is my preferred toy. I like that something I hold in my hand one moment can soar unpredictably through the sky in the next. It’s kind of like [INSERT METAPHOR ABOUT TOURING].

---------------------

Ak.

The Dark Lord Waldemart

I’ve been living in a cabin in rural Vermont for the past two weeks, teaching a Shakespeare camp. As a result, I’ve been more in touch with the mythical Forest of Arden some 407 years ago than I have with the here and now. That’s why I was surprised when my girlfriend called to ask why I was on the front cover of the business section of the Chicago Tribune. The biggest surprise was not that I was in the paper, but that it was the business section.

Turns out our latest anti-Walmart Harry Potter video made some waves.

The video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuEAJFnMIjk

The movement:

www.waldemartwatch.com

The Chicago article:


http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-wed_waldenmartjul18,0,801652.story

Another article:

http://thephoenix.com/Article.aspx?id=43962&page=1

A Thing:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0707/5039.html

Another Thing:

http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=215



- ak.

Summertime, Summertime, Sum, Sum, Summertime

We unflinchingly say that we’re full time performers. It’s a badge of pride. Sure we haven’t had our New York Times article yet, or a TV show offer, but damn it, we work hard. Sure we don’t work much during the summer, but during the “school year,” the four of us do the work of eight men! Well, eight tiny men. Each one about half our size. You do the math.

The reason we don’t work as much during summer is because most of our shows are at colleges, and most colleges close during the summer, probably because they couldn’t keep afloat distributing all those free condoms during the lusty, warmer months.

So during the summer, we each find bizarre and non-committal ways of paying the bills while still leaving ourselves open for the usual business items and smattering of shows. Zach’s been living in Northampton, working on his hip-hop career as Mr. Napkins and directing theater at an arts camp. As usual, Andrew is changing the world in new and exciting ways, most notably through the Harry Potter Alliance, a social justice organization dedicated to fighting the dark arts in the “muggle” world. And Seth has been picking his nose.

I’ve pieced together an elaborate patchwork of occupations that fulfill my employment goals of being more interesting than they are lucrative. These include teaching Shakespeare in Vermont, house-sitting, organic urban gardening, and teaching a few martial arts classes at a camp in Cambridge. Teaching children how to kick and punch “bad people but not each other” provides me with a wealth of strange or "darndest" things kid say.

Yesterday, I was teaching some kids a stretch known as the Plow Pose in yoga. In it, you lie on the floor, then bring your legs up over your head with your feet touching the floor behind you. You end up doubled over with your back on the floor, your knees on your forehead, and your feet extended past your head. One little boy was struggling to stretch further and further, grunting and talking to himself by way of encouragement. Pleased that one of my students was showing such initiative, I walked over and finally heard what he was saying.

“I can… almost… (grunt!)… taste… my balls!“

------------
Aaron Kagan tours FULL TIME with the Late Night Players.

Doing the Charleston, Part Two: Dogs the Musical

Our first day at the Piccolo Spoleto festival in Charleston, SC was marked by a massive media blitz. First, we appeared on Low Country Live, a local morning news program.There we pathetically re-enacted our most accessible material without going over our three minute time slot. The hosts of the program chuckled politely, perhaps out of contractual obligation. Then it was off to a teaser performance at what seemed to be a craft fair.

The act before us sang songs from an original musical opening that week. It’s name? “Dogs the Musical.”

We didn’t see the entire show, so I can’t speak for the piece as a whole. But I can say that from what I saw, I think the same thing happened to Corky St. Clair of Christopher Guest’s “Waiting for Guffman” that happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in “Last Action Hero.” Think about it.

One song told the tale of a young pet psychic who can hear what the “dogs” are thinking. The dogs, by the way, are humans with make-up on their noses. Another repeatedly featured the refrain “Bow-wow, yeah, yeah!” My favorite moment by far was when Priscilla, the one feline in the cast, refused to be groomed like her canine friends. I forget the exact line, but she said something about not wanting someone clipping near her “anal glands.” This was sung at full volume and in brilliant sunshine by a local woman of some sixty plus years, wearing cat ears.

But the strangest thing about DTM is that it costs $22 to see. We know this from a ticket stub found in the gutter, which may or may not have been a statement about the quality of the show.

-Aaron Kagan tours the US with the Late Night Players sketch comedy team when he isn't being mean to local theater productions.

