Breaking The Law

Last night's show at Spectator's in Sanford was decent enough. I was up third, and as we all know, that's my lucky spot. I had carpooled up there with Dustin Beckleman and Heidi. One quick pit stop at Wendy's in Biddeford, where the bathroom was covered in a large amount of vomit, ans we were at the show shortly after that. Dustin and I decided to jockey for early slots because we didn't feel like hanging out much. He had #2 and I went third.

Dustin had a great set, and the crowd was into him from the start. he kept them the whole way. I figured I'd be golden to follow him, as our styles are complimentary. Except a funny thing happened before I hit the stage. Our host, Mark Morrison I believe his name was, was really taking the energy out of the crowd from the start. He has a very slow delivery, and he made so many molestation and rape jokes he made everyone feel awkward it seemed. He finished some material just before I hit the stage about his uncle giving him oral sex after applying Vicks Vapo-Rub all over it. When I hit the stage, the crowd for one was taken completely out of the show and disgusted, and i was a little off too. That was definitely not cool to bring me up like that.

My set started off tepid. I wasn't bombing, but I wasn't carrying the room like I thought i should have. My jokes were landing a little flat, but my delivery is quick, and I think it was a little awkward after the host's slow as crawling death delivery. About midway through my set though, things turned around. For some reason, people were getting into it, especially the table right in front of me. There was a thin tall guy who looked kind of like a military kid wearing a zip up white turtleneck sweater. I said I had a joke I'd like to tell everyone about advice. He was a little shitfaced and said "I need advice" and I replied, here's some good advice, "Lose that sweater". The crowd exploded. He was a good sport and fed me back. He said he'd been wearing his clothes for the last 48 hours, and I asked him how long his boyfriend was wearing them before he gave them to him. I mentioned to him that he looked like the only sperm swimming upstream in Sanford that night, because he was wearing the gayest sweater the town had ever seen. His mom was sitting across from him and piped up, "Hey, I bought him that sweater for Christmas". I said, "Here's some better advice, don't buy him anymore sweaters."

I even went into my hockey joke that normally doesn't do too well at that point and dedicated it to him, because it's a self deprecation joke that calls myself a faggot. It was what the crowd needed right at that moment, and it killed. Normally I wouldn't go that deep into a gay joke like that. I'm not homophobic at all, but you could get the vibe from the crowd that they were, so I gave them what they wanted.

So I pocketed the $20 we got paid for the gig ($60 left to hit goal) and we got back on the road. We chatted about how the evening went, and laughed. It was fun. I had to drive Dustin back to Portland, but when we hit South Portland, there were blue lights in the rear view. Now to pepper this story, I have a bit of a lead foot. I'm always speeding, not because I like the thrill of speed, but I drive whatever speed feels comfortable at the time generally. The cop that pulled me over asked if I had seen him, I said "No". He's said he was on the side of the road with his paring lights on, and he locked me doing 76 in a 55. Oops! I told him, I was sure that probably was the case, and that I wasn't paying enough attention to how fast I was going. I was going to go deep into a story that said He pulled us out of the car and slammed me on the hood etc, but he was really quick and cool about the whole thing. He ended up giving me a ticket, but only put on it that I was doing 65 in a 55. That makes my little infraction quite a bit less expensive. I'd only been pulled over once before about 13 years ago for running a red light, but that didn't stop my running of red light. We'll see if this slows me down from speeding.