HeadSpill

After being up from twenty hours I arrived in Chicago from Manchester. I was really annoyed that the flight was an hour late, which was nothing really, but then for some reason crossing a one hour time zone and getting it back made everything alright. The holiday I’m having is cut neatly into two halves of a week each, one to see the sights and be taken by around by my significant other, who spent time as a teen here, and a second week making up the 2007 Comedysportz tournament in Rock Island, Illinois, where I now sit at the end of week one.

Day One.
My best Colt Seavers impression (him out of the Fall Guy 80’s tv show) out at a log cabin in the middle of nowhere where the insects were the size of golf balls. Got topless naked chopping wood and went all cowboy masculine with an axe in the picture postcard sunshine. Then Bron showed me a photo she’d just taken of a chubby, red faced, sweaty northerner blowing his cheeks out that looked quite frankly embarassing.

Day Two.
The district of Wisconsin Dells looks like it has been built by willy wonka after a hard night at a German bierfest. Like blackpool but with no coastline.
It’s on day two I realise that everything is far away. Towns are far away, cities are miles away, but even each building in commercial areas, or ’shops’ to you and me has its own land and parking space and big sign. There is no ‘next door’, and you need transport to get anywhere at all. At most petrol stations we’ve used we’ve seen locals complaining about the cost of fuel. Simple solution, don’t build everything so far away from each other.

I have found the eating mecca of America and it is called ‘The Old County Buffet’. I’ve tried a few places while being here, Denny’s, IHOP (International House of Pancakes) and others, but the OCB, where you pay $7.50 (£4) to fill a plate as many times as you like with french toast, eggs, steak, bacon, pizza, meatloaf, pasta, nachos, burritos, burgers, chicken wings, bbq ribs, salad (why!), soup, cheesecake, cinnamon pastry, chocolate cake, fudge and then pour a pint of cheese sauce over the lot is magnificent as it is evil. If you ever go to America, go here (, and yes it is full of impossibly the obese).

Day Three.
If Willy Wonka did build Wisconsin Dells in a drunken haze, then Heath Robinson must have paid him a visit and designed Ella’s Deli. Another eating place yes, but truely unique in that it has the power to charm and scare children in equal measure, like sad clowns. Suspended from the ceiling and inside the tables are a vast array of mechanical cartoon characters riding tin rockets and colourful images of smiling faces and shiney things all over the place, making it the perfect choice to take a hungry victim of ADD.

A visit to see Weird Al Yankovic doesn’t come off, and suddenly I’m caught up in a girly night as Bron meets some of her Milwaukee pals, I struggle to be understood as a bloke, an Englishman and a Northerner. Later I met Dick Chudnow, the creator of Comedysportz. He’s a lovely bloke, we talked about stand up and his early days gigging on the same bill as Robin Williams, who would over run on a shared bill by a matter of hours. I am unsurprised. Dick talks to his dog. Respect.

Day Four. 4-7-07
CHICAGO! (again) I’m enjoying myself so much I’ve even started using exclamation marks. Arriving in the city of pointy towers on Independence Day, we stumbled across the ‘Taste of Chicago’ festival and consecutively found a stand up comedy tent running an open mike, and a Comedysportz event. I did a 3 minute set to a mixed response having to change most of my points of reference, and Bron made some contacts.

We’ve also been shooting for a new short Danny Pensive Film (check out the others on my myspace site) in the various places we’ve been. While filming a long shot in the searing heat I walked off into the crowds in Danny’s big duffel coat I and freaked out when a little old woman sitting at a table with the sign ‘Tarot Cards read’ looked me dead in the eye and said ‘How are you John?’. What made it weirder was that I was in character, so my knee jerk reaction was to say to her “I’m not John, i’m Danny”, but then she was right. Skepticism suggested she could have been at the comedy tent an hour earlier, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t, which only leaves the third option. Spooky. I walked on and didn’t look back.

Day Five. Chicago to Washington DC.
12 hours in a car. A lovely car, yes. but 12 hours.

Day Six.
Washington DC, being the centre of American government is tighter than a tupperware box of cheese’n'beef jerky, so how do you think it reacts to a northern man in a duffel coat? Well, Danny visited the library of gongress, no problem. Danny visited the central courthouse building and ended up having a (nice enough) chat with a law officer. But then at the capitol building Danny got visited by three police officers, all carrying guns and a verbal curfuffle ensued (they do curfuffle over here according to Jeff at Comedysportz DC). One was quite chatty, but the other two were all hard stares and looked itchy to do the kind of things they do over here like ‘bust our asses’ or something. When they realised we were English, terribly polite, and I was a tad eccentric, everything was fine.

Just before that, while sitting under a tree in the sunshine, my brother called. He has put a very big cheque in the post.

That evening we did what we came to do in the first place, played two matches at Comedy Sportz DC.