From Maspeth to Manchester

My third-favourite Bosnian comedian booked a comedy show Friday night in the middle of a Ukrainian restaurant in Maspeth.

July 13th, 2017
Maspeth— Queens, NY

My third-favourite Bosnian comedian booked a comedy show Friday night in the middle of a Ukrainian restaurant in Maspeth.

I was booked to MC the ‘show’ to a grand audience of 6 local diners who didn't know there would be a “show” happening.

What the booker didn't realise was that there would be a diabolical storm flooding New York City that night, keeping most sane people in their homes. There were 8 comics on the show who had all schlepped to Queens for the show, each finding it more brutal than the next to get the attention of the soggy diners, staring blankly into their borscht. What a night.

I went straight from the show to Laguardia and jumped on a very turbulent red-eye flight to Manchester, only to be kept wide awake by a fellow passenger with questionable personal boundaries and an inconsolably screaming baby. Thomas Cook Airlines didn't have seat-back screens or earplugs, so I sat staring at my tray table for 8 hours, grinding my teeth to chalky nubs.

July 14th, 2017
Manchester, UK

I landed in Manchester completely sleep-deprived, went to a meeting about a comic arts festival for the full day, and then lay wide awake in the hotel room because of severe jet lag.

Note: Fellow Substacker Chaz Hutton has a great piece this week on -among other things- Jetlag. Check him out below:

Friday Outlined. Edition No.6

Kenan…

…the booker in question, Kenan, is an absurdly funny person. He was raised in Bosnia and moved to New York to pursue music comedy. A potty-mouthed sprite with a heart of gold, comedian Devin Keast lovingly said Kenan had “the intellect of a gin-soaked Sarajevo drainpipe”.

He once told a joke (in an actual comedy room where people wanted to watch comedy on purpose) that had the audience crying laughing for —and we timed this on the recording— 1 minute and 49 seconds. He just stood there on stage while the wave of laughter rattled through the room. When it looked like the laugh was going to die down, he’d take a beat and smile, then the audience would just burst out laughing again, remembering the previous joke.