Doing the Charleston, Part One: Harry Potter and the Scuppernong

There we were, in town for a four night run at the Piccolo Spoleto festival, which means we had four days relatively free in what has rapidly become our favorite touring destination: the Lowcountry. As we sloshed into the tasting room of a local vineyard, seeking refuge from tropical depression Barry, a teacup Yorkie ran up to great us. His name? Harry Potter.

He was followed by a charming older woman, who owned the winery along with her husband. I mean, she and her husband owned the winery together. She gave us the low down on Harry Potter: “ He was kind of a girly boy when we got him, with ribbons in his hair, but now he runs around with sticks.”

Seth, a wry smile forming amidst his stubble, asked: “Do you spell it H-A-I-R-Y?”

“No, H-A-R-R-Y” she responded, correcting what she must have assumed was Yankee ineptitude.

Her husband then appeared and instantly began describing the history of the Muscadine grape that they so proudly grow. Apparently Muscadine viniculture is an old Southern tradition, popular since long before what our informer referred to as “The War of Northern Aggression,” or what we in the North think of as “The End of Slavery.”

Given that comment, we were curious to see how our hosts would interact with the black family who came in after us. As far as we could tell, they were treated with exactly the same level of Southern hospitality, with one exception. The owner recommended that we pair their sweet, white wine with Thai food. We overheard him recommend that the family try it with fried chicken.

That said, we loved the wine. It was much more interesting and far less expensive than many of its counterparts above the Mason Dixon line. In fact, I’ll go so far as to recommend that phrase as the new slogan of the South: More Interesting, Less Expensive.

Some of the wines were on the dry side – always an accomplishment for small vineyards with unusual varieties of grapes, as they’re often tempted to compensate for lack of complexity with a higher percentage of residual sugars. We asked what accounted for the difference between sweet and dry wines from the same grape, imaging that it must have something to do with the type of oak their barrels were made from, or the ratio of skins to juice in the final pressing. “Dixie crystals!” they answered, beaming.

When they want to go for a sweeter wine, they add sugar. It was as though someone had put a toddler in control of the final product. Surprisingly, you could “taste the grape” much more in a bottle that had 1/8 teaspoon of added sugar. However, the same goes for “tasting the grain” in oatmeal as compared to, say, Cocoa Puffs.

Our hosts took every opportunity to inform us of the advantages of the Muscadine grape over all other varieties, making it an obvious metaphor for the superiority of the South. Lesser known and full of seeds, the Muscadine somehow beat out all those Northern grapes in every possible test. It was even naturally resistant to pests and required no spraying.

“So it’s organic?” asked Seth, full of New England liberalism.
“No, not with all the herbicide I have to spray,” said the proprietor.

But there was more. Muscadines, and their cousin, the Scuppernong (!?) also contain mythic proportions of every nutritionally beneficial chemical that occurs in nature, trumping grapes with wimpy names like “pinot.” Apparently, drinking Muscadine wine even coats your platelets so thoroughly that your arteries will never clot. To bad it couldn’t have helped them win that pesky disagreement over states’ rights.

-Aaron Kagan tours the US with the Late Night Players sketch comedy group, and is a burgeoning scuppernong afficianado.

My Big Break

I was recently asked to be in a play. It’s been 6 years since I’ve been on a stage for anything besides an LNP gig, unless you count a speaking engagment for Martin Luther King Day at a high school in rural Arizona and a couple of anxiety dreams. So this was kind of a big deal.

And it was flattering. The play was a 10 minute one act in the Boston Theater Marathon, a fundraising event at which you can watch as many of the 50 plays as you like, with all ticket sales going to charity. I got the offer through my girlfriend, who is among other things, a fantastic actress. Her employer, who is particularly well placed in the Boston theater community, said that she had a part that was just perfect for me.

Perfect? For me? Why, then it must be a very good role.

Do you think that turned out to be true? Why don’t you read the stage directions that describe my character’s entrance and then decide:

ART enters. He is naked except for a thong and knee-high leather boots. He has an anarcho-punk look. Printed on his chest, in black marker and in big letters, is the word “ART”. He turns round and his back becomes visible to the audience. On it, in black marker, is written the word “FUCKS.”

