Open Mic: Obama Goes for Hillary´s Head

BADEN-BADEN, GERMANY — Illinois Senator Barrack Obama surprised observers today when he agreed to engage New York Senator Hillary Clinton in a 22nd debate, in this playground of kings, emperors, and 13th-century bad boys. Obama called for the debate to take place in the "Älte-Schloss," a historically restored castle from a 13th-century royal.
The castle, now a tourist attraction sits some 500 meters above Baden-Baden, high above the Black Forest. Among its features is a complete dungeon that offers visitors a traditional "last meal" as given by the resident "hangman" before the removal of one´s head. Senator Obama says the setting is perfect for the kind of "one on one" debate demanded by Senator Clinton prior to the Indiana primary on May 6. "I think the loser should offer his or her head on a platter, at the end of the debate, have one last meal, and good German beer, and that would be the end of the nomination campaign,"Obama says optimistically. "There should be no more misunderstanding... once it´s off with her head, the superdelegates are mine."
Obama confidently offered the Clinton campaign the 60 Euro admission to the Ält-Schloss dungeon, "if she´s particularly strapped."
There´s been no immediate response from the Clinton campaign, but sources say if the campaign continues much longer, both Democratic candidates may lose their heads to the Baron John McCain.
If you are in a mood to offer your head, or at least the thoughts within, don´t forget that Open Mic comedy happens every Tuesday evening at 7 pm at the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club. Go ahead, throw yourself in our delightfully funny front and center dungeon and try to hold on to your head. It´s free to get in, and free to offer your head. Save your €60 for your last meal.

Brian Malow: Sparing Euros for US Congress

Once again, Congress has sensed the will of the American people. As the US economy continues to fall apart, and the American dollar sinks to new record lows, Congress is preparing to take bold steps. With the summer tourist season ahead, Americans traveling to Canada and Europe face some startling economic realities. The US dollar that once was as sound as — well — a dollar, is now the toilet paper for the rest of the world.
Outgoing Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig says Congress must take a wide stance on protecting the American lawmaker. As a result, Craig introduced a bill that would pay members of Congress in Euros, instead of dollars. He says Americans don´t want their Congressmen to suffer when they go on discovery tours around the world. "I was in an Amsterdam toiletten recently, tapped three times and showed a $100 bill, and the guy in the next stall thought I was tapped out," Craig says.
Louisianna Senator David Vitter, a fellow Republican co-sponsored the Craig bill, noting that the price of ladies in the evening is out of control "even in the Paris suburbs!"
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, chimed into the debate from a remote location inside a Heidelberg biergarten. "Sauerbraten? Hell, you can´t even get a decent fleish-kässe for less than $10 bucks American!"
A special delegation from the Republican Congressianal Caucus will travel through the European Community in the next month and report back to the Congress after being checked for STDs.
If you like your science with a cup of funny, don´t miss the hillarious Brian Malow at the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club this weekend. Malow is an unusual sort of comedian, he can be just as funny standing on the stage at the National Academy of Sciences as with an audience of drunken Germans who believe fleish-kässe is a gift from God. See him Friday and Saturday night for two shows beginning at 8 pm and 10:30 pm. Best of all, the Mainstage will still accept your US dollar for now...

Open Mic: Take A Bite Out of Seriousness

Pennsylvania-based Hershey Chocolate has quietly sweetened its role in Tuesday´s primary by offering a new "bitter-flavored" dark chocolate bar in honor of Barack Obama. The Illinois Senator says the new candy bar could take a bite out of his opponent´s campaign. The sudden announcement of the new "Yes We CANdy" line comes at the end of a long-fought bitter campaign in the Keystone State. Senator Clinton says she is disappointed in the demonstrated bias of a company that once "charmed me with a kiss."
Clinton supporters in Pennsylvania are furious. "We had hoped that the company might consider a "Bosnian Sniper Bar" filled with cherry-red imitation fruit that people would clearly remember years after eating one," a Clinton campaign spokesman said. Campaign officials were in a last-minute negotiation with executives at of Philadelphia´s famed Tastykakes bakery to create a rich "lady fingers" surprise made of "sugar and spice and everything nice."
Senator Obama says campaign workers will storm the state overnight distributing a free bar of "Yes We CANdy" across the state before polls open in the morning.
If you are looking for a sweet experience or a way to take a bite out of seriousness, head for Tuesday´s open mic at the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club. It´s your chance to say "Yes I Can," and let the audience chew on your humor without rotting their teeth. Comedy Open Mic begins at 7pm Tuesday, singers and songwriters begin at 9 pm.

