Another Episode of So You Want to be a Road Comic???

In moments designed by fate to remind me I’m old enough to be their father… I’ve found myself recently sharing relationship advice to a younger comic and answering emails from another asking for comedy advice…

Talking comedy with Headliner Kris Shaw, pre-show recently he reminded me that while we always start the show by acknowledging we’re happy to be there… We’re there to bring the audience into our world… Then to give them a glimpse of the world inside our minds…

Hopefully mine will always be a world where people spit beer and snort sandwiches out their nose…

Yes, I’ll always be happy to be there…

But you want to be a road comic???

Constantly asked by friends and former co-workers… “Hey Steve, how’s the comedy career coming along, played Vegas yet???”

I smile and say “No, not yet, but I’ve played places like… We ain’t got all our teeth, West Virginia… and Interbred, Pennsylvania… ”

Where, when a drunken Pittsburgh Steelers fan in a moment of misplaced team pride told me he bled “Black and Gold”… I told him… “So do Ben Rothlisberger’s girlfriends…”

Constantly traveling the country in fear that… Instead of hearing my GPS say… “You have arrived at your destination”… I’d hear banjo music as it asked… “Hey boy, you ever see Deliverance???”

While some people may think the road comic life is all bright lights and glamour… I’m playing places I only need to say the name of to get a laugh… Playing places where the only difference between the place and yogurt is there’s live culture in yogurt…

I've done shows in some of the few places where verizon can't hear me now...

While the government says that in the event of another terrorist attack we need to cover our windows with duck tape and plastic… I’m playing places where I’m pretty sure people don’t need to be told that… They’ve been wrapping the whole fuckin’ trailer with duck tape and plastic for years and changing the tires twice a year, too… Putting snow tires on the roof in the winter and taking them off every summer…

Sitting in a hotel room watching “UFO Hunters” on late night television… I come to one conclusion… The only people who have seen UFOs all have one thing in common… None of them have all their teeth… Are the aliens afraid we’re going to eat them???

I think some of my audiences have been breeding with aliens, but hey anything that diversifies the gene pool can’t be… All bad…

Stopping to consider the irony of it all… Steve “The Nuclear Guy” performing where the only thing anyone understands about the theory of relativity is everybody is a fuckin’ relative…

They can blame the six fingers on each of their kid’s hands or the one leg shorter than the other on radiation if they like… But maybe… Just maybe it’s because the family tree looks like a fuckin’ cell tower…

I say, if they don’t want people to know they fuck their sisters… Then they shouldn’t fuck their sisters!!!

Still doing some seasonal nuclear contract work, as if I don’t get enough of the road as it is… Recently finishing a two and a half week job at a nuclear power plant in Augusta, GA… I was issued white protective coveralls and a hood upon my arrival… Another moment of irony missed on the locals???

Of course Augusta, GA is the home of the Masters golf tournament and where no black had set foot on the golf course, except to mow the greens, until Tiger Woods broke that color barrier…

This years Masters tournament will be Tigers’ return to competitive golf following some pretty public indiscretions… Waffle House, the road comics’ home away from home, was mentioned prominently as one of Tigers hunting grounds…

Well, I visited three different Waffle Houses while in Augusta and I didn’t happen to see any waitresses that looked anything like the women Tiger was taking to his den… I think that’s a serious case of false advertising… But the food is good and they’re open 24 hours…

I’m a comic ‘cuz I didn’t want to wait until I was old to be able to say whatever came to my mind… And there’s no place I’d rather be than right there, right now on stage in a place like Moonshine, Mississippi…

Friends said, ‘Steve, the roads the place you ought to be…” So I loaded up the car and started driving across the country”