[Editor's Note: Following the 2013 RFT Standup Throwdown, judges Jeremy Essig and Chris Ward went drinking for the first time together. Hungover on a plane to San Francisco the next day, Essig created a game show that combined their common interests in music, video games, and comic books, and Loser. - A Live Action Shame Show was born. The crew will return to St. Louis Monday, June 23, for their one-year anniversary show at Heavy Anchor...that is, if they survive their first ever seven-day, seven-city tour with technical director Evan Rowe "DJ DVDA" Rowe and tour manager Kelsey McClure. The Loser crew is sending tour-diary dispatches from the road.]
Bloomington - Pittsburgh - Morgantown, WV - Washington D.C.
Tuesday 9:30 p.m. - Local comics cross dress for the benefit of Loser! Totally immersing themselves in inter-gender sitcom theater (our fourth round), Bloomington comedians David Britton and Josh Cocks donned dresses and lipstick for the occasion. All four of us (yes, we didn't lose Chris for once!) retired to the apartment of the questionably attired Cocks, where we may or may not have supplied his underage roommate with alcohol. Don't judge us, someone did it for you once!
Wednesday 2:40 p.m. - We probably should have asked for a sponsorship from Steak and Shake. Passing through Jeremy's hometown of Zanesville, Ohio, his parents offered to buy our broke asses lunch. Though they offered to pick up the check at any of Zanesville's four restaurants, our time constraints required us to return to the place of Jeremy's sign conquering two nights previous. Evan continued his streak of dietary excellence -- accompanying a pizza burger and fries with his second birthday cake shake of the tour. See what happens when you require everyone to have health care?
Wednesday 9:10 p.m. - The Arcade Theater has it all. But it doesn't have a microwave. So at intermission, Chris had to run a block or so to 7-11 to use their microwave and run back in time for the show to start again and...well, here is video of how that went.
Thursday 12:27 a.m. - It wasn't planned, but hey, we're in West Virginia! With no lodging prospects in Pittsburgh, we took our good friend Sally Brooks up on her offer to stay at her place in Morgantown. Not only were Sally and her husband gracious enough to put us up each in our own room, but we were also greeted with pizza and beer. One day, two meals, both free.
Thursday 10:30 a.m. - After walking into a gas station/Subway, Chris is immediately stopped by a Senior Sandwich Artist who notices Chris' "Arcade Theater Comedy" shirt and introduces himself as a "used to be stand up" comedian named David "Two Spoons" Moore. "I opened for Rodney Carrington, Ellen Degeneres, Carrot Top...I played the spoons and harmonica in my act. I also did evangelical comedy up and down the east coast. But then, I had the brain surgery..." He tried out some old material on us. But alas, he sighed to us, there are no comedy clubs in Morgantown. There is only a falling-down strip club named the Blue Parrot with quarter drafts.
Thursday 3:25 p.m. - We roll in with just enough time to go to the White House and make a statement. First, a birthday greeting to RFT Standup Showdown winner Jon Venegoni. And then, some real American political protesting. It was a joke sign, but Jeremy and Chris are immediately yelled at by White House security and we get the hell out of there.
Thursday 6:30 p.m. - After attempting to drive and find parking for a large cargo van in DC, it becomes immediately clear why the angriest, most pissed off hardcore bands come from this city.
Thursday 7:17 p.m. - Hello from the Bier Baron Tavern! Due to a stand-up show being booked before our ours, we had only a half-hour to load in and check all of our tech before the first show started. As this is being typed, the gentleman onstage has been arguing with a woman in the crowd for the last twenty minutes. Strangely, the woman keeps asking to be thrown out for heckling, while the comic begs her to stay, a bizarro version of the usual comic/heckler relationship.
Continue to page two.