MIKE MARINO: And you vil like him!

The Department of Homeland Security has ordered an exchange of Germans this week as the German Pope travels to Washington, DC and New York. “We have reached the maximum number of Germans permitted under a 1917 US law, a DHS bureaucrat noted, “ thus we had to remove at least one German native prior to admitting the Pope.”
After a nationwide search for a useless German within the United States, officials turned up an insignificant, non-Catholic, unrepetant comedian that was deemed no longer useful by authorities.
The German-American comedian working out of Seattle was last seen writing a certain blog that has been known to make fun of US authorities. As punishment, she has been directed to return to Germany as long as the German Pope is occupying US air space. As the Pope entered the country on April 15, the Seattle comedian was quietly removed by a battalion of Homeland Security personnel based in Idaho. She was placed in a carpet and duck taped to an Airbus passenger jet bound for Frankfurt ”I regret that I have but one joke to tell for my country,” Barbara Sehr said as she arrived on a caravan deep in the Black Forest.
As Barbara attempts to find her way back to the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club, come hear New Jersey Bad Boy Mike Marino tell you tales that will make the Garden State spin. Then come back Saturday evening and hear comedians Tony Daniels, Joey V, and Dean Oleson put together a very funny show for the amputee soldiers gathered at Ward 57 in Walter Reed Hospital.
Then again, if you´re hard up for Germans, the Pope will be at Yankee Stadium…

Open Mic: Torture is Taxing

Vice President Dick Cheney revealed today that he deducted more than $500,000 from his 2007 tax bills for “bullets and devices.” The deduction he says is necessary because more and more members of the public demand that the vice president take them out on quail hunting trips. “Inevitably, I have to shoot someone in the face so they can go home and say ‘I took a bullet from the vice president.’
Cheney says the bullets are legitimate deductions because they are demanded by American taxpayers who hound his office in an effort to have their faces shot. Cheney says he has receipts printed by the US Treasury department and the Bureau of Engraving for each and every bullet he shot. “These expenses are as authentic as the aluminum tubes from Africa that Saddam Hussein used to import uranium,” he declared.
Cheney admits that some of the expenses for “other devices” might fall under suspicion, as they were installed in the basement of the Vice President’s mansion at the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. These devices may or may not have included instruments meant to impress foreign nationals who were not sufficiently impressed by similar devices at Guantanamo, Cheney says. “Sometimes these folks appreciate my personal touch,” Cheney said, laughing a sinister laugh.
If you find your own calculations on this Tax Day torturous, perhaps you need some comic relief? Tonight, after you put that return in the mail, check into open mic at the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club. They’ll make you laugh, they’ll make you sing, and if you say “thank you sir, may I have another,” they’ll introduce you to the vice president. This weekend, you’ll be ready for comic Mike Marino, who plays Thursday and Friday evening.

