Gunshow Goes to Philadelphia

So over the summer our old improv coach, Dan Goldstein, suggested that Gunshow should apply to this improv festival in Philadelphia. Since Gunshow hadn't performed in 8 months, usually a bad sign for an improv group, we were all said "sure. why not" but hesitantly. We were accepted and this last weekend we drove down and did a show. How was it? That'll follow in a minute!

The drive down was pretty quick after we got across the Varrazano Bridge. Philly is only like 2 hours away as long as you don't run into traffic. We purposefully left at 3pm to get out of the city early. Our show was at 7pm and I didn't want to get stuck in some kind of crazy traffic jam. In my panic to leave I managed to forget all the information about our hotel and destinations. Luckily in a panic I called Ryan and he brought the info. He had made all kinds of good decisions about what info to bring. Once everything was in the GPS we were off and running. THe trip there was uneventful. At one point the GPS took us off the highway on a weird side journey. We figured out that the GPS was actually run by an old lady that used it to trick people into doing her errands. When we got to the hotel we were pleasantly surprised. It was a nice room, really busy joint. There were lots of families there at the hotel. When I was checking in I noticed that there was an info package for another group of hotel guests. As it turned out the Ruff Ryders motorcycle club was in town ad staying at our hotel. checking the parking lot I noticed a lot more giant sparkly rimmed SUV's in the lot. Their Itinerary was hilarious. First day there was a men and womens separate field day to some crazy strip clubs. So both groups were going to separate strip clubs to get worked up for 2 hours and then they would hook back up for Ruff Ryder action! There was a declaration on the packet which stated that they would settle for no-less than the Ruff Ryders attending to party like rockstars all weekend. Besides some random ladies in jackets and a couple we never saw any of the people who you see associated with RR in music videos and on youtube.

So we got to the theater and checked out the stage very briefly. Nice blackbox. Before we knew it we were backstage getting ready to perform. The funny thing about backstage was that you actually had to run around the block to get to the alley that led to the backstage. So we were looking for backstage like "It can't be around this corner... it's not... it must be arund the next corner?" So we made it backstage and then it was show time.

We had a really great show. Some of the scenes were about a Cheese factory, a new museum guard learning the ropes (featured mannequin fucking), People on a date, Father teaching birds and bees before going to jail and more that I can't recall.

Someone told us we "won the slot" which is nice but it wasn't a competition. We did just get a mention in the highly influential Washington DC blog DC Comedy: 4 Now. Good thing it took me a month to get this post up....

The next day I dropped Matt Stinton off at the Greyhound because he had to work. After checking out of the hotel the remaining three of us walked around Philly. We went to the Mutter Museum which is a fucked up medical oddities museum. Ashely really wanted to check it out. It was interesting. Lots of stuff on Ben Franklin and then it got gross. Lots of skulls and dissected people. I was interested in the trepanated skulls but disappointed in the lack of explanation of that weirdness. I was left explaining it to Ryan and Ashley who didn't really care. They were more interested in the fossilized colon of the man with 40lbs of impacted shit. Grim! After that we went to the Liberty Bell and other assorted things related to the Founding Fathers. Hard to imagine standing in line to see those things at this age but there were plenty of people doing so.

Apparently while we were in Philly it was also Ron Paul madness weekend. Everywhere you looked were people freaking out about how awesome Ron Paul is. Almost rabidly so. I thought it was a Sean Paul rally so I kept asking people is the had weed. Hey Ron Paul, Pass the joe-o-o cause i'm ina de club and I gots ta know which one is gonna catch my flow-o-o. We ended up stopping and listening to some speech during the rally. It was standard impossible proposal stuff. No taxes. No War. No whatever it is you don't want more of. Sounds good. Who is going to pay for that?

We stuck around to watch the first set of the night then headed home. Unfortunately the ride home featured a classically insane diarrhea emergency from me. I had been really good the whole trip and in fact hadn't had a brown out like this in ages. We stopped about 45 mins out of Brooklyn at some shitty rest stop and I got a Roy Rogers cheese burger and curly fries. Everything seemed fine and we ate and hit the road. About 10 mins into ride I felt something shift in my gut and it was followed by an almost instant and painful need to shit my pants. Of course just then the traffic got terrible. I alerted Ashley and Ryan that I might have to pull over to shit on the side of the road. Ashley encouraged me not to. I floored it and saw that there was another rest stop coming up in 11 miles. We did 80-90mph the whole way. A few times I thought I was going to lose it but I made it and shit a ton of crazy diarrhea. I was concerned that even though I couldn't force any more out that there was another stealth load hiding somewhere in my colon. I gave up and headed back to the car. As we made our way through Staten Island I started feeling crummy again. Sure enough I got that sudden painful urge. I decided I couldn't make it across the Verazzano and pulled off at the very last exit. I sped through the local streets until I spotted what looked like a restaurant. I pulled up and the valets took pity on my "I am about to shit my pants" line. I ran up and realized I was trying to crap at someone's wedding. There was a black gentleman dressed in a ridiculous top hat who stopped me at the top of the stairs. He wouldn't let me use the toilet but he pointed me to the nearest one. Which was thankfully just 50 feet down the boardwalk (it was some kind of sea side place) so I ran into the place past anyone who would care and dropped what felt like Pound #2. Afterwards I quickly made it back to the car and we headed back to NYC. The rest of the trip was totally normal. Just for 30 mins of sheer horror it would have been a great trip. That didn't ruin the trip but its something that really embarrassed me. Its something I don't like other people to see. Fucking IBS.

When I finally got to my neighborhood I scored front parking which was a god send. I didn't have to go to the bathroom anymore but knowing it could just walk right into my house was nice.