Yes, it was nice to take a break from the world of sketch comedy and sink my teeth into some real acting. I relished the opportunity to rub elbows with the theater community proper. You could say that we do theater, or you could say that we do something in theaters.

When other actors would ask me what company I was with, I had some explaining to do. Unlike them, I didn’t work with one of the seemingly infinite amount of theater ensembles from Western Massachusetts with one word names. Nor did I support my theater addiction with a desk job in one of those mysterious fields like “development” or “consulting” that must absorb all those people who majored in communications.

When I explained that I was in a comedy group, I heard a range of bewildered responses as people tried to condescend to something they didn’t quite understand. It was like a shark trying to insult a school teacher.

In the end, I found myself grateful for getting the chance to perform for a couple hundred people in one of Boston’s most prestigious theaters, and for a good cause. I also found myself scraping the word “FUCKS” off my back with cold cream.

My Vagina (Cream)

I recently visited a dermatologist for the first time since a short, Jamaican man named Dr. Virtue burned a mole of my chest at the age of thirteen. But that was a long time ago, and now my mom doesn’t set up doctor’s appointments for me anymore. I live in a world without Virtue.

I had one question for my new doctor that burned in my mind and sometimes on my upper thighs: how to avoid irritation and chafing in the… special zone. He recommended basic hygiene, regular dustings of baby powder, and, in the event of an incident, the application of an over the counter cream. This he scrawled in Aramaic on a post-it note sponsored by a corporation whose name seemed to combine an emotion and a kind of plastic.

When the pharmacist at CVS had finally deciphered the doctor’s recommendation, she paused for a moment, looked me over, and, I later realized, assessed my gender.

“What’s this for?”

I lowered my voice and leaned in close. “Irritation in the groin.”

“Follow me,” she said.

Then, in the middle of the store, she asked: “Again, what’s this for?”

“Groin irritation” I said at a regular volume, trying to look as casual as I do when buying condoms.

She led me to an aisle with a sign that said something like “Women’s Lovely Items.” There, between of tubes of Vagisil and Spring Rain, was my cream.

I had two options: applicator shaft or vaginal suppository. I turned to my guide, but she had already high tailed it back to the safety of her counter, probably assuming that I or someone I loved had a vagina.

When I read the label more carefully, I saw that it said “Do not use unless you have had a yeast infection on your vagina before.” With those two strikes against me, I called the doctor. The receptionist answered.

“What’s your question?”
“I have a question about the warning label on my medication.”
“What’s it say?”
I told her. A pregnant silence followed.

I waited patiently while she checked with the doctor, pretending the applicator was a slide whistle.

“He says it’s fine.”

The entire episode made me feel kind of lost. Gone was the dermatologist of my youth. My new doctor didn’t provide the sense of security of one hand picked by my mom. I learned that we, the recipients of health care, must look out for our own interests. Yes, in the end, you could say that Patients is a Virtue.

------------------

Aaron Kagan practices good hygeine.

Poetry In Motion

“I walk alone, absorbed in my fantastic play, — 
Fencing with rhymes, which, parrying nimbly, back away; 
Tripping on words, as on rough paving in the street, 
Or bumping into verses I long had dreamed to meet.”

-C.B.

Charles Baudelaire roamed the streets of Paris as a flaneur, a wandering poet in search of what we might now call “soft news.” His spleen was enormous. He floated down les avenues awash in absinthe, in a cloud of opium, being rained on by hydrogen and oxygen. A self described combatant, he fenced with the city to win its rhymes. Cities contain fences. Therefore, he might have sometimes fenced with a fence.

Replace “stroll” with “drive”, “the city” with “I-90”, and “poetry” with “blog” and you’ll see that I am exactly the same as Charles Baudelaire. He fenced for poetry, I for funny jokes. We are as one, except that I haven’t written poems called “A Hideous Jewess Lay With Me” and “To She Who Is Too Gay.”

En guarde, America!

Comedy During Tragedy

The last line of the previous post was going to read: “As far as I can tell, all’s well in America.” But it just didn’t seem right. Sure enough, shortly after the blissful day I described in the last installment, our country suffered its worst school shooting to date.

People are quick to point out the relationship between comedy and tragedy, but in practice it’s much more complex than the old formula. When we’re up in front of college students and the crowd jumps when fireworks go off a mile away, like they did tonight, you realize that there’s not even a grain of gallows humor in what has just happened.