Open Mic: An Elite Serving of Bitters and Arugula

As the Bush administration matter-of-factly admitted its history of torture, as Wall Street continued its plunge, and “bomb-bomb Iran” became a mantra within the Beltway, sniper fire continued in the Democratic primary campaign with a serving of bitters. “You have no friends in Pennsylvania, Barrack Obama, “Senator Hillary Clinton shouted out rolling down her bullet-proof window as she rode in her motorcade,”you are an elitist Emperor of a corps of effete, impudent snobs!”
Senator Obama interrupted his negotiations with Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert and representatives of the Hamas party on his cell phone as he helped an elderly disabled woman across a busy Philadelphia expressway. “Could we all just put down our lattés for a moment and think of what is unfolding on our 50-inch, high definition screens as our Hummers run out of gas?”
Just moments before, he had rescued the woman’s cat from the catwalk on a roof of a 52-story office building, and had helped complete brand new homes on behalf of Habit for Humanity that would house 50,000 refugees from Darfur in New Orleans’ once-destroyed Ninth Ward. Unfortunately, representatives of the media had caught him dining on his favorite Spinach and Arugula salad at a neighborhood Applebee’s. Cable news tickers immediately flashed the ominous headline across America’s information highway: OBAMA REFUSES TO CONDEMN ARUGULA: WOULD YOU DRINK A BEER WITH HIM?
It was left to former President Bill Clinton to insert one last stab into the Illinois Senator: “When the President of the United States answers a phone call at 3AM, what would you rather he or she be eating — a Big Mac or Arugula?”
Are you an effete, impudent snob who loves to crack up at the idiocies of life? You might be just the type to attend an open mic at the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club. Imagine the opportunity to grin, cry or throw arugula at the musings of would-be and professional comics attempting to humor your laugh muscles. Maybe you can do better? Here’s your chance! Open Mics are set every Tuesday at 7 pm, followed by singer and musician open mic at 9 pm. Go ahead, laugh until you’re bitter, or cry me a river… hey, can I write the songs or what?

New York Comedians of New York: Seeds of Conflict

For the next five days, Seattle will light up its environmental and surrealistic lights as it enters 120 hours of Zen during the Seeds of Compassion Conference led by the Dalai Lama. In a city fraught by whispers of wrinkles on its neo-tech surface, the enlightenment of his holiness may bring us pause from the heaviness of posturing, politics, and sitting on our posteriors. Then again, it could just bring road rage as thousands of orange-robed would-be believers jam traffic on its way to Saturday’s Mariners game at Safeco Field.

The presence of the Dalai Lama — far from the Olympic torch-lit Tibet battle fields of Paris and San Francisco — may bring attention to Eastern religions in the West as next week’s papal visit to Yankee stadium brings attention to Western religions in the East. Of course all is not necessarily about colorful robes and brotherly love —especially if the brothers are under 21, as in the case of some religious leaders serving unexpected prison ministries. It is a time to raise expectations, a time to manifest our greatest hopes — not only will the Mariners win the World Series this year, but they will never move to Oklahoma City.
The torch has been passed to a new generation of expectations. Let us hope that we will all be able to touch a tiny part of the rainbow this weekend that will shine all the way from headquarters of Beijing’s occupying Army in Tibet to Clay Bennett’s office in Key Arena.
May the Force be with us.
Meanwhile, if you need a way to reach a higher state of Zen than the Dalai Lama and the Dave Matthews band can provide at Key Arena tonight, come instead across the street to the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club to visit with the New York Comedians of New York. Jeff Glasse and Jason Good will meditate in a constant state of high comedy as performed in the tombs of Manhattan. Tonight, walk, run, or levitate to an evening of comedy at either 8 pm or 10:30 pm. Rinse, repeat, and return Saturday evening for more of the same at 8 pm and 10:30 pm.

New York Comedians of New York: Hillary At the Summit

Presidential contender Senator Hillary Clinton announced today that she would personally take the Olympic flame up Mt. Everest in May, despite the closing of the mountain to non-Chinese climbers. Clinton, who had called upon President Bush to join other world leaders to boycott Opening Ceremonies of the Olympiad in Beijing on August 8, says she will make the dramatic run with the Olympic torch to demonstrate her strength as commander-in-chief. She expects to arrive at the Everest base camp on the day before the Oregon Primary on May 20, and will reach the summit at 3 AM, Pacific Time, hours before the polls open.

Clinton denies her public plan to sneak up the nearly 30,000-foot summit was scheduled to counter some discrepancies regarding her tales of heroic sniper fire at a Bosnian airport. “Shame on Barrack Obama for hinting such a thing,” Clinton says. “Senator McCain has climbed through a North Vietnamese prison camp, and soon, I will be in a Chinese prison. Despite his use of drugs as a boy, Senator Obama has never been in prison.”
There are hints that the senator’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, may use his friendship with the incumbent’s father, George H.W. Bush, to spring his wife from her expected incarceration. The senior Bush, a former CIA chief, may have some close contacts with Chinese authorities.
If you want to climb the stages to laughter, you don’t need to carry a torch. This weekend you can enjoy the New York Comedians of New York, as they land on the stage of the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club, blintzes, kosher ham sandwiches, and shares of the Brooklyn Bridge in hand. New York Comedians of New York, Jason Good and Jeff Glass will perform at 8 pm Thursday, and 8 pm and 10:30 pm Friday and Saturday. Who knows, with Seattle preparing for its LamaPalooza, you’ll experience Olympic memories without breathing a bit of Beijing Air.

