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Road Stories With Josh
Goguen - Vol. 2: "Montana"
Helena, MT
I’m told that Helena is the capitol of Montana. If that’s true, wow, there isn’t much hope for Montana. That’s sad because it’s one of the most beautiful parts of this country I’ve ever driven thru. You can see grassy hills for miles and beyond that there’s mountains with snow-covered tops.
When we arrived at the hotel/club, it’s very odd. Steve Sabo and I stand at the front desk just waiting for the girl to figure out that we are waiting in front of her for a reason. We tell her we’re the comics, and she doesn’t get it. Finally we give up and just tell her we’re performing there tonight and we also need a room. For some reason she’s surprised. Some how, I don’t think that should have surprised us.
After we check in, Steve asks her if she’s going to check out the show.
“No, my boyfriend doesn’t like me hanging out in bars.”
Steve asks how old she is.
“22.”
“And you let your boyfriend dictate where you can and can’t go?”
“Well, I don’t want to leave him at home with our 3 kids.”
Three kids. THREE. She’s 22, he’s her boyfriend, and they have 3 kids.
“Yeah, I have one from a previous relationship, and he has 2 from someone else.”
Oh, well, by all means then, that’s perfectly normal.
We head down to the show room, and it doesn’t look promising at all. It’s funny, but rednecks really look the same everywhere. The club manager comes up to us and lays out the “rules” for the show, which there basically are none. “Oh, and by the way, the people who’ll be up front are retarded.”
Does he mean that they’re slower than everyone else and he's just being condescending?
“No, they’re really retarded. They come out every week; they’ll laugh at everything.”
What a lie. It’s not a lot of fun to be stared at by retarded people for 30 minutes. Luckily, the crowd is filled out with real people and I do well overall.
After the show, I had a few drinks and talked to one of the retarded guys and he’s nice. He tells me that the hot chick in the corner won’t go out with him because of his condition. All I can say is, “yeah, women have the dumbest reasons sometimes.”
One guy in a wheel chair with the voice of Gollum convinces Steve to give him his both CDs for free. He takes them back to his buddies saying that they were donated to the Special Olympics, then proceeds to drink heavily.
Upon going to my room to call it a night, that same guy is in the hotel lobby passed out and hanging over the arm of his wheelchair with his head just waving inches over the floor. That guy is indeed quite the special athlete.
Bozeman, MT
I would love to make fun of this town, but it’s great. My hotel sucks, but it’s these horrid holes that make the Motel 6 seem decent and the nice hotels seem like luxury resorts, so I’ll accept it.
The show goes great. It’s a large college crowd, and really, they’re my audience; old enough to get the jokes, but too young to be judgmental about them.
After the show, we go down to the bar to await our pay. There, Steve meets a cute girl whose name I don’t care to learn. She’s a very heavy drinker and she informs us that she’s only 18. Wow, that’s great.
“Yeah, most of the time, no one cards me, and I hang out with older people so they are the ones who actually buy the drinks. Last time I drank this much I woke up naked at some guy’s house. I don’t know who he was, and I wound up walking to work. Isn’t that funny?”
Then she just pounds a glass of Jack Daniels. A Glass, not, “oh, we ran out of shot glasses, here I’ll just put a little in this.” We’re talking 6 ounces of whiskey with no breath in between. The only liquor that remains is a couple of drops that roll from the corners of her mouth. Here eyes get wide, and I want to throw up just from watching that.
Instead, I stand up and hunt down the paychecks, because, at this point, I’ve had enough and want to sleep.
Butte, MT
I think there’s a pattern starting here. On the Hotel/Club’s sign it says, “Welcome Severe Brain Trauma Conference.” I’m praying it’s the doctors and nurses who are getting together.
We walk into the bar/club, and there’s this attractive young girl playing the video bar game that gets up and starts to leave. Steve says he was hoping to play a few games with her before she left.
“Imps mkay. Imal be back lata mahbah.”
Holy crap, that sign wasn’t lying.
She leaves and we sit and play some touch screen games waiting for the show. After about ten minutes, some guy comes in who’s literally yelling for a beer but you can’t understand a word he says because, he of course has, say it with me, Severe Brain Trauma. I turn to look, and I wish I hadn’t because I see this guy is wearing a cloak carrying a staff like he’s Gandalf who just finished off a Balrog and is parched for a for a mug of ale before going on with his campaign of dragon slaying.
The show is packed, and not with the brain damaged, though it might as well have been because these people don’t get any of the jokes. It’s not just me either, because they just stare at Steve too. This is the worst show the tour so far.
After the show, that girl from before is back, and she’s drinking heavily. She says, “Look, I’ve got 2 belly buttons” as she pulls her shirt up. She says that it’s from a feeding tube from when she was in a coma for 9 months. I found the whole thing really hot.
The rest of the evening, she’s hanging around Steve and I. She’s making eyes at me and trying to get me to dance and the only thing I can think is, all my life, I’ve never really had a woman hit on me and be so blatantly obvious about it. Turns out, all I needed was to go to a convention of the brain damaged.
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Josh Goguen currently lives in NC. He went to Film School and upon graduation, said, "fuck film," and started doing stand-up. He's been doing stand-up for 3 years and tends to be an less than appreciated in the South. So far, his comedy career highlights have been working with Jim Norton and the late Mitch
Hedberg.
Check
Out Josh On MySpace:
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