On Friday night Dawn and I went to two local comedy shows on campus. The first one was a fire fundraiser/standup comedy show (there's now a standup comedy club on campus) and the other was my old favorite, Birdstrike Theatre, our improv show.

This kind of led to a mini-debate about which is better. I admittedly prefer improv because I find standup to be a pretty mixed bag. Some people are killing it and some others can be pretty lame and/or creepy. I am really not a fan of the ones who are all, "I'm really lonely and horny, someone please fuck me" (especially if that's essentially the whole set right there). Dawn's response to my mixed bag remark was that improv was to--and it is--but at least with improv it's less likely to be a total naval gaze whine about their sex lives.

The standup show was starting at seven and the improv one was at eight, so I figured we'd sit through a bit of standup and then leave and go to the better show of improv.

The first act was a guy I've seen at the Comedy Spot and heard some of his routine of before-- did some stuff on racist fantasy camp ("oh, look, there's Walt Disney, what's he doing here?"), being called a certain ancient insult for Italian people from the 1930's. He also imitated squirrels, which I'm into. Oh yeah, and then there was pointing out that "We all piled into Mom's Volvo for a ride" sounds dirty.

The second act I've seen before here--it's a professor who does standup and runs the club. She did some good riffs on living here, like "I've been here since we only had six turkeys," and explaining the actual reason why we have no lights in town is because one mayor wanted us to be able to see the stars (if not the roads). She pointed out the lost opportunity to have shirts that say "Yolo Cemetery." and the bad logic of having Braille written on poles designed for people running from predators, and also that the FDA does not get to monitor supplements so 30% of the bottles don't actually have what you think is in them. Also, vulva is a fancy word for pussy. She was the best of the lot and well, the reason why I was going.

We caught a few more after that. One guy who literally just stood up and read one liners off a piece of paper (sample line: "I'm a caricaturist, not a plastic surgeon!"), and one guy who riffed on names such as "If you name a child Fuckface, you will literally be Fuckface." He also pointed out that when you name everyone the same name, you don't need more friends named Mike, and if there are two Joe Smiths, one must die.

The final one we saw before leaving was a girl who did a riff on reporting a guy at a club for sexual harassment and then reporting back on his ridiculous appeal, such as saying don't slander his family, I didn't do anything, it was all a joke, I won't apologize, and I'll alert the media. She then talked about buying a pomegranate, trying to eat it at home and realizing she made a huge mistake, and finishing off by being Jeb and saying "please clap."

And that's standup for you.

I should also point out that the standup show was mediumish attended, while the improv show was FULL UP.

Quotes from the evening:
* "If everything's an open area, I guess I'll take a dump in your backyard!"
"Maybe instead of going to the pines, you can suck my nuts."
* The travails of a Jewish snowman--nuff said
* "This is coming from the heart, suck my butt."
* At one point someone said, "Cut to Tony's funeral!" and Tony was all, "Oh yeah," and had to lie down. There was one mourner who kept walking around in circles and coming back as different characters to throw flowers into the grave. It ended with the guy's friend climbing in with him.
* The end was a long scene on the moon that started out with "Do you ever get tired of pooping in space?" and then turned into a scene about people being infected with minion spores. One of them admitted to being "Houston" on the radio. This was a game in which they kept cutting in and out for flashbacks, and upon the line "Who's on the ground for us? Nobody?" they cut to...nobody doing anything!

I enjoyed it, I saw Dawn laughing, but she might not have been as into it as I was.

BUT THE BEST PART OF THE NIGHT YOU HAVEN'T EVEN HEARD YET. On the way back, Dawn told me that she joined an embroidery guild and she had gone to a stitch in at someone's house where they had "the suggestive tree."

This had:
* On the top of the tree was a Barbie sitting on a vibrator.
* A storebought ornament (where does one get this?) of Santa Claus screwing a reindeer. My "humping reindeer" sweater I have on today totally approves of this.
* Many handmade ornaments the lady made herself by cutting out pictures from an Adam and Eve catalog and gluing them into circles and then putting tinsel around them.

"The other ladies didn't bat an eye," Dawn reported.

I am loving this. I don't have uh, such pictures around the house these days, lord knows i am NOT gonna search on the Internet for any either, and I don't think I quite want to see my mom's reaction if I do any of my trees up like this...but now I kind of want to.
I am also mentally comparing this tree to Deacon Dave's themed trees around his house and thinking "this would be a lot more interesting than the laundry tree...." Except, y'know, deacon.

Oh, how I wish she had pictures, but tonight my imagination is bright and dirty. I did, however, find a sex toy advent calendar. Hubba hubba!

Oh, and I found something else fun tonight: the story of the disc jockey who insisted on playing "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" 27 times in a row before they stopped him.

There is also a new "Grandma got run over by a reindeer" sweater from the company that got me my previous "Grandma got run over by a reindeer" sweater. Now she's being hit by a reindeer driving a car. I'm considering it. I did, however, order the Dick in a Box Fanny Pack" for $10 today.

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