It's Come to This: Norton Furniture Guy to Make Comedy Debut

If you’ve ever had the fortune of catching Marc Brown -- the raspy-voiced, baby-killer-looking dude – on his late-night Norton Furniture commercials, chances are good you were drunk. But no matter how drunk you were, chances are good you never thought to yourself, “I’d like to see what this guy could do with 30 minutes on stage.” That’s why the universe manufactures guys like Mike Polk. Polk is a local comic who makes his living by trafficking weird. His essay, “Look at My Striped Shirt,” was a spot-on evisceration of Warehouse District party boys and an internet sensation. His music video, the “One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song,” has been viewed 1.5 million times on You Tube. Less successful was the above video, in which Polk had a picnic in Edgewater Park with “the Norton Furniture guy,” who went around the park promising people credit approval. But that’s not stopping Polk’s quest to turn Brown into the celebrity he deserves to be. His comedy troupe, Last Call Cleveland, recently was invited to do two nights – December 7 and 8 -- at Borderline, a new comedy club in the basement of Lakewood’s Bottom’s Up bar. Typically, Last Call would invite a stand-up comic to open. But Polk called Brown. “He’s a star,” Polk explains. “Selling furniture to him is just a means to be on television. I don’t think he even wants that furniture store. But he can’t just go on the air every night for 30 seconds and say, ‘Hey, I’m a star.’ So he has to sell furniture.’” – Joe P. Tone