VT Day 4 - A Very Cheesy Day: Pizza, Jokes, and Lots of Free Samples
With the exception of Wisconsin, Vermont is probably the state most known for their cheeses, and for good reason. Having already sampled Cabot, possibly the most well known Vermont cheddar, today I decided to go for a deeper, finer cut and go to the Grafton Village Cheese Company in Brattleboro. Besides the high quality dairy, the advantages to checking out Grafton was that I got to essentially drive to the other end of Vermont, getting to see more of the state, and also there is a fine distillery right down the road from the cheese shop.
To fuel up for this cross state trek, I went to the Bagel Market in Essex, near St. Michael's College where I'd spent the night. I got a jam-packed bagel sandwich with eggs, cheddar, spinach, and bacon. Not too shabby a way to start the day.
From there, I had hoped to visit a weird taxidermy museum called the Main Street museum, but they appeared to be closed. Fortunately I stumbled into a different art/thrift called Oodles. The owner (pictured below) was incredibly friendly.
I made a lunch of free Grafton samples. My personal favorite was the smoked garlic cheddar, but there was quite a bit of variety to choose from. They also had a cheese I had never heard of before (which doesn't mean much to be fair) called a shepsog, which was made out of a micture of sheep and cow's milk, so it had a really cool flavor and texture combination. For the lactose intolerant, the shop also has samples of different jams, jellies, and mustards and a fine selection of unfortunately un-sample-able chocolates, maple syrup, and booze. I bought a dark chocolate coconut cluster and a mint chocolate truffle, because I did feel a little ashamed of just how much cheese I had eaten and felt like I owed them something. Turns out the woman working the cash register was also a comedian, but had kinda fallen off the wagon do the long drive to Burlington and lack of a scene in Brattleboro.
Down the street aways is the Saxtons River Distillery, probably most known for their Sapling maple liqueur. You get to sample 4 spirits for free, so I tried the maple rye, the maple bourbon, the gin, and the coffee liqueur. Personally I really liked the maple rye best as that was probably the one that was nicest to drink neat but the others would all go well in cocktails. I don't normally like gin much, but there's wasn't overwhelmingly piney so I didn't mind it.
On the way back to Burlington, I had passed through the town of Middlebury, which I'd like to go back to because they have several breweries. I did stop to snag some sweet pics though.
Because there hadn't been enough cheese today, I got one of the largest slices of pizza I have ever had for just $3 at the Castleton Pizza Place and Deli, where I had stopped to get gas.
With both myself and my car fueled back up, I went back to round 2 of the first round of the Vermont's funniest comedian competition at the Burlington Comedy Club.
None of the jokes were actually that cheesy I just put that in the title for thematic consistency. In fact, I think this night was actually slightly stronger overall. And while I'm making wide generalizations, I'd say that this would have been a good night to bring any shitty dudes in your life who don't think women are funny, because in aggregate I think the women did more consistently well this night than their male counterparts. And that is very much more of a compliment to the women than a diss to the men, because overall the quality was high across the bar.
I think my favorite comedian of the night was Tarzan Jenkins because he did such a bizarre and unpredictable set that was unlike anything else I had really seen. I don't know how to summarize it other than as a wildly inaccurate history lesson about MLK, but that doesn't do justice to how weird, smart, and funny it was.
I think the tightest more traditional standup set went to Betsy Briton, who did a mix of political and personal stuff including a really smart alzheimer joke. A lot of stuff that was riding the line of sensitive subjective, but she always stuck the landing.
I was really happy to see some of the comics I had met at the earlier open mics, Carl Sonnefeld, Nicole Sisk, and Dave Anderson, deliver truly excellent sets as well. I had heard a good number of the jokes before, but, I don't know if there was some weird energy because of the good venue or the competition, because this was the best delivery of the material I'd seen all week and I think the audience sensed these were particularly good sets as well.
Other highlights for me included a comic named Tim Bridge's extended bit about how messed up Beauty and the Beast is, another completely character based set, and the host Richard doing an almost entirely different set of one-liners in between comics. My favorite of his: "I'm a skateboarder so it was really weird for me to come out to my parents and have to tell them they're gay".
My personal favorite joke of the night: Dave Anderson: "I'm allergic to bees so I got an epipen. I just want to give those bastards a taste of their own medicine"
Just about every comic, that I really liked made it to the next round. The biggest surprise to me was that Dave Anderson didn't, and two comedians (who I won't name in the spirit of avoiding negativity) that I would have ranked fairly lowly made it. My theory is that the two I didn't care for very much were really sweet and charming, as opposed to particularly funny, so they still got good audience reactions, and Dave was the last performer on the last day of preliminaries, so he did better material in front of a more tired audience and more tired judges. Who knows? I guess these decisions must always have some degree of arbitrariness.
After the show, I hung out for a bit at the bar in the comedy club and got to talk to the host, Richard. Of the comics, I've gotten to talk to from Vermont, I think he's probably done the most extensive touring so it was great getting to ask him for advice. Something he said that I thought was cool, is that you have to try to overcome your assumptions about an audience even during your set, because he's had times where he's bombed every joke for a big chunk of a set and then managed to save it, so you just never know. You can only fail for sure if you give up on yourself and the audience.
Favorite Random Sightings: A restaurant tip jar saying "Save cows, tip us"; A Traffic cop blatantly vaping; A car with the license plate "AynRand" (from New Hampshire) speeding up to pass a VW bus with a "Coexist" sticker; Vermont Country Kitchen Kissing Bridge; A wifi network called "Anne Frank Live On!!!"
Regional Observation: Between Burlington and Brattleboro is a whole of beautiful, green, nothing.
Albums Listened To: Black Messiah by D'Angleo and the Vanguard; The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady by Charles Mingus; Blackout by the Dropkick Murphys; Blackout! by Method Man and Redman; Blackstar by David Bowie; Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan (This is probably my favorite grouping of albums by random alphabetical chance. With the exception of the Dropkick Murphy's album they all flowed together surprisingly nicely)
People's Favorite Jokes:
Why did the rooster cross the road? To get to the Hen house
(Again you have to picture this dirty one being told by the sweetest old lady you can imagine) A husband and wife have been saving for 50 years of marriage to go on a cruise. Right when they get on the boat the wife realizes she forgot her hearing aid, but she doesn't want it to ruin the trip so she just goes with it. When they get to their room, they see that they have bunk beds. Her husband turns to her and asks "Up or down?" Right then she jumps on them, and they have the best sex of his life. All week on the cruise it's like that. "Up or down?", great sex, "Up or down", great sex, etc. When they get back to shore, the husband's in a really good mood. They get back to the house, and go right for the bedroom. She puts her hearing aid in, and he turns to her and says "Up or down?". "Huh?" she says. "You know, like all week. Up or down?" "Oh," she says, "I thought you were saying, 'Fuck or drown'"
What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh
