Comedy and Culture in the Bible Belt
We were stuck with Atlanta, GA, because this is home to the Laughing Skull Lounge, host of the Laughing Skull Comedy Festival, and the competition that was our reason for getting involved. Madison's Comedy Club on State hosted the second round of the competition back in November, and Nick Hart advanced to the quarter-finals, which meant Atlanta in April. Stefan Davis funded the trip and performed in the festival; and I went along because I am eager to travel anywhere, and because following Nick and Stefan around has done a good job so far of feeding me material.
Laughing Skull Comedy Festival
The city of Atlanta was every bit as disappointing as I had been warned. No one knows how to drink, a vegetarian meal is not to be found, service is terrible in any venue, and the prices for everything are outrageous. The people aren't very friendly, and there are few attractions to keep the poor traveler entertained. We spent most of our time in Atlanta in the hotels.
The festival itself was pretty disappointing as well, despite the great potential that a week with the top budding comics from around the country holds. The Laughing Skull was its hub, but shows were held at bars and clubs around the area, so moving from one show to another was annoying, at best. We had to drive 45 minutes from Atlanta for Nick's first show Wednesday night, to the tiny town of Buford, GA, and the Buford Variety Theater, a comedy club built in the guts of an old Presbyterian church. The venue was gorgeous, and the staff hospitable; but the show was clearly not promoted at all by the club or the festival. The club usually runs an open mic on Wednesday nights, and a number of their regular comics showed up still expecting that. The showroom holds about 100 people; about 20 seats were filled. Six of them were me, Nick, Stefan, and Nick's family; and we had to leave after Nick's set to race back to Atlanta for the competition show at the Laughing Skull.
The Laughing Skull Lounge is a tiny space located inside the Vortex bar in Midtown Atlanta. The bar is really cool, despite the characteristic Atlanta service. The food looked great; and between the dim lighting, the section of poker tables, and the secondhand smoke that is still legal in Georgia, the bar had a satisfying seedy vibe. The Lounge had a bit of an underground vibe, as well, but more Beatnik than back-alley. The comedians said it reminded them of Chicago basement open-mics. I expected to see a troupe of mimes all in black and berets step out from behind the velvet curtain onto the small stage in front of the theater-style rows of chairs.
Instead, a shitty host stepped onto the stage. He was an entertaining comic, but-- like everyone we saw chosen to host the festival's shows-- had no idea how to emcee. They were all low-energy, they held pages of notes on stage, they forgot the performers' names, they were slow to get to the stage after each comic's set... and a number of other things that the comedians pointed out to me as unprofessional and awkward, things that made the shows dull and uncomfortable compared to the ones that we've become spoiled with in Madison, where the performers know proper etiquette and the crowds know how to watch a show.
The third venue that we experienced this week was the most absurd, in my opinion. Nick was there ahead of Stefan and me, and he sent a text, It 's inside of a Chuck E Cheese. The Funny Farm is located in what apparently used to be a restaurant inside of Andretti Indoor Karting & Games in Roswell, Georgia. We entered through the arcade and dodged the herds of fat families and screaming, sprinting children at the buzzing, clanging, dinging machines to get to the green room. Nick performed in the Politics show in front of an almost-empty room of Georgia Republicans on Friday night, and Stefan performed in the King Davids of Comedy show Saturday night without a single Jewish joke in his cache.
We came out ahead, altogether, though. The boys earned TV credits through the Funny Farm performances; and, because few of the people in charge at any of the shows knew completely what was going on, we were able to get into all of the shows for free as “comics”, and the Funny Farm even gave me a $25 gift card for the arcade simply because I was in the green room when they were handing them out to the night's performers.
South Carolina
Despite any annoyances of the festival, the vacation was still a pleasant respite for all of us, and a great experience for me. I enjoyed the idea of “being on the road”-- the boys were performing, and I was taking notes for a story, a prototype for the artists' life we're each working for.
Thursday we had no comedy business, so we spent the day in Spartanburg, South Carolina, at the lakeside home of Nick Hart's parents. It was 70 degrees and sunny outside, we could see the Blue Ridge Mountains standing in the distance behind the trees across the lake, and Sue Hart made grilled chicken for dinner. Nick and Stefan drove the Harts' Porsche to the mountains with the top down, and Nick gave us a tour of his childhood after dinner. We enjoyed our only good buzz of the entire vacation on vodka-7 and Heineken. Stefan and I slept in the room that used to belong to Nick's little sister, and we woke early to head to the ocean on Friday.
The ocean was my favorite. This part of the vacation was absolutely unreasonable and totally necessary. We were told that the drive from Spartanburg to Charleston would take about three hours. With a stop for breakfast at Waffle House, Stefan's Yankee driving, and a car on fire on I-85, it took us four. We spent twenty minutes at the beach before we had to turn around and head back to Spartanburg to meet up with the Harts to head back to Atlanta for Nick's politics show. We spent fourteen hours driving that day. But, I saw the ocean for twenty goddamn minutes. I collected seashells, I held a starfish, and I tasted salt water.
Aside from a week off of work, the greatest benefit of my trip was simply the experience of traveling. I experienced Southern hospitality, cooking, driving, and... “diversity”. I experienced a tour schedule and a sleepless night in the plane, the train, and the automobile that got us to Atlanta from Madison. It was but one more taste of the world outside of Central Wisconsin, another one to whet my appetite for more, an experience worth even Atlanta and bad comedy.
