I am doing a small tour with Mike Birbiglia (myself and the amazing Todd Glass are special guests).
Oct. 31 - San Francisco, CA at Cobb’s Comedy Club (Todd won’t be at this show)
Nov. 1 - San Lois Obisbo, CA
Nov. 2 - Redding, CA
Nov. 3 - Eugene, OR
Nov. 4 - Portland, OR
All the dates and venue info and tickets are available on Mike’s site - www.birbigs.com
Comedy Show at Tiger Lilly in Los Feliz..
It’s a nice restaurant/bar on Sunset and Vermont in Los Angeles.
1739 N Vermont Ave, Los Angeles
Tiger Lilly is a show that is run by Maria Bamford, Melinda Hill and the lovely Natasha Leggero.
They are all hilarious and there will be other comedians. Also,watch the Maria Bamford show at SuperDeluxe.com…it’s so good.
Also..the show tonight is free. Starts at 8pm..or 8:30pm. I think.
So I received a message from a friend on Myspace the other day. This friend is named Ben and by friend I mean a cool guy from Cincinnati that I have never met who occasionally sends me cool, funny messages from time to time.
In the message he described a vivid dream that he had had about a grocery store, a fat man with a cello and Mitch. In the dream he and Mitch were stifling their laughter about the fat man and the cello in the grocery store.
This got me thinking about stifled laughter and how great it is. It made me think of a story from many moons ago, where upon stifled laughter and the intense laughter dam that breaks after you have stifled it for too long - got me in trouble:
Stifled Laughter. I actually love stifled laughter because the odds of containing it are very slim..so that usually means that the laughter is building up inside and will come out hard. I remember that I used to laugh so fucking hard as a kid..like pee your pants laughter, and it usually started from stifling it.
I grew up a bit in England when I was young. It was an all girls school, uniforms. I was the ‘foreigner’ from Canada. They all acted like I was American and would ask me if a had a swimming pool growing up..
Anyway, in French class our teacher came up with the idea that we could only speak French, on certain days, for the whole period. Mais non!
Anyway, one day in the ‘only speak French today’ French class. The teacher started the class by offering ‘Ouevre Les Livres!’..or whatever ‘open your books’ in French is . I open my book along with everybody else.
Well almost everybody. From the corner of my eye I spot this Go-Getter Girl march -with great purpose - to the window and start closing the curtains. Now this particular window took up a whole wall - it was huge - and the curtains must have weighed at least a 100lbs. She was using the whole of her weight and then some to pull the rope to close this massive mass of thick and extremely dusty fabric. Extremely determined.
The room is slowly, laboriously getting darker, when I figure out that she has interpreted ‘Ouevre Les Livres’ as ‘Close The Curtains!’ and the look of pride and accomplishment on her face is amazing…
I’m not sure if anyone else has really cottoned onto why the hell are the curtains closing …but I start to lose it, and made every attempt possible to stifle my laughter, ‘cos the room is silent ( save the creaks and groans of an ancient pulley system dragging pre- WWII drapes across a football field sized set of pre- WWII windows). But for some reason the whole thing is hilarious to me.
The teacher hears me, the racket and sees the girl at the same time…and she yells out - in English I might add - “What are you doing?” to the girl, who is still feverishly closing the curtains with all her might. I knew that she was so proud of herself for being the quickest (and only) person to understand the French command…and the room is practically dark. (It was an old school, dim lighting etc)..
I tried really hard to contain my laughter - because I was always getting into a bit of trouble for laughing and shit..but it’s pretty impossible. I hear little quips from around the room, in English accents “What’s she bloody doing?” …and I lose it. I couldn’t stop…Anyway, the teacher tells the girl to sit down and goes to open the curtains again (not a small feat)…and starts yelling at me to stop laughing and settle down.
But I can’t…it’s not like I wanted to embarrass the girl, really..it was just so funny to me. The more I try to stifle the more difficult it becomes to do just that.
The teacher was so mad at me…but the more she was telling me to stop the more I was laughing and now a few other girls are laughing just because I was, and laughter is contagious..I don’t even think most of them really knew why I was laughing so hard…it’s just difficult to not start laughing yourself when someone else is losing their shit.
I start to pee my pants..or should I say my grey, school uniform skirt - and I attempt to get up and run out the room to go to the bathroom, as the teach is yelling at me to sit down and shut up. Ferme La Bouche!
Anyway, I ended up having to have my desk outside the Head Mistress’ office for a week and a letter home to my Dad for disrupting the class..
but I always remember laughing that hard on that day.
“>
You can order your very own 2008 Mitch Hedberg calendar at www.mitchhedberg.net.
It very cool and colourful. All the artwork was done by fans of Mitch. It’s only $20 (includes tax, S&H) ….The shipping department is super fast and efficient (the best in the biz).
Each month has an awesome illustration. Impress your friends by knowing what day it is and stuff.
Also, thank you to all the Artists, Arne and Mary… and to Mark Collins for working so hard to make it look so good.