Our approach to sensitivity is as varied as our venue list. Sometimes it comes down to a quick decision made moments before going on stage, sometimes we add lib to correct content in sensitive environments, and sometimes we spend whole van rides arguing over which vaginal synonyms objectify women and which are just funny. (“Box” and “hoo-ha,” respectively.)

We live in an age of masters like the brains behind The Daily Show and The Onion. There have been masters in the past, like Chaplin taking on Hitler, but their less complex times did not require the finesse and nuance of, say, Jon Stewart tackling Bush regarding September 11th. Bernadine Dorhn, famous for blowing up buildings as ringleader of the Weather Underground, once told me that she thinks The Onion is a powerful tool for social change. From bombs to editorials by Area Man.

Ideally, when something like Virginia Tech happens, every citizen takes a good, hard look at their own actions. How can you prevent things like this from happening, and when they do, what can you do to help? What you can you do as a student, lawyer, parent, or in our case, comedian? Our approach is twofold.

First, reach out to any audience members who don’t look like they’re part of a community. These people frequently find their way to our shows and stay longer than anyone else, and we don’t leave until they do. Second, watch what you say up there.

We always want to push, but there’s no value in making an audience feel bad in a way that is unproductive or paralyzing. So for the time being we’ve snipped out any and all references to guns or violence, and I’m making more of an effort to reach out to loners, especially at colleges.

When I look what we’re doing and how it fits into the scheme of things at this point in time, I figure the best we can do is to give people a night off from the darkness.

-A.K.

As It Should Be

The day began with a massive brunch by our gracious hosts Tom and Susan Newberry, parents to Andrew’s girlfriend and my girl friend, Sarah. The meal began with a blonde gazpacho laced with green grapes and marcona almonds, and it ended with homemade mango sorbet and satisfied moaning. To drink, Mr. Newberry’s famous margaritas, so good that the recipe must here be published: 3 parts tequila, 1 part grand marnier, fresh lime juice, a dash of almond syrup. Not a bad way to start the day, if you like pleasure.

Breakfast was followed by a quick dip in lake Minnetonka, whose ice had just melted. It was quick because I didn’t want to die.

We then cruised on to Madison, passing the rock spires and cranberry bogs by the “Wis Dells.” While HQ was being slammed with a Spring Nor’easter, we enjoyed perfect driving weather: 64 degrees, spotty cloud cover, light traffic, and for us, not too much farting.

Things were looking good for the LNP. We were full of sorbet, the sky was full of migrating cranes, and adult novelties were available at most exits.

My Stars!

We’re sharing our booth at this conference with Dennis Haskins, aka Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell, with whom I am on hugging – nay, bear hugging - terms. LNP celebrity encounters have spiked recently thanks to our help writing for Boston’s two highest profile fundraising events. Here are some things I’ve learned about those I’ve met.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick now recognizes the extravagance of his travel budget, and Andrew.

Boston Mayor Tom “Mumbles” Menino is like a big, democratic teddy bear. Not so much because he’s cute, which he is, but because he can’t really speak.

Aerosmith bassist Tom Hamilton makes a bizarre Borat.

In person, the Car Guys sound, and laugh, just like they do on NPR. The former is interesting, the latter slightly awkward.

Robert Goulet’s wife finds us “intriguing,” and he himself is not only charming but also drunk.

---

Aaron Kagan is currently typing this.

LNP v.s. Snakes

From the seventh floor of the Crown Plaza in St. Paul I can see twilight releasing it’s dim hold on what’s left of the skyline. To my right, the bluffs of the Mississippi catch the last bits of sun. To my left, a packed convention center teems with entertainers of all shapes and sizes, hawking their wares to unwary college students at the regional conference for the National Association of Campus Activites, or “NACA.” Or, as some students from Massachusetts inadvertently say it, “NAUWKA.”

Here, a college might book the Late Night Players, a giant, a giant chair, a mechanical bull, or actual reptiles. I don’t like to think of it as a competition, but I also don’t like it when the chair does more business than us. When the reptiles do, I don’t mind -- if something can kill me, it’s fair for it to do better on the college market.

If you’re ever in the twin cities, I have one strong dining recommendation. The astronaut ice cream at the Science Museum is literally out of this world, and if you can identify the species of the “bird on the buoy” statue in the foyer, you get a sticker. The sticker cannot be traded for more astronaut ice cream.

