Over my long career, one club that has been consistently kind to me, is Acme Comedy Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There hasn’t been a year over the past thirty it’s been opened that I haven’t spent at least a week in its warm nurturing environment. They have always believed in me, and have supported some of my craziest ideas.
From the Mudslingers Ball, a political debate show I created and turned into a local TV show, to Crash and Burn, an experimental writing forum for comedians, owner Louis Lee has always believed in me, and gave me use of the stage.
He let me throw a protest one year, after the smoking ban passed, and we let people in the audience light up. Even though it was a non-smoking showroom, he let me “move the stage” into the audience to allow us all to smoke under a performance loophole in the law. It was a big night and all the TV stations covered it. It caused a lot of trouble for lawmakers, as bars around the State started hosting “Improv” Nights to skirt the ban for a few months until Legislators could amend the law.
Because Comedy is a Hospitality industry, there are many things I can’t talk about on stage at other places. Most clubs want their customers to leave happy, and if some comic goes over the line, they blame the club that booked him. They also leave mean words on the comment cards and send angry letters. (It’s been my lot in life, that the targets I pick for satire, are the same people who like to write angry letters.)
This happens almost everywhere else but at Acme. This club has allowed me to explore topics I couldn’t get away with anywhere else. Louis’s comedy philosophy has always been pro-free speech, and he believes that nothing matters as long as it’s funny. And if people get offended, it’s even funnier. Other owners would have blackballed me, back in 1999, the night I walked 90% of a sold-out room there. There were 270 people when I started that night, and only 27 left by the time I said “Thank You, good night.”
Over the decades, I’ve amassed quite a collection of material that I can only perform there. It’s material I know would find a fan base outside the Twin Cities, but unless you’re local, you’ll probably never get to see me do it.
But it’s 2022, and technology rules the day. Because of the pandemic, Acme installed a pretty nice studio to record shows in 4K. So I decided to record some of that stuff I keep in a notebook, marked “Acme Only.”
Next week, I’ll be recording a new special at the club, called: Cancel This! If you’re in Minneapolis, I highly recommend you coming in, because there’s a REALLY good chance I’ll be walking some people. And if you see somebody in the back, laughing really hard when they do, that’s probably Louis.
Thank him for me.
If you can’t make it, be sure to get on my mailing list so you’ll know how to watch the special when it’s released.