A special place in Purgatory for Bill Bunker

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on July 17th, 2007

“Purgatory Gig” is the title of the latest essay by Chicago-based Bill Bunker. It has been quite some time since Bunker was moved to send along another of his semi-regular “Wells St. Journal” columns in which he documents the “curious mix of emotions (elation, dread, hope), the inexplicable drive that keeps us pursuing the comedy thing even through the bad experiences.”

In his fifth piece for SHECKYmagazine, a private party falls into his lap.

But I pressed on, weirdly euphoric, driven by that “nothing left to lose” freedom that Janis Joplin used to sing about before she overdosed on heroin. Amazingly, I was now surrounded by a group of people who seemed focused solely on me, trying to figure out what I was saying. True, they were not laughing, but it was a start. A hand shot up. Unusual, but I was ready to roll with anything.

“Yes, you have a question?” I inquired of a not-so-young woman with metal studs in her face.

“Can you move? You’re blocking the buffalo wings.”

Read the whole thing.

(Bunker’s previous columns for SHECKYmagazine.com were obliterated back in August of 04, when that curious worm took out a good chunk of our archived files. Many of his columns live on through the courtesy of Google’s Wayback Machine. Check out his early columns here, here, here and his original column here.)

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