How to Have the Flu and Tour

Option 1: Don’t.

Option 2: No need to be a hero and drive all the way from Vermont to Detroit. Let Zach do it. You sit shotgun, moaning.

When you get to the Ramada in Buffalo, specify a non smoking room since you’re already in pretty bad shape and don’t need any extra carcinogens. When they still give you a smoking room, complain. While they’re getting your new room ready, shiver.

The next day, let Zach drive again.

When you get to the Howard Johnson in Pennsylvania, turn the heat on in your room, because it hasn’t been turned on yet that winter. When you notice that all of the heat is just being blown behind the curtain, hallucinate that it’s Marilyn Monroe over the sewer grate. Once you’re thinking clearly again, redirect the hot air by blocking off the curtain with a clock radio on top of a lamp. Crawl into bed already in your sleeping bag, still wearing your winter jacket and ski cap. Want to die. Hear the clock radio fall.

For breakfast, eat a saltine. Feel nauseous. Don’t eat again that day.

Take Dayquil. Wish it was stronger.

Drink lots of fluids. Wish it did jack shit.

Suffer.

Wait.

See Option 1.

Aaron Kagan is so funny, it's sick.

Freedom Bread

A hearty “hag sameach” to my fellow descendants of escaped Hebrew slaves celebrating Passover this week.

I celebrated Passover this year by making matzoh. I figured it couldn’t be that hard, and certainly shouldn’t take too long. And not to brag, but it was practically shmurah.

I also spent some q.t. with my cousins and long time LNP hosts, the Steinbergs. We usually show up at their place well after our gigs in the city, eat their hummus, and take off again in the morning. This time I was able to hang out and catch up at their cozy home in Westchester county; possibly the nicest place in the world if you don’t think about all that other stuff.

Nina’s macaroons were breathtaking, and the homemade chopped liver was to die for. Eventually... The twins just played Carnegie Hall, Zack got signed to URI for baseball, and Adam already produced an international hit; apparently “Chicka Chad” is huge in Italy.

So sorry, Nazi’s. We’re only eating the bread of affliction because we want to. And we dip it in chocolate.

Pain in the Neck

I’m coming to you from a stiff, upright position in a Holiday Inn Express in Easton, PA. Why, besides early man’s desire to hold tools and look for jaguars, am I standing upright?

Because I screwed up my neck and it hurts to… do things. Even to sit, or turn my head. Regardless, tomorrow I shall sit indeed: for six hours as I drive, alone, for the show must go on. But I’m not changing lanes.

Did I hurt my neck performing? (Obviously not.) Or by foolishly answering Seth’s dad’s bizarre sit-up challenge at the gym this morning? Hint: Seth’s dad is about twice my age, but he’s twice as good at doing weird sit-ups.

Thanks to the Sit-Up Challenge, I finally understand why some stomach exercises are called “crunches.” I actually heard and felt my vertebrae "crunch" as I gripped the bars behind my head, lofted the lower half of my body straight up into the air, and jammed my neck and shoulders against the padding. All to prove myself to a paternal figure, and to fail.

Besides my intense pain and the Williamson Wedding, this hotel also has a Bar Mitzvah party tonight. We had an easy time picking out which people in the lobby were here for which event, thanks to a new game I’ll call “Blonde Hair or Crazy Nose.”
Ouch! Sorry - my neck, not the joke.

Aaron Kagan has been called "The Calvin Trillin of Writing About Touring as a Sketch Comic."

Oh, The Things You Didn't Know I Did Today

We dwell anonymously, flying down the interstate at odd hours between semi-major metropolitan areas, lodging where it’s least expensive, performing for people who can’t afford the Black Eyed Peas. Most people don’t understand that you can make your living as a performer without their having heard of you. Well we're everywhere, and you had no idea.

For every Johnny Depp there’s a thousand guys like me lurking around the rest stops of major highways, sleeping in the Motel 6’es of America, hawking our wares to anyone who can afford a show fee plus four meals (two vegan, please).

We once descended upon the office of a Jewish community center somewhere in the Midwest to use their computers. I guess they thought we were coming over to juggle and tell jokes, because they were surprised when we just said “hi” and parked in front of four monitors, fingers flying, keys clacking, our faces reflecting the cool, blue glow of the PC screens. When we’re not performing, we’re working. If we had normal jobs, we’d be rich.

