Some of the best audiences a comedian could ever ask for are in the midwestern United States.  Unlike many of the "City Audiences" who look upon stand-up comedy with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, the crowds in the midwest always seem genuinely excited to be at the show.  Not only that, but they often make the show a big event, with even a Wednesday night gig in the middle of nowhere feeling like a huge party that everyone has been inivted to attend.

That said, I typically spend March of every year touring throughout the "flyover states" in the middle of the country.  It's always the perfect time to be there, it seems, because the ten feet of snow has melted, yet it's still cold enough to get people into a comedy club.  Once summer kicks in, the people find nice things to do outdoors and the clubs stuggle to keep going until autumn brings everyone back for more laughs.

As much as the midwestern tour is fun and rewarding, it can be a bit of a drag at times.  See, it's not the kind of tour where I can slide into town on a Wednesday and be back home on Sunday.  When traveling through the midwest, I'm so far from home at any given point that it makes sense to go ahead and book a full month at a time.  For about five straight years, I haven't even seen my apartment on St. Patrick's Day.  Since I'm not working every day of the week, that leaves me sitting in random hotels on the off nights, often in little towns I've never heard of where there is nothing to do.  The weekends fly by, with huge crowds laughing at every single line I say...but the early weekdays seem to be nothing but boredom and endless cornfields.

So, imagine how nice it was when, in the middle of a tour from Illinois to South Dakota, I was offered a last-minute gig in the fine city of Minneapolis.  Not only was the money good, but it offered me the chance to spend a night in one of the coolest cities in the country.  On top of that, I was getting a paid night in a three-star hotel instead of putting myself up in some "ma and pa" shack in the middle of nowhere.  As luck would have it, Minneapolis was on my way to South Dakota anyway, making the trip much easier altogether.  I quickly accepted the offer, no questions asked.

Minneapolis is known for having great comedy.  There are a ton of talented comedians living in that city and touring all over the area.  Lewis Black even recorded one of his best albums in that city and it's a city many people try to get back to once they've been there.  Comedy aside, the people there are really into arts and entertainment in general, including some great local theatre and really cool bands in every other club in town.  It's like an artistic dream that appears in the middle of nowhere as you come driving up from the south.  Being offered a gig there was a a no-brainer and I was looking forward to doing it.

I arrived at the club that night with the usual excitement I get when working at a new club for the first time.  Immediately, everything seemed right on the money.  The club staff was great and friendly the second I walked through the door, and the manager was quick to ask me how I liked my steak cooked.  What a treat!  I'd been eating fast food for days and was all set to have some chicken wings that night until I was suddenly given the chance to indulge on some Filet Mignon.  Many comedy clubs serve food, but rarely do we get to eat fine dining like I was being offered at this place.

I was led downstairs to a private green room that was better than most I've seen in the business.  It was a huge room with comfortable sofas, chairs, and a wide-screen TV for me to watch while waiting for the gig to start.  The manager reached in a large, stocked fridge and tossed me a beer.  If I didn't want it, there was still several types of sodas and bottled water for me to choose from, as well as some finger food on the coffee table.  And, yes, there was a big bowl on the table that everything except brown M&Ms.  I felt like someone finally got it and was treating the comedians like we always wish to be treated.  Things couldn't have been better.

And that's the problem.  Whenever you hear a comic say "Things couldn't have been better", know that there is a shitstorm on the way.  I've heard many stories over the years about all kinds of scenarios.  What I've never heard is a story that ENDED with "Things couldn't have been better".  I have, however, heard countless stories that BEGAN with this very phrase, only to be told a scenario that involved angry mobs throwing used condoms at a juggler and comedians who are beaten to submission, their dreams and ambitions completely destroyed.

This is, dear reader, another one of those stories.

I'm sitting in this enormous green room, my feet on the coffee table as if it were my own, waiting for my steak to be cooked, when the manager walks up to me with the big news.  It seems that there was a mistake made by the booking agents at the club.  (Authors note: If I had a dollar for every time a booking agent made some kind of stupid mistake that resulted in a comedian banging his head against a wall in frustration, well, I'd have enough money to live like a booking agent and not a comedian)  This club, I'm told, has TWO bookings agents.  One agent handles comedians and the other handles musicians.  By mistake, on this particular night, they accidentally booked BOTH.

