NH Day 7- Odd Jobs, Odd Encounters, and Odd Comedy
Little Video:
It's interesting writing these everyday I'm beginning to see recurring themes and patterns within the days, and I'm sure eventually that will hold true for weeks and months as well.
Today's theme was definitely unexpected or unusual encounters, but each one led to learning some new, fun or interesting piece of information. I feel pretty lucky that all these strangers feel comfortable talking to me, and sharing jokes and stories and occasionally the heavy stuff. I hope this is indicative of the other states to come.
My favorite stories I heard from my Air BnB host were the time she made Russell Brand a box of chocolates and surprised him at a show with them, and another time she got to travel through Europe serving as a personal massage therapist for a professional dance team. I can definitely get behind using an odd job for travel.
When I was driving with her friend to pick up her towed card, her friend and I somehow ended up talking about karaoke, and I learned that he has been to over 580 different karaoke venues. I really admire that level of commitment. His go-to songs were mostly James Taylor, because I had to ask.
Driving my host's truck back, I learned that, while I would not be so bold as to say that you should look a certain way to drive a pickup truck, I definitely don't look right doing it. There was just such a look of disappointment in the eyes of every other pickup driver that passed me.
After getting the truck back, I went to the dinner and a show deal at Headliner's Comedy Club in Manchester. They advertise as the ONLY (their emphasis) comedy club in NH, but is the function room of a Raddison hotel really a club? Who am I to judge? The dinner was really good though, and the meal deal covered a salad, either steak, chicken, or fish and a gratuity already factored in, leading to $40 all told for that and the show which seemed like a pretty solid deal to me. I went with the fish, at the waitress' recommendation and she did not lead me astray.
I finished my dinner with enough time to just explore downtown Manchester. I'm sure this might be shocking, but the Raddison was in a slightly nicer location than the Econo Lodge. I quickly realized that there was a lot to the city, that I missed out on. This sentiment will certainly also apply to New Hampshire more generally. Manchester seemed to have a solid night life, with most bars looking like they had decent crowds. My favorite was walking past Castro's Back Room Cigar Lounge, and just seeing all these older guys with gigantic cigars sitting outside the storefront shooting the breeze.
At the show, the random encounters and connections continued as I was assigned to sit at a table with two older couples and one of the couples' son. Even though the two couples had never met, they discovered that two of them had worked for the same community college at various points, and one couple had recently bought heating equipment that the other couples' son's company had designed. We all chatted about comedy and life.
One of the women at the table had grown up in Illinois, but then lived all around the East Coast. I asked her what she thought the biggest differences were between the midwest and the northeast. She said friendliness. In her experiences, the midwest is genuinely friendly (everyone says hi), the northeast is guardedly friendly (they won't make the first move, but once you've said hi they'll be friendly), and the south is superficially friendly (they'll say hi but won't want to go any deeper). I'd be interested to see how well these generalizations match my experiences. I'd really agree with the guarded friendliness for MA, but I'd have to say so far it seems pretty genuine in NH. We agreed though that perhaps hikers are just more friendly in general and thus not a very good sample.
The crowd was a pretty decent mix of younger and older people, though I'd say slightly skewed older, and they were certainly drinking more than the other crowds (which makes sense for a Saturday Night). I think this in particular made them a very amenable crowd, though a few people seemed to lose the ability to whisper in a way that could reasonably deemed quiet the more liquor they got in 'em. The comedians were pros though and just had fun whenever someone said something too loudly in the audience rather than getting upset. No topics seemed to go without any getting any laughs, including the dirtier ones which was first for me to see in a slightly older crowd. Again I'm sure the booze lightened people up a bit.
