Being a road comic all of these years certainly brings about a lot of crazy moments, memorable moments, hilarious moments, lonely moments, and even moments I’d rather forget altogether.

**Connxtions Comedy Club in Lansing, MI**

There was the time I was on stage in Lansing, MI, and got called an “ass clown” by a gang-bangers wife…so in retaliation, I called her a “fat pig” and told her she sounded better with Cheetos in her mouth. Then, after the show, while selling merchandise, I had to have one of my keys in my fist ready to defend myself in case her husband or friends tried to jump me. Much to my surprise, they all shook my hand, and then her husband came up to me, shook my hand, and whispered in my ear “thank you for saying that to her, I kept telling her to shut up”…and then walked away. I couldn’t believe that I was getting away so easily after being that rude to someone’s wife. That’s when management walked up to me and said: “All those guys are just hanging around in the parking lot, where’s your car?” Of course, you know exactly where my car was, it was parked right next to them. Management told me “you’re going to have to stay here until they leave so there’s no incident.” These guys lasted 90-minutes outside before they left. Chris Maddock (the other comic) and I got so hammered in that bar that we ended up taking a cab back to the hotel anyway.

Then there was the time an 80-year old woman “charged” the stage in Bradley, IL, and stabbed me in the leg with a fork.

What about on my first road trip in October of 2004, when my buddies and I stayed at a motel and got separated from each other throughout the course of the night. My one buddy had the motel key, and I was stuck outside our motel freezing until about 2am, trying to figure out how to get in. I took out my driver’s license and ended up Macgyvering the door open…which in turn, kept me up most of the night as I was scared a stranger could do the same.

How about when I got called out to New York to audition for Saturday Night Live? I flew myself out there at 21-years old with no money, stayed in basically a half-way house scared out of my mind, only to get to the “audition” and find out that it wasn’t an audition to be a “cast member”, it was just some SNL scouts looking for “extras” that they could use once in a while in scenes.

Maybe those were just the scars I had to earn on my way to cooler moments like getting a phone call from John McDonough, the recently former CEO of the Chicago Blackhawks. He called me after a show and said he loved my act and wanted to bring me in to do some work with the Blackhawks.

The collective bunch of these memories has intertwined together in my mind over the years so that when I flip through the scrapbook in my brain, I am able to smile at all of these and know they were just another building block in this career of mine.

One time that makes me laugh more often than not when I think of it, is when I performed at Fat Daddy’s Comedy Club in Sioux Falls, SD with Justin Leon on 11/4/10-11/7/10. Oddly enough, I don’t remember a whole lot about the shows themselves, but I remember two-things distinctly:

**My Facebook Timeline in November 2010**

1. I flew out to South Dakota late on Wednesday night. Due to the fact that it was a late flight AND I was flying to South Dakota, the gate that I was waiting at was all but empty. It was me and a few others waiting for this flight that none of us overly wanted to be on. While I was sitting there, the gate right next to me announced they were boarding, announced a final boarding, announced a final, final boarding, and announced a final, final, final boarding. About 10-minutes later, the lady sitting next to me walked up to the gate and said “when are we boarding?” You can imagine the look on her face and the laugh out of my mouth when I heard the agent say “Ma’am, your plane left 10-minutes ago…”. This lady sat there through four boarding calls and missed a plane leaving that she was sitting right in front of. To put this in perspective, this is like waiting in line at the grocery store, the cashier is saying “next” and the people behind you just keep walking in front of you with their cart…only for you to finally go “hey, when is it my turn?” It’s all but impossible to miss your flight while sitting there. 9-years later I was saved by a gate agent from making this same mistake as she came up to me and said “you’re the last one sitting here, I’m assuming you’re on this flight, we’re about to close up.” Sure enough, I was in my own world and missed all of the boarding announcements and if it wasn’t for this lady, I would’ve been this dip-shit I’m writing about now.

**Fat Daddy’s Comedy Club in Sioux Falls, SD**

2. When I landed in Sioux Falls, Bethany, the sweet owner of the club came to pick me up from the airport and drive me to the comedy condo. I would be sharing this condo with the headliner, Justin Leon, who would be arriving the next day. Most comedy condo’s are pieces of shit that are not maintained well. Nor should they be as comedians often times live like animals. You only need to hear one story of John Fox sticking his dick in a comedy condo mayonnaise jar to go “yeah…I don’t think vacuuming is gonna make a difference.”