"The musician booked for the night is kinda a local celebrity," the manager told me and, for the first time, I noticed she had very big eyes, very pouty lips, and very exposed breasts that she put directly in my face as she leaned over and told me the bad news, "Do you think you could shorten your show a bit so he can go on after the comedy is done?"

At first, this didn't seem like such a bad thing at all.  Here I was, being offered the same money as before for doing a shorter show.  Less work and more money always go hand-in-hand, in my book.  I agreed to do it, sending the happy manager and her perfect breasts bouncing out of the room to announce the good news to everyone else.  For all she knew, it was going to be the perfect solution.  The audience would get some hilarious comedy, followed by a concert by their local rock star.  It was, to a club manager, a win-win scenario.  I, on the other hand, was already feeling screwed.

You see, there's something I already knew that most comedians either already know or will certainly one day learn the hard way:  Opening for musicians sucks.

I still don't know who came up with the horrible idea that, before watching their favorite singer or band, an audience would enjoy watching some jackass onstage, telling jokes.  Yes, from a business standpoint, it makes sense.  A comedian costs MUCH less than an opening band and requires a lot less equipment and setup.  But, to the audiences and the comedian doing the show, it's like trying to teach a pig to sing: it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

As a comedian, you're just asking to be ignored.  Nobody leaves the Fleetwood Mac concert talking about the comedy stylings of the funny clown they weren't listening to in the first place.  Yes, it's really cool that you might get to meet Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, but no one is going to give a rat's ass about you, and you'll be fully aware of that long before the opening licks of "Go your own way".

And, if you're lucky, you'll only be ignored.  Beer bottles hurt when they are thrown at you and it's when opening for bands that comedians typically get hit with them.  If you take a job opening for a band, you'll likely enjoy cashing the check, but don't count on adding new members to your fanclub because you were there.

Yet it happens all the time.  I know many comedians who regularly open for bands, from local bar shows to big-named groups in Central Park. I, myself, once opened for a shitty cover band in Atlanta simply because the money was good.  It's a double-edged sword, and one that many comedians fall on every single week.

So, a short while later, I was hanging out backstage, waiting for the show to begin.  The local hero hadn't even gotten there yet, but his audience was in full force, tossing back drinks and yapping like a group of kids at a Wiggles show.  I had no idea what this guy was going to be like or what kind show he'd be performing, but I already knew that this crowd was not in the mood to sit quietly for almost two hours, watching THREE comedians waste time before their rock star hit the stage.  Needless to say, thing couldn't have been better.

Did I mention the money was good?

I rarely drink before a show, but my mood had shifted and I was already enjoying my fourth free coctail that the club manager had graciously been tossing at me as if they were bottled water.  From the bottom of my glass, I watched the other two comedians go onstage and essentially eat ass for a combined forty-five minutes.  As they each went through their usually funny reportoire, the audience went about ignoring the show completely, excited about their gorgeous idol who had yet to arrive.  When they did stop to pay attention, the crowd's reaction was a mixture of apathy, contempt, and general confusion.  For all they knew, it could've been a stuffed monkey onstage being lit on fire.

I ordered another drink.

"You might want to be cleaner than those guys," a voice came from behind me, "I don't think this crowd wants it dirty."  The manager was pouting again, her big eyes and big lips and big breasts posed out to me in a way that said I should listen to what she was saying or I'd never know the touch of a woman again.  You'd think I would've nodded my head and heeded her warning.  Instead, like the stubborn narcissist I am, I nodded...and decided to take my filthiest game to the court.

See, telling a comedian last-minute that he has to do his show differently than he is used to is a sure-fire way to ensure the exact opposite of what you intended.  We're a cynical group of assholes, and we don't like being told how to do our show.  I, personally, would rather a club never book me at all than tell me right before I go onstage how I'm supposed to do my show.  It's insulting to the hard work I've put into my act and, quite frankly, gives the impression that non-comedians know how it feels to be a comedian.  No one ever tells a fireman how to handle himself before he runs into a blazing skyscraper.  But, for some reason, every third jackass you meet on the street has an opinion on how comedians should operate and isn't afraid to spout it as fact.

Keep in mind, I'm not even a very dirty act.  Neither were the other two comedians onstage that night.  But it was obvious that the crowd that evening weren't just annoyed by the four-letter words being spewed by my comedic bretheren, there were downright shocked.  I knew that they weren't just looking for a show that was non-offensive, they were looking for one that was child-like.  As the second comic finished wiping the floor with his own ass, I could tell that it was already hopeless.  If I wasn't going to put this show on my list of "Best Evers", the least I could do is go out in a blaze of glory.

