On Friday night, my wife and I went to see Mike Birbiglia in Huntington. With the exception of a rather odd choice of opening acts^[a], it was an excellent show.

We were in Huntington’s Veteran’s Memorial Field House^[b], which is a little run-down at this point, but I thought it was okay as a venue^[c].

The opening act, whose name we didn’t catch^[d] was disappointing, but she was followed on stage by Geoff Tate. Tate’s comedy is slightly cruder than that of Mike Birbiglia^[e], but their mannerisms and attitudes are very similar, and he was an excellent warm-up for Mike’s appearance on stage.

For those not familiar with Mike Birbiglia, he tends to be a little awkward (One of his routines involved the coining of a new word to describe himself – deciding that he’s both pudgy and awkward, Mike dubs himself “pawkward”), and has a knack for, as he puts it, “making awkward situations even more awkward.” His comedy generally consists of telling (presumably) true stories about his life, and even stories that could be considered quite serious (especially some of the stories about his sleepwalking, caused by rapid eye movement behavior disorder) are hilarious when Mike tells them.

It was particularly funny to us when we noticed that Tim Irr (who kicked off the event by thanking the alumni association, mentioning the event’s sponsors, and embarrassing his daughter) nor any of the other announcers even attempted to say Mike’s last name, simply calling him “Mike.” I guess they didn’t want to screw up and call him Mike Bahooski.

All in all, it was a great show (with the exception of The Cheerleader, who actually was quite funny – unfortunately for her, she wasn’t trying to be), and we hope to catch another show the next time Mike is in West Virginia.

1. A choice that was made, apparently, by the Marshall alumni association, and which we can only guess was made solely because someone had some extremely embarrassing photos of at least one member of the association. [↩]
2. I know that article shows “Fieldhouse” as one word, but the Greater Huntington Park and Recreation district shows it as two, so I’m trusting them instead. [↩]
3. I do wish they’d invest in some chairs, though. [↩]
4. I probably wouldn’t give it if we had, since I’m not sure that my reaction to her performance was fair, since a former Marshall cheerleader singing self-written songs interspersed with country versions of songs originally by Whitney Houston and Green Day isn’t generally what one would expect when one has come to see a comedian. [↩]
5. The only issue we had with Geoff’s performance wouldn’t have actually been a problem if we hadn’t been sitting beside my wife’s former teacher, which made her a bit uncomfortable when Geoff’s jokes started veering toward sexual topics. He wasn’t really crude, but sitting next to your sixth-grade teacher while a comedian compares being gay to liking Thai food is apparently almost as embarrassing as watching Cold Mountain with your grandfather. [↩]