Today you might have read about Brittney’s first post rehab outing, but I bet you didn’t know how many times I had to spell “Reibstein” for a mechanic in Kentucky. That mechanic’s name? Actually Mike Hunt.

I also:

-priced out travel to a prep school in Georgia
-ate a burrito
-left a message at a bar in Kent, Ohio where we forgot a vest, beret, and mustache
-used a toothpick
-cashed a claim check from when somebody tried to break into the van in Peoria
-missed my family
-found out the guy who edited our last anti-Walmart video also made the controversial Obama you tube video
-stared out the window
-looked over an application for us to tour military bases in Afghanistan
-cried a little
-edited a script in which a member of Aerosmith will be playing Borat

And what did Johnny Depp do? Probably just drink champagne and cackle.

How Do You Guys Exercise?

To answer the question posed by the title of this post, I'll say bizarrely, or never.
As one of the Dresden Dolls pointed out, the irony of becoming a successful artist is that you live a lifestyle antithetic to art. Or, in our case, to exercise.

Thanks to touring, I’ve observed new and undesireable things happening to my body. Some of them are painful, some audible. I’m not as fat as many Americans, but neither are pigs or whales.

I exaggerate, and to show you how absurd it is to even have the words “fat,” “my,” and “body” in one post, I have attached a photo of myself looking fit after our first year of touring. But it’s my obsessive attention to detail that makes me an ideal candidate to pick apart society with the tweezers and needle of comedy. In fact, our material has been described as “blistering” by at least one journalist we’re friends with.

I suppose using Outlook on long drives just doesn’t keep me as toned as I used to be. Guess the OUTLOOK on my HEALTH doesn’t look so good! Actually, it’s really sad.

Prog Com or "Is the new..." Is the New "Making a Joke"

As a fairly busy comic, I rarely get to see the work of other comics. When I do, it’s a treat to come across material that matches my exacting standards. You see, I like comics to be funny rather than making me feel like the jury of 500 hundred Athenians felt about Socrates.

Fortunately, there’s a new wave of upper middle class, white, male comics here to save all the upper middle class, white, male comedy fans from the unfunny and offensive material that all too often passes for humor. The closed circle is now a safer space.

A good comedy show that doesn’t drag society backwards with every laugh is a veritable ivory billed woodpecker. But the bird has been cited more and more, and it’s now safe to say that we’re enjoying a new wave of progressive comedy, or as I just decided to start calling it, Prog Com.

These comics include(d) Mitch Hedberg, Dmitri Martin, Mike Birbiglia, and Myq Kaplan. Actually, those are just the ones I know. (See sentence #1.) The LNP had the pleasure of opening for Martin, catching Birbiglia’s act last night, going to school with Kaplan, and will perhaps meet Hedberg when our van crashes into an oncoming semi.

These comics actually cook up new jokes rather than rehashing the old “men leave the toilet seat up but women use all the toilet paper” bit or delighting us with advancements in the art of “_______ is the new _________.” And when they say "fagott," you can tell by their messy, hipstery hair that they're actually making fun of people who say fagott. Or they're talking about burning sticks.

Why?

You may be wondering why four college grads decided to do what we do. You might think “Hey, these guys probably should have gone to grad school.” You’re probably right.

Based on some feedback I received after my last post, I feel the need to explain why we continue in such a difficult line of work. That feedback:

“I feel horrible. You must really love what you do to put up with all the crap that comes with being on the road. And if the four of you were girls, you'd have scratched each other up and blown all your money by now.”
- Miriam Stern-Kramer

I’m not sure if I agree with her gender analysis, I do think my reader has a point. Life as a touring sketch comic isn’t all tow trucks and traffic jams. In fact, sometimes we perform sketch comedy. But that’s not why I decided on this unique application of my Bachelor of Arts in European Cultural Study. It’s because of a letter I wrote in 1998.

I was then about to graduate high school, and like many others in my position, I wistfully daydreamed about my new life as an academic, wondering whether or not the amount of alcohol my body could tolerate would be considered “cool.” I sat down to write a letter, which is what we used to call e-mailing, and it was then and there that I decided that I would one day be an artist. After graduating from college and reliving the graduation party scene from The Graduate over and over again, I decided that being an artist meant being commercially successful at being an artist. By this rationale, my parents would be satisfied, and Van Gogh was an insane bum.

