Clareified

Sometime last year, after Chugarte made him quite the December fool, Fisch thought to himself “yeah, he’s funny now. I wonder how funny he is when he doesn’t have me to kick around.”
I imagine he used a Richard Nixon voice, but you know, I dunno, he was thinking to himself.
He then asked Chugarte when his next stand up show was and added “ok, Dawn and I are coming.”
I looked up at the sound of my name.
“What’s that now?”
“We’re going to see Chugarte’s show.”
“Uh…we are? When did we make these plans? Was I sober?”
I don’t recall what the answers to these questions were, but I evidently agreed.
Of course, that was like 2006 and well, ask anyone, Fisch has a memory like a sieve. Or a strainer. Or a cylinder with no bottom. So, I doubted it was going to happen.
Lo and behold, he actually ims me yesterday afternoon to make actual plans to go.
I know. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
That’s when I discover the most awesome part about this whole outing. It’s. In. Queens.
You all know how I feel about Queens. (Click the link of course, but for the lazy or stupid, it’s about how I got lost in Queens for a week and half last Spring. You will laugh, you will cry, you will ask why on earth Dawn is going back to Queens.)
“Oh, come on, Dawn! Queens is closer than Manhattan!”
Nu uh. Queens is in the Midwest. It’s closer to Indiana.
But fine, it was Chugarte. And Chugarte is very very funny. I hadn’t seen him perform since last year, so I agreed.
And, since it worked so well on me, I Jedi mind tricked F-train too.
We planned to meet at my apartment. F-train arrived first with his furrowed brow of concern.
“Dawn, do you know how to get to Queens?”
I rolled my eyes and gave him the what-kind-of-idiot-do-you-think-I-am look as I showed him that I have looked up the directions and emailed them to myself on my blackbe…uhh…wait…where are the directions….
Ap-Cray.
I guess my balckberry doesn’t interpret the yahoo map formatting very well…so…d’oh.
“Uh…well, good thing you asked that question now,” I said in my well-I-guess-that’s-the-kind-of-idiot-that-I-am tone.
We got the instructions, Fisch finally came and we were on our way.
Fisch and F-train amused themselves by trading “oh my God and then Dawn did this totally stupid thing” stories, while I took turns flipping them off.
They then prepared to laugh at my inability to park the car, but it was a right hand side spot and I had no trouble whatsoever…sasat.
We got out of the car and found ourselves standing in a very residential neighborhood, with no idea where to go.
“What’s the name of the place, Dawn”
“I dunno…I just plugged the address in…”
Fisch points to a blue neon sign and says “well, let’s try that building.”
We are about to head in that direction, when a lady stops us.
“You guys look lost.”
“Uh…we’re looking for a comedy club,” I stammer.
“No, it’s not. It’s probably a bar,” F-train corrects.
The lady points us to a coffee shop in the across the street.
“I think that’s where you’re going.”
We get there and I ask this dude outside to take our picture. F-train deems this beneath him and tells Fisch to glare in the picture.
Of course, F-train is a vain, vain man and when it comes right down to it, does not like ugly pictures of himself in the universe. So, while Fisch is scowling, F-train and I have pleasant smiles on our faces.
“HEY! You said you were going to glare,” Fisch complains later as he scans through the pictures on my digital camera.
“See, Fisch. This is why we don’t trust F-train. Lesson: the first.”
We went inside and discovered that when they say “free show” they mean “$7 show.”
We said hi to Chugarte and he said that if no more comedians showed up, he would have an incredibly long set.
Oh, would that were so.
Would. That. Were. So.
The MC opened the show with “welcome to what we’re calling the ‘agents don’t come to astoria’ show”
I laughed.
Let me preface the rest of this post with this: the MC was hot. He can do no wrong. If he sat Indian style on the floor, running his hands through his hair. I would laugh. (Provided he was looking for laughter, otherwise, I would applaud. Or cry. You know, whatever, hot guy wanted.)
So hot guy does an amazing set. Including a bit about how his mom was race neutral and would call her inner city high school students monkeys.
Look, I mangled that joke. It was funny. He was hot. I punch you in the face.
Oh, at the start of the show he did that comedian thing where they ask people what they do.
“You can lie, if you want.”
So Fisch did.
“I’m a fireman.”
Hot guy laughs in his face.
“You can lie, but at least make it believeable.”
Fisch admits he teaches the LSAT.
I laugh and decide I love the hot guy.
(Later, in the car, when we (and by we, I mean me) are mocking Fisch, I say “Fireman, dude? What are you four?” He then glumly says “yeah, but when I said fireman all the women in the room turned around to look at me. And then when I said I was a teacher, they looked away.)