Anyway, Bethany had a really nice condo RIGHT next door to the club, which made it even more convenient. There were two bedrooms in the condo, each one had it’s own key to access the room and create some nice privacy for the comics. It was late at night, and when I walked into the condo, both bedroom doors were open…so I just grabbed a room, threw my shit down, watched some movies on my computer until it ran out of battery, used my phone until it was almost out of battery, saving just enough battery for emergencies, and went to sleep. Not much has changed for me in 10-years…keep my ADD brain going until my technology tells me I have to stop.

Anyway, I wake up the next day and go to set up my computer so I can plug my iPhone into it and charge it. It was important that I get this accomplished quick, because I was still working a day job that let me work from the road. As long as I kept proving myself to be efficient, my job kept allowing me the privilege to travel all over for comedy while keeping a steady income with them. There was just one problem on this particular day…I forgot my laptop charger at home. Without my laptop charger, not only could I not work my day job, but I also couldn’t charge my phone as I only brought a USB charger with me, like a total chaunce.

I was worried that if I used my phone to look up where I could get a charger, I would run out of battery…and I felt like I needed to save that remaining battery space as a lifeline in case I needed to make a phone call. It was only 2010, but pay-phones were already a long thing of the past…as was carrying a pocket full of quarters. Being that it was 8am, I figured “It’s Thursday, businesses are operating right now, there has to be a store in downtown Sioux Falls that sells computer plugs”. This is what you get for being an optimist. I walked around for the next hour, walking up, down, and all around the city of Sioux Falls. I got lost and couldn’t use my phone for the GPS as again, I didn’t want to run out of battery. I tried finding a gas station to ask for directions, but locating a gas station in Sioux Falls was about as easy as eating soup with a fork. The positive that came out of this, is that I made my way to Falls Park and got to see the actual Falls in Sioux Falls. The negative is that since I knew the condo was right next to the club and I’d have to walk about 200-steps each night, I didn’t pack a coat…I’m an asshole. 39 degrees as the high and I’m out site seeing like Clark Griswold in a t-shirt.

**The Uber cost now of my $25 cab ride almost 10-years ago.**

It’s 9am and I finally make my way back to the condo if only to warm up for a brief moment. I trade in my lifeline (my last remaining battery %) and call a cab. I lock my bedroom door at my condo in case Justin gets there early, he knows that I’ve already occupied that room. The cab comes to get me and takes me to Best Buy to get a new charger. It’s 11-miles away, but with tip it ends up being about $25 to get there. For what it’s worth, I just plugged this same route into Uber and it came back as $10.86 - so roughly $13 with tip. This is why I’m glad Uber is stomping the cab industry. Anyway, in the rush hour of Sioux Falls traffic, it took about 10-minutes to get there. Well, because I couldn’t look up anything on my phone, I just assumed Best Buy would be open for no other reason than because I needed something from them. Turns out, my needs & timeline are not a part of their business strategy. They didn’t open until 10am. So, I had a choice…pay my cab driver to wait the next 45-minutes or so with me, or stand outside and freeze by myself with no phone battery remaining until Best Buy opened up. I opted for the latter, because, fuck the cab company. 10am hits and I walked into Best Buy like a member of the soccer team from Alive…ready to eat the first customer service agent that asks me “What brings you in today?” I am an idiot and didn’t know the exact model of the computer that I had back at the condo, nor did I think to take a picture of it, nor did I have the battery bandwidth to allow me to pull that photo up if I did have one. Needless to say, I had to buy a universal charger that has 20+ adapters/extensions to allow this plug to work for 99% of computers. To spare you of the drama that is beginning to be “woe is me”, my computer WAS a part of the 99%. The foreshadow here is that I’m not still in jail for murdering a Best Buy rep over that other 1%. Anyway, $100+ later, I am asking Best Buy if I could borrow their store phone to call a cab. This prompts a sales rep to ask if I was interested in buying a cell phone. I swallowed blood and left. Another $35+ cab ride back (we had to stop at a gas station so I could get food…after which, I walked back to the condo), and I’m back at the condo. $160+ dollars in the hole (not to mention the $160 flight that I took out there), and I am now in for $320 on the first day of a $300 paid weekend.

