A Night Out

The last time I can remember going to see a comedian live on stage was February 1989 in Las Vegas. I'd say after 20.5 years, I'm due. I'm not sure if Tim has ever gotten to see a live show. He's wanted to go to a comedy club for years, so Sunday night we went to see Lewis Black. I'd heard an interview on WRIF, and several coworkers told me he was really funny (if extremely foul-mouthed), so I bought tickets.

We also went out to dinner. Thanks to Ellen, we were able to track down that Mexican restaurant we visited in 2007 (El Barzon). It's still there, and strangely now half its menu is Italian specialties. But our dinners and margaritas were all good. The waiter recommended the chicken mole when I couldn't decide. Very complex and bursting with flavors. Sadly it just didn't make a very attractive pic, but here's the exterior of the place, Ellen.



The neighborhood looks even more decrepit and run-down, and the drive down Michigan avenue into downtown Detroit was more depressing/creepy than ever. But we did think of Bryan when we saw ancient ads painted on the sides of brick buildings, architecture and grafitti.

The time on our tickets said 9pm, but it must have been about 10 by the time we actually got seated in the Fillmore. The line to get in stretched past the Fox Theater and around the corner and probably halfway back to Campus Martius. I know why we don't go to shows and entertainment venues with crowds of people very often. I was getting tired of cigarette smoke drifting in my face, and people popping their gum. Still, the people-watching was nearly entertaining as the comics. The women wearing too-revealing clothing, the middle-aged chicks who think they're smokin' hot enough to wear clingy black strapless dresses...

I thought we might even see a brawl right next to us when a guy turned around and asked the loud-mouthed woman behind him to quiet down. She looked like 9 miles of bad road in a flowered shirt, but then he was a pretty big dude. It ended up being more or less a stalemate with him telling her she was being a rude ignorant bitch (and she was---she was constantly making commentary and mocking the opening act. And her normal speaking/laughing voice was one that feels like someone is trying to twist a butter knife into your ear canal), and her sort of quieting down. And we got to see someone marched out by ushers after he yelled something incomprehensible at Lewis Black, after it had been explained to the audience by the announcer, and Lewis himself at one point to other hecklers, that the show was being filmed, and to please behave ourselves. There were cameramen everywhere, and right next to us several times throughout the show.

All in all, a righteously entertaining evening. We got home sooo late, though. It was somewhere between 0130 and 0200.

So who knows, Timmeh and I might end up being seen on Comedy Central one day.

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Not the funniest clip, but the cleanest I could find. There are a gajillion clips on YouTube.