A Week in Oklahoma

Well, we made it. Oklahoma City. This was the gig I was nervous about for the last month and a half. It’s still a city, but it’s still Oklahoma. I did well, they’ll probably have me back. I had some epiphanies while here, and working with the fantastic Gabriel Rutledge. But that’s not why you stumbled upon this blog. For me to brag about how much I’m still learning and rediscovering the fun. Let me tell a few amusing stories.

The condo here is one of the nicest in the country, I’ve been in. Hotels are different but as far as Condo’s. This is great. It’s a big house. 3 bedrooms and a huge living room with a nice big TV. but there is something in the water that makes it taste funny. It’s definitely not Birth Control though. Wow, people are breeders out here. A guy during one of the shows said “There’s nothing else to do.” build an amusement park or something. I only had to change a few jokes around. I tried my joke about the porn star with space needle tattoo and it didn’t work a couple times. I think they just didn’t know what the space needle is because, later in the set, I made a callback to Seattle during the Hybrid Parking joke about “That joke never works in Seattle.” and it didn’t do that well either. I think it’s too obscure of a reference for them. My friend and I hypothesized that maybe if it was the St Louis Arch they would get it better. We’ll see how the rest of the road trip goes.

Other references got a bigger response than normal. I have a Kobe Bryant rape joke and it got a huge applause and laughter. I guess it’s somewhat of a basketball rivalry now that the Oklahoma City Thunder are a pretty good basketball team and constantly meeting the Lakers in the playoffs. (#ripsonics). Because I was pretty incognito about being from Seattle, I got to see a lot of the people in their natural habitat, if you will. I didn’t do my sports material, I didn’t bring up that I was from Seattle (except in a joke or two that they didn’t understand and didn’t tell the rest of the week.) but there were Thunder basketball games on in the bar outside the showroom and people cheering and every time the other team scored, I would secretly cheer a little bit.

Also, if you’re ever out here. Something you should know. Every Saturday at noon when there’s no threat of a tornado, they test the Tornado sirens. HOOOOOO LLLLLLYYY SHIT. lol. At first, I wasn’t sure what it was. Then the thought creeped into my mind, oh that sounds vaguely familiar from movies and terrible nightmares. Sirens. There’s no volcanos, there’s no tsunami’s. Tornado! I looked out the window, it was sunny and 50 degrees. Tornados happen during good weather now? My plan was to worry when the weather got bad. Wait till I heard the pepsi can windchime’s picking up like a eerie scene in a twister movie, then panic. I went to Weather.com and there was no alerts on the front page, so I calmed down and got out of the bathtub with my laptop. I walked outside. The Sirens cut off after about 3 minutes. No clouds. After some googling, you realize it’s a test. You think that’s something they would mention to out of town comedians. There’s a giant rule sheet stapled to the wall, maybe put that inbetween wipe your feet and don’t bang the waitstaff. “oh by the way, saturday at noon they blast horns just for fun. Don’t worry. It means there’s no danger.”
There should be a different test. What if there’s a real tornado Saturday at noon. “Oh, that’s fine, that’s just the test.” Could lead to some confusion. Just saying. Anyway. One more show tonight. Then I’m nomading for a while. I caught a terrible cough a couple days ago, and have downed a whole bottle of Tussin. I’m starting to get over it finally, so that’s good. We’ll catch ya later.