Finally, after watching the trainwreck onstage before me, it was my chance go up and be a part of the carnage instead of merely a witness.  As the MC said my name and the huge sound of indifference followed, I pretended to be excited as I took the microphone in my hand.

At this point, I should point out that I'm not a complete asshole.  I'm not in the business of offending people just for the sake of doing it, and I don't want to pre-judge an audience without first and foremost getting a vibe of what they are like.  I had no intention of just jumping on that stage and insulting the audience with a birage of angry, filthy, horrible humor that was simply going to offend them and make them wish they'd stayed home that night.  After all, it wasn't THEIR fault that these comics were booked to open for their cutesy boy-band singer.  Why should they be punished?  I decided not to blame them and simply try and give them a decent show.

So, attempting to keep the peace, I started my show off nice and polite and continued it that way for a very long, very painful ten minutes.  There were easily one hundred people crammed into that club, and the ten who were listening to me didn't seem to find it very funny.  Without saying a single word deemed offensive by the FCC or MPAA, I had already offended everyone in the audience simply by stating that I enjoyed sex that was of the premarital variety.  A little pissed off that all it took to turn the crowd away from me was a little talk about the horizontal hokey-pokey, I shifted my gears and drove into uncharted territory.

For the next 25 minutes, I spoke of everything you could imagine that wasn't pretty.  I spoke of sex.  I spoke of dead things.  I spoke of sex WITH dead things.  I talked about how Easter is a creepy and no one sings about how neato it was that Jesus crawled out of his grave.  I made jokes about sex with imaginary creatures.  I talked about how I once date-raped a Teddy Ruxpin.  All the while, I watched as one hundred people went from being completely indifferent to suddenly fully aware of my existence..and in complete horror.

As I left the stage, the audience applauded.  They didn't clap because they loved the show or because they were impressed by how hilarious I was.  They applauded because I finally got their attention.  They applauded because, even though I scared the living shit out of them, they had respect for me.  They applauded because they knew that they'd been beaten.  Not even their romantic singer/songwriter, now waiting in the wings, could save them from what I had done.  I had failed as a comedian, yes...but as a symbol of power and authority, I had won.

I came off the stage with a mixture of bravada and shame running through me.  The star of the show was there, guitar in hand, to greet me with a firm handshake.  Although I had just offended his audience, he smiled at me, patted me on the back, told me how talented he thought I was, and wished me well.  As he took the stage and the place erupted with the thunderous cry of adoration and lust, I simply shook my head and what had just happened.

The manager walked backstage, looking beaten.  To my surprise, she wasn't angry with what I had done, nor was she about to throw me out on my ass.  Instead, she laughed in an exhausted way that said she couldn't believe what she had just seen, but was happy to have seen it.  Not only was she not angry at what I'd done, she applauded it and found it absolutely hilarious.

"But I tanked," I said, fully aware that it was NOT what I'd call a successful show, "You're okay with that?"

"Well, yeah," her breasts said, "I thought it was hilarious.  I didn't book the musician.  Not my fault his audience didn't get the humor."

"Yeah," I said, "but did you hear them applaud?  They must've liked SOMETHING I did, right?

"Nah," she said, "That's just what people like that do."

I raised an eyebrow, completely oblivious to what she was talking about.  Who was this guy onstage?  Who was this audience that had come to see him?  Why were they so unappreciative and so welcoming at the same time?  Where the hell was I?

"Christian Rock," the manager grinned at me, "I didn't know it, either."

Turns out the guy onstage at that very moment was, indeed, a very popular local musican.  He was a very popular CHRISTIAN ROCK musician.  I had just gone onstage and insulted 100 people who were now listening to the nicest, cleanest, most unoffensive man on the entire planet.  Ten minutes before listening to a blue-eyed babydoll sing about how wonderful God and Jesus are, I had just told the entire audience about how small my penis is and how I masturbate with children's toys.

And that applause?  That wasn't the audience suddenly turning around and accepting me or accepting my talent.  No, it was something different.  That was the sound of 100 Christians doing something they felt was Christ-like.  All at once, despite what I'd done, they applauded to let me know that I was being fogiven.

Amen...?