WV Day 3 - Comedy, Castles, and Crustless Pizza
I started today by getting my coffee at the River and Rail Bakery. The bakery is in Huntington's Heritage Station, and old B & O Railroad station turned visitor center. The building itself is really cool and historic, so it would be worth the visit even if the coffee and food hadn't been great. For food, I got my first southern biscuit with cheese, eggs, and bacon. It was a little slice of home-cooked heaven.
From there i drove up Wheeling, which is just about as far north as the South gets. West Virginia is a very oddly shaped state, so if you think about it being shaped like a tea kettle, than Wheeling is right on the handle.
Wheeling is about a three hour drive from Huntington, but today was the first real sunny day I've had so the mountain roads were all just insanely beautiful to drive without any of the ominous grey skies.
Over the long drive, I re-listened to more of Norm Macdonald's podcast. At the end of (almost) every episode, he, the guest, and his trusty sidekick Adam Egret will read a series of jokes of prepared notecards. A lot of the jokes are intentionally pretty bad, but the episode I heard today had one that really killed me: "Pornstar Ron Jeremy is back to work today after having open heart surgery. His next picture is called 'I'm Going to Have Sit Down for This'"
Once in Wheeling, I was very impressed by the gorgeous views of the Ohio River. One of the comic's I met in Burlington said that if I went to Wheeling, I had to get DiCarlo's pizza so I made sure that I did. A local chain, the DiCarlo pizza isn't exactly much to look at, but in this case appearances are very much deceiving. With homemade authentic Italian recipes for bread and sauce and freshly grated provolone cheese, the pizza packs a powerful punch of flavor. I honestly think it is one of the best tomato sauces I've ever had. And the personal small pizza is under $10, and could probably be two meals for someone with an ounce of self-control. For an added bonus, according to their advertisements, their pizzas have fewer calories than their competitors.
from there I went to see an abandoned castle also in Wheeling. When the railroad and coal industries were booming, Wheeling was at one time the wealthiest city in the country. One rich doctor from the town started having a castle built as a gift to his wife, but she passed away unexpectedly so he just abandoned the castle before completion, and it still remains to this day. In the intervening years, the castle has become a bit of a scenic tourist sight because from it's cantage point on a hill it provides an incredible overlook of the river and the rolling hills. It was a pretty incredible place to catch a sunset.
After that, I drove on to Morgantown for the first (and only) official comedy open mic of the state. It was at a bar called 123 Pleasant Street. Because Morgantown is a small-ish college town and 123 Pleasant Street is one of the top bars in the area (they have $1 beers!), the mic was shockingly well attended compared to most bar shows I've been to. The audience seemed to encompass a pretty big breadth of people looking for something fun to do on a Wednesday night. If the good crowd wasn't enough, before the mic began the bar was playing Norm Macdonald's new netflix special on a projector so that struck me as a very good omen.
Between the audience energy and the overall high quality of comedy, this turned out to be one of the most fun mics I'd been to in a while. I'll be honest the West Virginia comics were so nice and welcoming, I didn't actually get to hear all of them perform because other comics would end up chatting with me at the bar and I'd end up losing track of time. That means I won't necessarily have the most informed view of what West Virginian comics are like as performers, but I do now have a very high opinion of them as people.
Of the comics I really got to hear, my favorite was a guy named Andy Frampton. He had the biggest beard and the thickest Southern accent in the room, so he wouldn't have looked or sounded out of place on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, but his jokes were just about a million times smarter and funnier. I particularly liked an extended bit about how Jesus got the last name Christ if no one else in his family has that last name.
My own set went really well. The host Noah, who was one of the chillest people I've ever met, said that all performers got 6 minutes but as long as they were getting laughs they could just keep going. Having the longer set length and the packed house, I felt really comfortable on stage and like I could do all the material I wanted to do. Everything seemed to land pretty well. I snuck some newer jokes in the middle which did alright but not as relatively strong, so I followed those with my short, dirty jokes, and those were very well received. I think total I did about 7 minutes because it was going really well, but I still get anxious about going over time, so I just wrapped on a big laugh line.
My favorite joke of the night was by a guy named Jacob Hall: "I got into a fight with my friend who's a pharmacist because I told him his whole job would be out of date if the medical world discovered the technology of the Chuck E. Cheese ticket counter. You just put the tickets on the thing and it knows exactly how many there are!"
Favorite Random Sightings: Pepper King; The Red Caboose; A big billboard with a middle aged man in a fairy outfit that didn't mention that fact at all; Smoker Friendly's (like a Friendly's but for smokers); the first Big Old Mullet I've ever seen in real life
Regional Observations: I was talking to the other comedians about Virginia going blue for the first time in a while. I feel like in the North there's been a sort of "Now they're coming around"/pleasantly surprised attitude towards it, but the people from the next state over were not surprised at all saying that it's been a long time coming and that Virginia has been gradually going blue for a while.
Albums Listened To: Here and Nowhere Else by Cloud Nothings; Heretic Pride by the Mountain Goats; Heroes by Mr. T-Bone and Young Lions (Italian ska); Hi-Bob Ska by the Skatalites; Hi-Five Soup! by the Aquabats!; Hidden Vagenda by Kimya Dawson (just Viva la Persistence); High Voltage by AC/DC; Highway to Hell by AC/DC
People's Favorite Jokes:
Pick up Line: If you were a pirate, would you keep your parrot on this shoulder or this shoulder? (then you put your arm around the person, the funniest part of this was that the barista used a basket of bread to model the person she was trying to pick up)
I wish I had a coffee pun for you, but I've bean busy
Song of the Day: