Comic
Josh Sneed is starting to feel middle-age creep up behind him, now that he's turned a ripe old 31. Even a trip to the department store makes him pause. "I've realized that, when you start asking for things like vacuums and Tupperware as gifts for your birthday, you're not a kid anymore," laughs Sneed, who's in town for a couple of shows this week. A Cincinnati native who quit a comfy Procter & Gamble job to pursue a comedy career four years ago, Sneed started to taste success on the road with a 2004 appearance at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal. Since then, he and a business partner have started the Look at Me apparel line, complete with T-shirts that bear cheeky phrases like "I talk dirty to your kid on Myspace," "Legalize midget-tossing," and "Yes, they're real." "Anything we can think to print on, we're throwing it out there, and people seem to dig it," says Sneed. "It's a whole different creative side of me."When he's not giving his shirts a plug, he's appearing on
Comedy Central Presents or is pushing his debut CD,
A Shout Out to My Peeps. All of it beats a corporate desk job. "That's why I'm not sitting in a cubicle anymore," says Sneed, who's opened for funnymen like Dave Chappelle and Lewis Black. "The day it feels like a job, you should rethink why you're in this business." Sneed goes onstage at 8 p.m. today and tomorrow at the Improv, 2000 Sycamore Street on the West Bank of the Flats. Tickets are $11. Call 216-696-4677 or visit
www.clevelandimprov.com.
Wed., April 9, 8 p.m.; Thu., April 10, 8 p.m., 2008