New York Comedians of New York: Up A Tree

After weeks of attempting to foreclose on a “double-super-secret” tree house in Seattle’s upscale Lake Union area, public officials have foreclosed on the cozy, rustic, northwest fixer-upper. Real Estate officials say the tree house built by a homeless carpenter might net as much as $5 million — despite the declining local real estate market. “With neighborhood development continuing to proceed at historic levels, and the diminished availability of affordable property, the tree house may become the subject of a rare bidding war in this economy,” a local agent says.
This may explain why neighbors of the homeless carpenter pitched in to replace the tree house with a gift of $500 used RV. “All the tree house needs is some basic plumbing, perhaps some more southern exposure and a garage, and we’re looking at a chance for a $50 million dream home for someone who needs to be near a cancer center and TGI Friday’s,” one neighbor said.
Despite the roar of the traffic on Interstate 5 above the tree house and the difficult ladder climb to the hidden front door, real estate agents say they will have no trouble moving the property. “It’s in the Northwest, and it’s made out of wood, stupid,” the agent said. “Need I say more?
Jeff Glasse and Jason Good are the New York Comedians of New York who wish they could afford a tree house in Manhattan. They compensate for their lack of affordable housing by treating audiences to an unimaginable evening of confrontational comedy. They’ve made it in New York, and now will see if they can make it on the stage of the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club. Support them Thursday evening at 8pm, Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and 10:30 pm. If you’re a carpenter, perhaps you can build them a tree house?

Open Mic:The Wavin' Wheat Can Sure Smell Sweet..

More than seven years after the Ash Wednesday earthquake of 2001 that tested the viability of Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct, the City Council agreed to ship the 1950s structure, lock, stock and seepage to Oklahoma City as a “going away gift” for the Seattle Supersonics. “There are some who have suggested we simply drop it on the doorsteps of Oklahoma City Hall, set fire to it, ring the doorbell and run,” May Greg Nickels says. “No, we are kind Seattleites, we want Oklahoma to recognize our gift for what it is.”
While Seattle/Oklahoma Supersonics fans say the Viaduct may be the better Seattle import to Oklahoma, there are some die-hard fans who believe the viaduct will not be as beautiful in the plains of Oklahoma, without the view of the Olympic Mountains. “However, the existing concrete, rotting pillars and layers of dust will fit right into the prairie atmosphere,” one Oklahoma observer said. “All we need is a few tumbleweeds down the center lane.”
Oklahoma, "where the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweeet" is also far away from any earthquake faults, making the Viaduct a potentially better experience for curious Oklahomans seeking to experience a major league traffic jam. “Besides, if by off-chance a seismic event occurred here, the number of people caught in the movement would be far lower,” the Oklahoma observer said.
If instead, you want to experience a rite of passage in the stages of major league comedy, experience an open mic at the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club at 7pm every Tuesday evening. If there’s a funny bone bothering you, why not take a step in front of the microphone and let it bother an entire audience? When was the last time you moved an audience?