$160 - Flight
$25 - Ride to Best Buy
$100 - Universal Charger
$35 - Ride home from Best Buy
The look on my face when I get back to the condo and realize that the bedroom key I had was for Justin’s room and not mine…priceless.

That’s right…I finally get everything in line and ready to go, except that I didn’t check the keys the night before when I got to the condo. I just picked a room and assumed my key had to work for that room, because I’m a fucking moron. So, now I’ve got a key to a bedroom that’s not mine, and a universal computer charger to a computer that’s locked in a bedroom that I don’t have a fucking key to. Right about now you’re probably thinking “just call the club owner and get the proper key” - that’s good thinking except you’re probably forgetting that I am now officially out of cell phone battery, I’m locked out from my computer, and it’s only 10 a fucking m, so the comedy club next door won’t be open for another 8-hours or so…

Basically, I did what you would all do in this situation, I panicked. I first tried the key in my lock about 16-more times before I conceded that it wasn’t the right key. Then I went over to Justin’s door and tried my key on his door just to hate myself even more for not walking through this routine the night before. I then combed every drawer, cabinet, hidden door, etc…looking for a spare key. After logic and reason went out the window, I took out my driver’s license and credit cards and tried to shimmy the lock the way I did on my first road trip back in October of 2004. A broken license and broken credit card later, I decided that I should stop doing this…you know, with the off-chance I have to rent a car to get home, or pay to stay at a hotel. Like any good Ocean’s 11 scam, I had to find those few hours where I admitted defeat, scanned through all of the worst-case scenarios in my head, and regroup, before I got one last idea that I could try in the third act of this Planes, Trains, and Automobiles moment that I created for myself.

This was a beautiful condo, but I remember the one thing I didn’t understand when I walked in was that one wall in each room didn’t go all the way to the ceiling. It was basically an elongated pony wall. The ceilings were about 10-12 feet high, but this one wall had about a 3-foot gap between the wall and the ceiling. If I could just get up on that ledge, I would be able to jump off onto the bed, and that mattress should break my fall, allowing me to open the door from the inside, get my computer, plug in my phone, and try to save my job. It was just dumb enough to work (cue heist music). I dragged the entertainment center across the living room to the wall I intended to scale. I then dragged the coffee table over to allow myself to be able to get on top of the entertainment center. Without thinking it through (a theme that seemed to follow me this whole trip), I stepped on the coffee table, jumped up and pulled myself on top of the entertainment center and stared at the obstacle left in front of me. I had about 6-feet to the top of the wall, where I had to jump up, pull myself up to my stomach and literally lay on about 1.5-feet of wall width, 8-10 feet high. Mind you, I only had about a 3-foot gap between the wall and the ceiling. I did all of this so fast (again, no time to think), and wrestled myself from my stomach onto my butt, so I was now sitting on this 1.5-foot wide ledge, bent over because of the ceiling limitations, staring at what I didn’t think through…the impending drop. Jumping 8-10 feet onto a mattress would’ve been scary enough, however, I didn’t take into consideration the headboard aspect of this vault. Being that the headboard stuck out from the wall, I needed to be able to clear the headboard on top of landing safely on the mattress. Having no room to get leverage wasn’t making me comfortable about my chances, maybe it was best to go back down the other way and just wait in my misery. Well, since I made the decision to shimmy my way onto my butt instead of staying on my stomach, I no longer had the room nor the courage to flip myself back around and hang myself back down to that entertainment center. Here I go, just do it (I thought), 1…2….45-minutes later I am still sitting there trying to get the courage to count to 3. Who knew this was all practice for having kids one day…you never get to 3. Finally, I knew I had to do it, I had to take the plunge…3…I launched myself off that ledge as far as I could, praying I cleared the headboard…not only did I clear the headboard, I landed dead-splat in the middle of the bed and broke all 4-wooden legs of the bed…completely flattening the mattress to the ground like an orgy on the first day of a NAAFA convention.

It didn’t matter, I was free, I made it, I was alive! I propped those wooden legs back up to make-shift fix the bed, grabbed my computer, grabbed my phone, plugged it all in…and Justin walked through the door with my key about 20-minutes later.

The REAL Sioux FALL…

2020 Vision

Comedians in Ditches, Taking Pisses