After hot guy comes this guy that looks just like Alceste. (He even made a joke about how if their was a Harry Potter rapist, he’d be collared. I did not mangle that one. He was terrible.) No one really laughed at his jokes and then he got all surly and yelled at the audience for not laughing. I kid you not, he said “that was a funny joke, you guys.” And then like stormed off.
He then left with a suitcase a few minutes later.
Of course, I would listen to that dude everyday and twice on Tuesdays if I never have to think about the woman that followed him. She made me want to jam sharp things in my ears and eyes, just for the relief of not hearing her whining anymore.
Her best line came when she kinda got heckled by an audience member who said “I would never do anything so [dirty] I am a Southern Belle.”
“Are you kidding me,” she replied “You girls show your boobs for plastic beads. Give me a break.”
That I laughed at. But it was mostly dead silence for her set.
The Hot guy came back out and said “Alright people. This is no longer a comedy show. It is a officially a battle. And you guys are winning.”
I laughed and laughed.
Then Chugarte came out and said (and yes, I will be doing my best to mangle all these lines, because then he will comment with all the corrections and I will get lots of comments.)
“I’m glad the Michael Richards thing is fading from the news. I am so sick of talking about it. Geez, you know, people find out you’re a racist and suddenly it’s all they want to talk about.”
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA…see, it’s funny cause you thought he was gonna say comedian, but no, he then goes the other way.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
And then he said “all the coverage of Gerald Ford’s funeral reminded me that Ford was alive…which you know, two days after he died, is kinda sad.”
(Oh, the hot guy had this joke where he said that people had packed the Apollo theater to see James Brown body. “So, there you have it…even dead, he’s the hardest working man in show biz.” I laughed.)
Then Chugarte talked about having Christmas dinner with the in laws and how he became very afraid of all the food when he tried a dollop of white cream on the table and was told that it was sour cream mixed with whipped cream.
“Dude. That’s just disgusting! What the hell…what else do they have? Here have a spoonful of sugar salt? Oh, you just must try the pepper and the coal shavings?”
He then told some jokes I do not repeat here because they require my hands to be over my face and I need to stick my fingers in my ears.
Oh, but before he told them, he asked this guy and this girl if they were a couple. The guy was all wishy washy about it and Chugarte was like “whatever, for the purposes of the next minute. You are.” Then he spots another guy and girl and says “hold on…are you guys a couple, cause then this can be salvaged.” They say that they are and Chugarte says “ok, fake couple you’re out. Real couple, you’re in.”
HAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAh
He then says that this year when the kids came trick or treating he saw the best costume ever.
“A little boy about six, was dressed as Superman, but his bucket for candy was a Spiderman head. The effect was really cool. It’s like: ‘put the candy in Spiderman’s head’ or else you’re next. Superman don’t play.”
Ok, and then Charles finishes and we all want to die again.
I mean there are a couple of one liners here and there:
I saw someone reading sheet music on the subway and I was like “buy an ipod, loser”
I really need to stop correcting people’s grammar…at funerals.
The best thing about growing up in Syracuse is that whereever else you go for the rest of your life, you’ll be impressed.
What do you get someone who owes you money for Christmas? A coupon to you. Hey, Billy, you know that four hundred dollars you owe me? Now it’s $350!And then of course, whatever else the hot guy said.
Seriously, I was laughing so hard that by the end he asked me to come to all his shows or to marry him, I can’t remember.
Then a fourteen year old kid goes on…except he looks eight…and sounds forty. I gotta tell ya, there is nothing so depressing as a little boy trying be grown. He had all the mannerisms of these comics around him and told all these raunchy jokes about “pulling out too early” and getting a girl an abortion for Christmas and it just made me sad.
Where’re his parents? Jesus, get that kid a baseball glove and some sun. He doesn’t need to know that life is disppointing quite this early.
We hung out with Chugarte for a bit and he agreed to let me follow him back to Brooklyn, lest I have to rent an apartment in Queens and relocate.
As we head home, Fisch says he really liked the Christmas dinner joke, but thought it needed to end with something funnier than coal shavings.
“What coal shavings? I thought he said shaving cream.”
“No, coal shavings and pepper.”
For some reason I find that the funniest thing in the world and just lose it.
(I am laughing like a lunatic even as I write this. ahahahahahahhahaa)
Fisch gets worried when I don’t stop laughing and the car begins to swerve.
“Stop laughing, Dawn. Drive safely!”
F-train was nonplussed.
“Fisch, I accepted long ago that I take my life in my hands when I get in this car.”
I was too busy trying to control the car while laughing to give him the finger.
I then lamented that all the female comedians I’ve seen in real life all suck. F-train said it was because they usually use the microphone as a therapy session.
Fisch posited it was because men are just funnier than women. And better drivers.
I gave him the finger.
Ah, good times. Good times. Coal shavings and pepper.
AHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 6:31 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.