Open Mic: Sniper Fire in the Raw

Sniper fire was heard outside the Washington, DC headquarters of the Hillary Clinton campaign. The noise was heard shortly after the New York Senator answered a 3 AM telephone call from a would-be Florida delegate. “Shame on you Barrack Obama,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters several hours later, “ if you had any judgment you would have warned me that Mark Penn was not an effective voice for my campaign.”
Penn had a preponderance of influence in the Clinton campaign, and reportedly constantly told the former first lady that the “pant suit” she was wearing was not only flattering, but made up of an “aura” that would put her on a fast train to the White House. Penn refused to let the Senator see campaign staffers who wanted to show her press clippings that pointed out she was campaigning in the raw.
In the midst of poll numbers that dropped in every community in which Clinton campaigned, persistent campaign staffers finally cornered Penn as he was preparing to send Clinton “naked” to a traditional Pennsylvania Amish community barn-raising. “It’s time that the senator saw Mr. Penn naked, instead of vice versa,” a campaign staffer said.
When you visit the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club in Seattle, you won’t see any naked politicians. Still, at the regular Tuesday night open mic for comedians — led by Derek Sheen — at 7pm and musicians at 9 pm, you’ll hear naked stories, some of which may make you blush. It might even make you blush enough to avoid a political career.

Kermit Apio: Oklahoma is NOT OK

Seattle Sonics owner Clay Bennett says he will acquire the $26 million ferry boat rejected by the Washington State Ferry System in order to make the team more comfortable in Oklahoma City. He says the state of Washington continues to let money get in the way of making decisions to make the area more attractive for “Okies.”
The state ferry rejected a Todd Shipyard bid this week for a replacement ferry to sail from Keystone to Port Townsend. The only bidder asked more than $9 million above the system’s planned budget. “Once again, the public refuses to pay a little extra for a recreational offering that my neighbors in Oklahoma City will enjoy,” Bennett says.
The new ferry boat will traverse the majestic Oklahoma River (formerly known as the Canadian River) as it makes its way through downtown Oklahoma City. Up until now, the river could accommodate only rowboats, but Bennett believes he can convince the city to pay for a $500 billion excavation project that will make the Oklahoma “a major league river.”
Bennett says he continues to look around for other area landmarks to bring with him to Oklahoma City. Rumors are that he is now looking at picking up the newly historic-designated former Ballard Denny’s to the land “ where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.” Bennett says he can’t imagine a more suitable landing for the Ballard Denny’s than in downtown Oklahoma City, right near the Ford Center where the Sonics will soon play. "For some reason, I can visualize a Broadway musical being staged on the decks of the ferry boat,” Bennett added.
Kermet Apio will sweep your decks clean of all memories of Oklahoma, and instead will give you a more tropical perspective from his Hawaiian background. Apio appears at 8 pm and 10:30 pm Friday and Saturday night at the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club. Unlike Oklahoma, he is far more than OK.

Kermet Apio: Bagging the Good Ones

The proposed tax for picking up bags at Seattle grocery stores is entirely unfair! We, the old bags of Seattle, object to this misogynistic approach to global cooling. Firsts of all, I don’t think the term “old bags” is very nice. Just because I haven’t had a date in 20 years, my face is wrinkled, and I hang out around the “Depends” aisle, doesn’t make me an old bag!
I used to be beautiful! I used to be brilliant, in fact, I have a college degree, and I read everything from Schopenhauer to Erma Bombeck. I love animals and children — not to mention rainbows and unicorns. I am not a prude, I will even watch football on TV and visit strip clubs in Portland.
So, just because I also have dark side that begins with my taste in chocolate, and ends with my thought that every man should have their pubic hairs ripped out one by one while having knitting needles poked into his tender areas — just because I think all men are dirt — I should have my match.com membership revoked?
So I’ve put on a few hundred pounds and I haven’t seen a dentist since I was in college. Does that give the city the right to put a tax on my head? I resent the label old bag!
What’s that? OH! The bag tax in Seattle is on PLASTIC or PAPER bags?
Never mind.
Whether you pick paper or plastic in your love life, you must see Kermet Apio this weekend at the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club. Kermet will send you into laughter without taxing your sensitivity. See him Thursday evening at 8 pm, and 8pm and 10:30 pm Friday and Saturday. You’ll be glad you came — even if you have to put a bag over your head.

