This was a very strange show... and don't I start all these memoirs like that?
I remember riding up to the show with Kris and Dale in Dale's old, gray clunker.
The car terrified me. It only had one working cylinder banging away in the 
engine, and I believe Dale told me that on the way to this show, on the 
expressway, doing 70. It sounded like an asthmatic model T and jittered
all the way up to Mt. Prospect. 

I loved those old road trips. It was such a new experience for me. I had only
done one with my comedy group Strange's and it was so much fun that 
I wanted to do more. Then the group imploded. When I joined Gag, between
the roadshows at the end of 95/start of 96 and travelling up north to 
rehearse at Janet's, we constantly seemed to be huddled together, driving.
We don't do that much anymore. Most people simply drive alone and 
congregate at the gig. I miss that. 

Any way. I think Janet had set this gig up. It was a Rotarian banquet and
we were going to be doing about an hour. No one had had the opportunity
to check the location, so we brought everything. In the end, we wound up 
performing up near the podium. There was no back stage and no lights
for blackouts. We simply had to run from the sound cues. 

I remember that we did Dueling Elvises and we tried a new ending that seemed
to work better. The audience was pleasant. They weren't falling over 
themselves with laughter. Let's face it, it was the Rotarians. It was
an older crowd. In fact, one of the evening's honorees, who must have
been 700 years old, fell asleep in the front row.

After the show we were invited to stay for the dance party and to enjoy
the open bar. We did. I got a little more buzzed than I normally would and
wound up dancing with some hat on that had Dale calling me Crazy Gugenheim.
I was also a free man at this point and there was 1 young lady sitting with
her family. The booze gave me courage and Steve and Dale kept egging me
on to dance with her. I remember Dale telling me that he had to live 
vicariously through me.

So I did it. I asked her to dance. And as much as I would love to go on
about some sweet road ass that topped off the night... she shot me down. 
She was actually leaving with her family, I don't know if she would have
danced with this funny, buzzed fat-man with the funny hat had she stayed,
but however she turned me down, it didn't ruin the evening. Which is
something.

This was also our last live performance with Janet.

Eric
November 2005
------------------------

This was also the first time we'd run into a situation we have since 
encountered again. We were told to clean up our material for the 
Rotarians, so the first set was mild. They came back at Intermission 
and either said, "Umm, okay, it's TOO mild," or else they  said it 
wasn't mild enough. Maybe Steve will remember. But it was one of those 
times when we had to alter what we were doing on the fly. That's really 
the only thing I remember about this show.

--Dale