It isn’t all that easy meeting celebrities in Dayton, Ohio. Book signings in the area generally leave me in a state of disappointment when they almost always insist on not taking photos with the signer. This naturally is after making a special trip to pick up a line number, taking off work to attend the signing, and fighting the intense crowd of desperate housewives who thrive on any celebrity encounter in the Midwest. But I’ve found a loophole, or I guess exception is a better word, that proves the rule: comedy clubs.
So far my success rate has been pretty high with meeting some great comedians/celebrities after the shows. In fact if it wasn’t for the self-important Mo’Nique, I would have been batting 100%.
That brings us with the most recent show I attended with, as you may have guessed from the title, was Tim Meadows, a ten-year cast member of Saturday Night Live who starred in 185 episodes of the series. I have always thought he was one of the most natural funny men on the show, and oft quoted his simple line as he transfers his dialect from ‘street’ to ‘businessman’: “Hi, I’m Tim.”
SNL is of course what I associate him with the most, but his resume outside of that is quite impressive too. Mostly I appreciate the sitcom appearances in shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm, The New Adventures of Old Christine, 30 Rock, The Office, and The Goldbergs to name but a few. He’s also starred in a slew of popular comedy films like Mean Girls, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and his starring vehicle The Ladies Man, based on his SNL character, which actually is my least favorite of his characters.
As much as I had enjoyed his work, I had never seen any of his stand-up comedy performance, but I certainly expected it to be good. Since Carolyn and I were heading out of town for the weekend, I attended the Thursday show at Wiley’s Comedy Club on October 1, 2015, which unfortunately since Carolyn was working, I attended alone.
Like always I arrived early and was seated right against the stage. I grabbed my Piggy sandwich (pulled pork on a burger) and sat back and readied myself for the show. Incidentally sitting at a table just behind me was Brother (John) Poole and his wife, who had drove down from Findlay for their anniversary to enjoy the show. I recognized him right away but had to explain who I was. Interestingly he had taken over the reigns as pastor of the church from Kristopher Johnson, who was the pastor when I used to visit the church several years ago.
A fine reunion with Brother Poole and his wife
The emcee Tom Plute and featured performer Ben Moore were both nice additions to warm up the crowd. But the strangest part of all was the utter lack of attendance. Granted it was a Thursday night, but with prices like $15 for an evening of entertainment, it made me a little embarrassed for our city and for Tim Meadows, who pointed out that Brother Poole was the only other black man in the room.
But I must say that the crowd became pretty receptive to him, and more importantly he finally embraced the crowd. He was often laugh-out-loud funny, and it was only the Ladies Man performance at the end that seemed to fall flat. Meadows was much, much funnier when he was just being himself. He had a great rapport with the audience and spoke to me several times during the show. Being the only ‘single’ guy sitting up front, he could have been rightfully merciless with me, but he took it easy on me, asking where I worked and had gone to school, why I was still in Dayton by choice, and if I was alone at the show. He kindly tried to set me up with the waitress, which met with some nice laughter.
After the show, he was literally right there when we walked out. He didn’t even take a minute to go to his dressing room, assuming they have a dressing room. He made it ultra-easy to walk up, greet him, get a photo, and be on my way. My only regret was that again I didn’t plan ahead and bring something for him to sign, which would have been a piece of cake.
It was a fun night of entertainment, and most importantly, it was capped off with a rare great Dayton celebrity photo, one that I’m quite proud to share.
October was off to a great start and promised to be every bit as busy as the month I had just bid farewell to.
October 2015 will continue back on another road trip, but this one wouldn’t leave the state…
Bob & I actually went and saw him also, on Sat night. They had the curtains closed off so only half the room was used, but it was mostly full by show time.
Darlene
December 7th, 2015