Modified On August 10, 2004
We ate breakfast over at the Pioneer, one of the original casino/hotels in Laughlin. (Get the Six-Shooter– Two eggs, bacon and sausage plus toast for $3.99) On the way out, we spotted the “Jeff Foxworthy, You Might Be A Redneck If” penny slot machine. Have you licensed your name and likeness to a slot machine manufacturer lately? I didn’t think so. We pumped in a dollar and, what seemed like days later, we won enough pennies to pretty much cover breakfast. The machine, by the way, is one of those video slot machines with hogs, outhouses, moonshine and pickup trucks instead of cherries, limes, plums and oranges. The folks down south must be real proud of Jeffrey. (In other news revolving around gambling devices that bear the image and names of standup comics, we lost $6.85 on the Reel Respect slot, a nickel machine that bears the likeness of Rodney Dangerfield.)
We had decent crowds all week at Berri Lee’s Comedy Show at the Cabana Club. Musta been that full-page writeup in the Laughlin Entertainer! Too bad they spilled all that ink on an enterprise that’s discontinued after August 14! The higher-ups at the River Palms’ corporate parent have decided to gut the Cabana Club and turn it into an open, lounge-type venue, rendering it unusable for comedy. The decision came from out of the blue and Berrri had the unenviable task of cancelling a bill or two.
Lee’s had an interesting career: A debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1969, performing in over three dozen Vegas “production shows,” opener for a lot of the big Vegas acts. (We’re trying to persuade him to put some of his experiences down in writing for the edification of our readers. Stay tuned.)
We had Sunday off, so we took the opportunity to stay put for a day in Laughlin. On Sunday night, we hopped over to the Comedy Stop at the Flamingo to say hey to Kevin Knox and Mitchell Walters, maybe take a digital pic for the magazine… standard SHECKYmagazine practice. The folks who man the Stop didn’t seem to grasp the whole concept. We handed our card to one of the Stoppers and briefly explained that we were comedians who’d been working down the other end of Casino Drive and we’d like to snap a pic of the comics, blah, blah, woof, woof… he handed the card back! NO! You take the card, you go back to the green room and you say, “Hey, guys– Anybody know these assholes out front? They wanna picture of you. They say they’re working at Berri Lee’s club.” The other comics then say, “Send the fuckers back here!” Then we get the pic and everyone’s happy puss ends up on the front page of the WWW’s most beloved magazine about standup. That’s usually how it works. Instead we get “Well, the comics usually come out of that door back there…” and we’re forced to wait around like stagedoor goofballs, like crazed fans. The ignominy. The end result? We leave. No picture. As the TV Guide might say, “JEERS to the Comedy Stop crew in Laughlin for not letting the scrappy internet mag SHECKYmagazine do their thing!”
Kathleen Dunbar and Carla Rae are two of the nicest people in the business… odd that they’d be anchoring a show called “Divas of Comedy” at the Sahara every Monday night! They’re “anti-Divas.” Should they ever come into contact with a geniune diva, the result would be a loud boom and mass destruction, like the meeting of matter and anti-matter. The show at the CasBar Lounge was packed last night. SHECKYmagazine’s Traci Skene will be on the bill next Monday as well. The show features a revolving roster of chick comics– Pam Mateson, Carole Montgomery, Kira Soltanovich and others. Stop in next Monday and say Hey!
We’re off to Reno. It takes ten hours through some of the most hostile terrain in the continental U.S. to get there from here. Wish us luck. Stay tuned. Don’t forget to watch Last Comic Standing tonight. Two hours? Hmmm…