Kermet Apio: Aloha to April Fools

As the NBA governors prepare to meet on the future of the Seattle Sonics franchise, multiple efforts are being made to prevent the Emerald City’s sputtering roundballers from following the trail of tears into Oklahoma City. While there was a lot of attention on a plan by group of Microsoft millionaires to rebuild Key Arena in keeping with NBA dreams, and a brand new plan that would put a privately owned billion-dollar sports palace with retractable roof on the Seattle waterfront, there was a far more likely plan put forth at a late April 1 news conference held immediately after the regular Tuesday night comedy and music open mic at the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club.
The three principals at the lower Queen Anne club that has changed the look of the local comedy scene in more ways than one, announced a plan for a spectacular renovation of the club and Key Arena directly across the street. An artist conception of the Patti Allen Arena — named for one of the three founders of the rare women-owned comedy club — shows a dramatic 100,000-seat thunderdome suitable for NBA basketball, a Willie Nelson Farm-Aid Concert, or a Microsoft post-mortem product manager meeting. At one end of the stadium a standard standup microphone will tower at a height just below the Space Needle. A house sports jacket, draped over the microphone — complete with a Sonics logo — symbolizes the sense of fashion the Mainstage has given the Seattle comedy scene. “The elevated microphone standing in front of the Space Needle will allow the Space Needle restaurant to double as an intimate comedy club,” Allen noted, chewing on the remains of her April Fool’s Day birthday cake.
At the other end of the arena, a huge Diamond Vision screen will allow NBA fans to watch their choice of six other games if the future Sonics franchise gets too depressing. Fans that are severely depressed will have an opportunity to tune in to a tape of the 1979 Sonics NBA championship game. Also, fans will be able to listen to live comedy — including a comic play by play of the current game — from headphones installed at every seat.
The gathered press from publications such as the Queen Anne Monitor and the West Mercer Independent Living Center Monthly Newsletter raised a number of major questions about the project, such as its costs and financing for what some fear could run into many billions of dollars. However, Mainstage owner Julie Mains says comedians have offered hours of their precious sober time to help on construction of the clay building that may take some time to cure under the Seattle sun. For that reason, construction may require the lifetime of several generations of Seattle comedians.
Still, the final cost may be far less than the billion-dollar waterfront plan. “If we can get some help from the Queen Anne Elementary School finger painters, we can probably get this done with our three economic stimulus checks that we’re getting from the government in May,” Mains estimates.
If you’re unwilling to wait for the planned 22nd Century completion, you can join the hilarious Kermet Apio and his gentle, but diverse Hawaiian humor at the Mainstage this weekend. Apio will perform at 8pm Thursday, and 8pm and 10:30pm Friday and Saturday. After you finish drinking and laughing you might want to sign up for our construction team.

Open Mic: April Fools is No Joke

President Al Gore apologized to the world today for one of the world’s most regrettable — if bipartisan — April Fool’s hoaxes. “It sounded so great at the time, “ the Nobel Laureate, Emmy, and Oscar winner told a stunned press conference Tuesday. “Everyone always accused me of being too damn serious.”
Gore says he and members of the Clinton family — along with members of the United States Supreme Court, Congress and the New York Times — conspired to “put the Republicans out of business forever” by pretending to have “the worst kind of GOP President” take office in 2001.
Gore says his initial objective was to stop the long string of elections in which America was divided, by appointing someone “so incompetent” that the American people would impeach him “in his first months of office.”
Senator Hillary Clinton had hoped by the time she ran for President in 2008, her election to succeed President Gore would be “a natural.” Gore said he assumed that he could let the American public “in on the joke” before the 2004 election, in time for his own re-election. “No one had any idea that Mr. Bush’s incompetence would reach the level it did,” Gore admitted. “ By the time he got us stuck in Iraq and made some of the appointments he did, it was becoming clear that we could never reveal the details of the joke. Everything just backfired on us.”
Gore says he is coming clean to make sure that no other politician ever tries a similar stunt. “I could just imagine what would it be like if someone put in some scary old man who wants to keep the war machine going,” Gore said. “Imagine what would happen if America missed a chance for hope and change.”
Open mic at the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club is no joke. Well, actually, it is “a joke,” sometimes even two or three. On April Fool’s Day, it is a night of the Living Fools getting up and attempting to make you laugh. You could laugh at this attempt at comedy or face four more years of the current joke in Washington, DC…
We thought you might see it our way. Be there, at 7 pm Tuesday evening for comedy or 9 pm for a music open mic.