The first comedian was Josh Day, who I had seen earlier this week. He still did mostly one-liners, but once he had won over the crowd (which he did very effortlessly) he branched into some longer set-up bits. Something I noticed seeing him a second time, was the way he used body language and facial expressions to really hammer jokes home. If a one-liner, required a little thought, he would pause and kinda raise his eyebrows, almost daring the audience to figure it out. A lot of comedians when they just start out are absolutely terrified of silence, but the way Josh would command his was really informative to watch. I'm so used to listening to stand-up that's it really easy to forget how much the physical aspect can add even without actually being more broadly "physical comedy".
The second comedian, Mark Turcotte, did a more "ripped from the headlines" approach. He'd bring up an interesting story, recent event, or song and then do a joke or two about it. This approach has the drawback of, depending on how interesting the story is, sometimes the set up can actually be funnier than the punchline. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though as people are still laughing. I particularly like a bit about how every modern day country song is super creepy toward women, and I think this bit did a good job combining funny set ups to funnier punch lines.
The third comic Rob Steen did mostly crowd work based bits with a few stories thrown in. I'll admit I used to be kinda snobby and think of comics who relied mostly on crowd work as being lazy because it doesn't show any good comic writing. While there are absolutely lazy comedians who do bad crowd work, having seen it done well a couple times now I'm starting to appreciate it more as just a different but still valid skill. Rob was really good at it. He had a knack for making people comfortable sharing odd things and capturing the rhythm of when to ask to ask more questions or just let someone talk a bit. Possibly one of the most impressive moments of the show was when he asked a woman if she was married and she replied that she was a widow. What an absolute minefield to have to respond to that in this context! Responding poorly could really threaten to tank his set, and take the momentum out of the whole show, but Rob did not even hesitate. He acknowledged that it was sad, but then asked her a funny question about her husband in a way that kept the humor going but also let her have some control of how he'd handle a delicate topic. It was super impressive.
The headliner was Paul Nardizzi, who's pretty well known around New England and has appeared on Conan a few times. He had a very "everyman" persona, talking a lot about his kids, cars, and sports. He was a lot like a mix of Ray Romano and Bill Burr, which I do intend as a compliment. He did a lot of rant based bits, and while some off the topics seemed well worn his ability to toss in a more absurd one liner or an unexpected word choice ("percolate" comes to mind) kept things from becoming predictable. He did an extended bit about his kid playing Call of Duty and acting like he'd actually seen war that was really funny. Unfortunately as part of his persona, he tried to be very middle of the road politically, which is normally not a bad thing but I personally felt like his jokes about Mexicans being illegal immigrants and transgender people being confusing sort of missed the mark. The rest of the crowd didn't seem to think so though, and both of those bits got pretty good laughs. Maybe I'm a bit sensitive, but I also think they were legitimately weaker jokes relative to the rest of his. I won't usually dislike a good joke just because I don't agree with it. I get that there are illegal immigrants and that identity politics can be confusing, so both of these topics can be joked about without being racist or transphobic. I'm not saying the comic or the crowd were either of those things, or trying to sound judgmental. I just reaffirm my belief that if you're going to make a joke that will likely be offensive it should be twice as smart or twice as funny, and these bits did not meet those criteria in my book.
Favorite Joke: Josh Day- "I'm doing pretty alright for myself, I have real rock with a fake key in it"
Favorite Random Sightings: A sign for dentist office called The Grateful Dentists with tooth on the sign made to look like the Grateful Dead logo. Because when I think dentistry, I think stoner jam bands; A Back to School Hot Tub sale, because those two things make sense together
New Skill Acquired: Making crepes:
Regional Observations: I've seen way more vanity plates in New Hampshire than I have in MA
Albums Listened To: Amateur Hour by Bob Odenkirk (my first comedy album on this comedy road trip, uneven but real moments of brilliance); American Ghetto by Portugal. the Man
People's Favorite Jokes:
What do you call a pig that has just gotten over a sickness? A cured ham
Quoting Josh Day: "I'm writing a book that takes place in time before porcupines. It's a pre-quill"
Quoting Brian Regan: "If there's one place you'd expect them to have valet parking, it's outside the emergency room"