I didn’t want rave reviews. I didn’t want roses thrown at my feet. I didn’t want Steve Martin turning over in his grave, or Steve Martin to have died. I wanted to pay Rocco Lorenzo four hundred and seventy five dollars - which is what we used to call six hundred dollars - on the first of every month, entirely from my doing comedy. And that would show everyone who said it couldn’t be done that they were wrong. And they were. Because now, I can almost always pay my rent.

How’s that Miriam?

PS – Since there weren’t any traffic accidents in this post, I’ve attached a photo of my hand after I sliced it open transporting our disco ball to remind children of the perils of the theater.

100 Miles in 6 Hours, iii

I ended up driving a rental car back from Nashville to pick up Seth and Zach, who passed their time at the gas station in a semi comatose state taking turns in front of a space heater they came to call “Polonius.” I don’t know what happened there in Horse Cave, but I do know that they really didn’t want to leave "him" when I finally did show up.

Having gone in the tow truck with Red Calf and J. to Nashville, I had to make the 100 mile return trip back to Horse Cave to get the guys at the end of a long day that had already sucked more than a name without a story. It took me 6 hours. I spent most of that time far from the company of Polonius and stuck in my tracks in two separate, gridlocked traffic jams caused by an inch of snow, roughly the same amount New England has had in total this winter. It would be more accurate to say the jams were caused by the inability of Kentuckians to drive through that inch, but I don’t want to point fingers.

Six solo hours in a traffic jam at the end of a day already full of time consuming automotive mishaps was more than I could handle, and I went mad. I felt bad doing so, knowing that no matter how bad is was for me, I was probably more alive than the people in the cars that were blocking the road.

100 Miles in 6 Hours, ii

So it was an ordinary day at the Late Night Players office, meaning that we were dodging semi’s to make it to the breakdown lane sans power steering while haggling with AAA to honor our free five mile tow. And if we were to rename Horse Cave based on what we discovered there, it would now be called Hours and Hours Waiting in A Gas Station and Two Hundred Twenty Dollars for A Tow Truck To Nashville and A Dry Chicken Breast Sandwich Cave.

The story of how we decided to get the van out of our temporary HQ in HC is really too boring for the attention span of anyone who does their reading on the internet, so I’ll skip it. But I will share some wisdom from our tow truck driver, as it pertains to tattoos and, in his words, “boobies.”

J. told us that if you rub salt and lemon juice into a tattoo on the day you get it, it will disappear. Part of his forearm is testament to this delicious and inexpensive alternative to a laser, and the rest of it illustrates what happens if you don’t perform the Horse Cave Scrub.

He also told us that if we hung a sign up in the back of the van that said “We Want to See Boobies,” we probably would. According to John (that’s his full name) you can get in trouble for exposing your breasts on 65, but not for asking, so we had nothing to lose. Now Johnny also portrayed the stretch of highway between Lincoln’s birthplace and Bowling Green as an erotic hotspot when viewed from the elevated cab of a tow truck, so his perspective may be skewed.

100 Miles in 6 Hours

We were cruising down I-65 in Kentucky, headed for Nashville, and for the moment everything was normal. Well, as far as traveling the country in a ’97 Chevy Astro loaded with wigs, beards, dresses, tofu jerky and booze goes. (Ordered in most to least.) Then suddenly, in the middle of snowy, heavy traffic, the van completely conked out. Actually, that is pretty normal.

Yes, old “Red Calf” checked out within a stone’s throw of Horse Cave, Kentucky. We call it Red Calf from an old anagram of Charleston Comedy Fest: Red Calf Costs the Money. The following tale will do no harm to that association.

I have no idea, however, why they call it Horse Cave. In fact, neither do they. In their informational pamphlets, it says “no one actually knows how Horse Cave got its name” where there should be a clever anecdote. An explanation of a name that consists mostly of explaining that there is no explanation is, on the scale of dumb, somewhere between using a word to define itself and naming an eatery The No Name _________ [noun]. I’m sorry, but where I come from, a name contains a name. And that’s Boca Raton, aka “Mouth of the Mouse.”

