Tickle My Funny Bone

After all the hard and serious touristing stuff I’ve been doing down here in the Ohio/Michigan area this week I decided to try something a little different. This weekend I visited the local Funny Bones Comedy Club with the Murrays who just happen to be in town (http://funnybonecentral.com/ComedyClub/598ade70-e983-48dc-a984-8bd8c86291ab/Toledo_Funny_Bone).

The venue itself was OK other than the fact that the club is in the back of a restaurant that neither the male half of the Murrays nor I could see an emergency exit for.  This kind of freaked him out because it would definitely not be up to the Canadian fire codes. Also, when it was time to leave it took forever to get out because we were all bottlenecked through the only exit.

But on to the more important stuff of funny business. We saw two comedians – Adrian Crosby and Rob Schneider. The first comedian was OK. I didn’t get a lot of his racial humor, but that is probably because I am from Canada and we face a different set of racial issues. This guy’s jokes were mostly focused around African American – Euro American relations and the relative sizes of their penises. I guess the stereo type of the large African American penis is alive and well in the United States. I don’t really know how well his jokes went over in that he was probably the only African American in a room filled with a group or rather large white people; and I do mean filled.

I felt for the guy when he did the big build up for Rob Schneider and had us all clapping and cheering for Schneider then the guy didn’t show up. Not only did Mr. Schneider take his time showing up. It was obvious that the Crosby guy was running out of jokes and really stretching, but he handled it graciously and did his best.

I do have to admit that Schneider (Deuce Bigilow, Male Gigolo - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205000/) was worth the wait. He was subtle, jarring, intelligent, relevant, and even a little daring. Maybe even more than a little daring when you consider where he was and the audience he faced. He didn’t shy away from controversial subjects such as gun control, immigration, and inter-racial marriage. He even talked about Obama passing into law that Monsanto can’t be sued if their Genetically Modified plants make their way onto an organic farmer’s land. What he didn’t mention is that for years Monsanto has been suing these organic farmers for patent infringement whenever their seeds or plants ended up on an organic farmer’s farm.  Still, it was nice to see a west coast perspective on the world get a little bit of exposure and laughter. Maybe this is the way things start.

Thank you Rob Schneider for an enjoyable evening filled with great, silly, and sometimes thought provoking laughs. I am just a quirky Canadian visiting your fair country and you lightened my heart to know that folks down here do not really have an insular perspective (we outsiders just think you do) and that free speech in America is not only alive but celebrated in unexpected places.