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life as a comic

20-Year-Old ‘Topical’ Material!

Blasting in From the Past!

I’ve been going through some of my first YouTube videos, from 2006, while preparing for the big 20th anniversary of the Pachelbel Rant this November, and this one from my Life as a Comic series really caught my attention. It’s about doing topical material, and the topical material of July 2006? The World Cup, war in the Middle East, and judging a country’s national team by the current leader of its country!

The connections to today’s current events were so strong that I did a short video about the episode—and that was before our stupid president got involved in the whole red card business and every other country in the world decided to root against us!

There’s even an Iran connection, which I didn’t feature in the above video because it took a little more setup than a 1–2 minute social media video allows. The bit starts with the fact that one of the American announcers mentions that the Iranian president was a Holocaust denier while the team is playing near the site of a WWII concentration camp (the World Cup was hosted by Germany in 2006). So the announcer basically implies that the whole Iranian national team are Holocaust deniers because their current president is an idiot. Kind of unfair.

I go on to speculate what would happen if our national team was judged by our then-current president George W. Bush, which is the bit I included. And I thought this 20-year-old topical material was relevant before Trump got involved in the red card suspension controversy, which ensured that the U.S. team would be judged by our current idiotic president.

The entire episode from 2006 is still on YouTube, but it’s unlisted because I guess I’m a little self-conscious about having material on my channel that’s older than half the people on YouTube. But it’s still there, and if you wanna check it out I’ll embed it below.

Meanwhile, mark your calendars for Monday, November 23, which is the big 20th Anniversary Show for the Pachelbel Rant. It’s going to be at the beautiful Caveat theater in NYC and will be live-streamed across the globe! Watch from anywhere!

And if you have any Pachelbel Rant stories or memories, please share! The popularity of the Rant has led to so many cool connections and opportunities, and it’s found its way into so many unexpected places I’d love to share as many as I can in the anniversary show.

Plus I’ll be posting more stuff from my first year on YouTube. Though it makes me feel old I’m grateful the material has reached people and made them laugh.

Here’s the full “Topical” episode in all of its 320×240 pixel glory! (YouTube videos were tiny in those days 😜)

All 50 States Day 35: Ohio!

Highway Sign

All 50 States Day 35:

Ohio!

I went to Ohio early and often in my touring career, first hitting the state as a feature act at Connextions 2 in Toledo (you know the shows are funny because of the saucy spelling). I was based in Chicago and the booking agent in Grand Rapids, MI called to ask if I could pick up the headliner at Midway Airport to ride to Toledo with me. That headliner was ‘Wild’ Bill Bauer, an energetic and funny veteran comic who’d been a headliner since the comedy heyday of the 1980s. He was pleasant and supportive throughout the weekend and though I hadn’t seen him since the mid-90s during a week at ACME Comedy Company in Minneapolis, I was sad to hear of his passing in 2012.

My first big years performing at colleges were 1996–1997 and Ohio was a big part of that. I showcased at the Great Lakes NACA Conference, performing a 20-minute set for the student activities boards of colleges in Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania. I booked so many shows after that conference there were some weeks where I’d have 9 shows in 5 days, doing a noontime show at a community college then another show that night at a school within a couple hours’ drive.

I had no idea how many colleges of one- to two thousand students there were in the state. I played everywhere from schools in cities like Capital University in Columbus, Xavier in Cincinnati, and Case Western in Cleveland, to schools in small towns like Muskingum University, Ashland University, Denison, Wilmington, Mt. Union. The list goes on.

There was a fun show at Kenyon College, a beautiful idyllic campus of old stone buildings atop a hill. I arrived early so I poked around the grounds and saw the game of Lacrosse in person for the first time. It seemed so New Englandy and preppie to me. I also remember staying in the lovely Kenyon Inn on campus, and that the show was well attended and opened by a campus improv group.

I also remember a show at Shawnee State in Portsmouth because I was fascinated that a small town had such a large area of mid-19th Century old buildings. The historic district struck me as something that should have been in a much larger city. Apparently Portsmouth, at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, had been a big, bustling city back in the 1800s when commerce flowed along the rivers and not by rail.

See? You learn things by traveling!

Highway Sign
Rob on state
selfie in theater
Blimp in sky
country road
Arthur Treachers
Rob in a car
Stone Building
  • Ohio Turnpike sign, 2010
  • On stage at Ohio University, 2006
  • Case Western University, 2010
  • Blimp in Cleveland, 2010
  • Country road near Lancaster, 2006
  • Arthur Treachers, Lancaster, 2006
  • Opining at a gas station in Ohio, 2006
  • Kenyon College, 1996?
OHMap

All 50 States Day 14: Indiana!

All 50 States Day 14:

Indiana!

I’ve done a few laps around the Hoosier State mostly doing college shows, everywhere from the big names like Indiana University in Bloomington and Notre Dame in South Bend, to smaller schools like Wabash College in Crawfordsville and Hanover College in Hanover.

I’ve also hit the big city of Indianapolis for some drop-in sets at the Crackers Comedy Clubs while doing shows at Nap-town area colleges like University of Indianapolis. Fun story: alums of Indiana U. are very particular about it being “Indiana University” and not “University of Indiana” so when I tried to tell a friend I had just done a show at the University of Indianapolis I couldn’t even finish my sentence because he said “it’s Indiana University.”  “’Napolis!” I shouted. “Indianpolis is the name of the school! I know where I was!”

I like Indianapolis and I’ve met some wonderful people there. It’s also where you go to appear live on the popular syndicated morning radio show Bob & Tom, though they ask you to not do too many local references because they’re syndicated coast to coast and I guess don’t want to remind people in places like Spokane that they’re listening to two dudes in Indiana. I only appeared on Bob & Tom once, back in February of 2007 and it was right after they got back from going to the Super Bowl, in which their Indianapolis Colts defeated my beloved Chicago Bears. They were wiped out from the travel (or hungover perhaps), I was surly from the loss, but I still had fun on the show.

In the photos for this post I had to dig in to some old video files and grab some frames, and this post marks the first appearance of frames from my Life as a Comic video series, which I did on and off from 2006-2010. The series showed what life on the road was like for a working comic and there are a couple of frames from an episode chronicling a show I did at Vincennes University in April of 2006. I also grabbed some frames from FlipCam videos I took at a show at Ball State in Muncie in 2010 and some B-roll shots of me driving through snow (complete with cracked windshield!).

IndianaMap
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