The pamphlet went on to suggest that perhaps the entrance to the famed local cave was large enough for a horse to pass through. But by that rationale, the town could just as easily be named “Floor Lamp Cave,” “TV Cabinet Cave,” or “Upright Mattress Cave.” By the way, I’m writing from a hotel room. I at least expected that the town was named by the bastardization of some local indigenous lore, a culture preserved and honored in the truck stop where we’d been towed to with a selection of, as Yogurt says in Spaceballs, “moichandise!” This included brown skinned and otherwise Aryan featured baby dolls in plastic buckskin, shrink wrapped and made in China. You could also buy tiny tomahawks armed with plastic moulds of rodent jawbones. Clearly, from Boca.

So Funny It's Scary iii

After somehow surviving Ghost Night, I expected the girl at checkout to laugh at me when she found out my room number. Instead she showed about as much interest as a block of the cheese that has made her state so famous, and pudgy. Yet when I told her what happened, she became a veritable pepperjack of disbelief, all of which sounded extra endearing in Wisonson-ese: “Oo my gad, why did yoo stee-ay in dere!?”

Apparently, couples who have grown weary of the natural wonders of the act of love sometimes ask if there are any haunted rooms for them to tousle in. She’s always had to disappoint them. Now they’ll be staying in 412.

The next night we drove through a blinding white out so bad that we passed up a stop at Thai Café in Indianapolis, home of the finest coconut pudding in the country. So when we reached our destination, I had to spend another two hours behind the wheel of the van trying to find something much worse to eat. The best I could do was a bar serving chicken wings apparently so bad that no one else had to eat them, until me. I ended the night so irritated that I ran barefoot for three miles on the treadmill back at our Hampton Inn. (Not because I was mad, but because we don’t really have room to pack secondary shoes.) By the time I curled up to sleep on the floor, it not being my turn for a bed, my feet were sort of raw. But hey, at least I don’t have a day job. Plus the lights stayed off.

So Funny It's Scary ii

Many performers are stupid, but we are not. We’re college grads from one of those prestigious institutes in New England that people outside of New England make fun of. On top of that we’ve got oodles of random life experience packed into the past few years of touring. On any given day we might have to change a tire, write a gag for William Shatner, or find the most vegetarian friendly restaurant in London, Ontario (which, by the way, is called Barakat – try the garlic yogurt). Plus it takes brains to drive 1,000 miles in one day and then be funny AND somehow be wearing unwrinkled clothing. Our friends who have become doctors and lawyers have never had it so rough. Financially.

So when the lights in our hotel room starting going off and on by themselves, we certainly thought to flick the switch on and off. We even unscrewed the bulbs halfway. And we continued to be haunted.

Zach: “Just close the bathroom door.”
Me: “No!”
Zach: “Why not? Because you’re scared?”

A long pause followed, in which I weighed my desire to preserve my manliness with my desire to preserve my life from the attack of a ghost.

Me: “Yes. Very.”

I called the front desk, hoping for some reassurance, but when I asked if this kind of thing was normal in an old hotel, all the attendant said was “Oh my god!” and “No way.”

So Funny It's Scary

Welcome to the first installment of LOL, USA, in which I attempt to explain to you how truly bizarre my life as a traveling comic is. I tour the US with my road weary sketch comedy cohorts, the Late Night Players, as we perform for colleges, clubs, theaters, festivals, and the occasional bar or bat mitzvah. Really.

We’re on the road 200 days a year, about 150 of which are show days, and the act’s about an hour long. That means for every sixty minutes of funny, there’s ten times more of time spent waking up in the van with an odd taste in your mouth and having no clue where in America you are until you can can tell from the architecture of a rest stop. For every laugh we get, we’ve seen ten bloody deer carcasses along I-90, and for each guffaw we wrench out of a crowd, there’s been infighting, engine trouble, and peeing in empty bottles when there wasn’t time to stop. Turns out that being funny really isn’t that funny. And last night, it was just plain scary.

I was coming “home” to an old hotel after a long travel day and a great gig at a nearby college. But just as I started to fall asleep, there came a soft flash of light from the bathroom, which, I should mention, had been pretty creepy well before it started glowing. When I got up to investigate, I witnessed the antique lights over the mirror silently turning themselves on and off.

Aaron Kagan and the Late Night Players are based out of Boston and play regularly, oh, everywhere. To verify, check out www.latenightplayers.com.