Our Jaded Critic Praises a Lakewood Comedy Night

You have to be careful with local comedy nights. They have a tendency to draw people out of strange, dark corners or the world and put them on stage, where they definitely don’t belong. Personally, such public travesties make me squirm; I’m that guy who has to change the channel when some freak butchers Christina Aguilera on Idol. So I usually spend open-mic nights in the bathroom, pretending to wash my hands and waiting for the bleeding to stop. But this week, I stumbled into a weekly local comedy event that, for the most part, didn’t suck. It’s a regular Monday-night event at Bella Dubby, a coffee shop/art gallery in Lakewood (13321 Madison Ave). It’s organized by an earnest young comic whose name I forget because, thank God, this coffee shop/art house also serves beer, and I drank many. But I do know that she ran a tight ship and only let one total freak on stage. Other than that dude’s brief rant on the time he tried (unsuccessfully) to set a gay guy on fire, it was a decently funny night. The highlights: Mike Polk, founder of Last Call Cleveland and my former rowing partner, sang a fun little ditty praising James Buchanan, this great nation’s first and only gay president. And Ryan Dalton – the guy from the video above, who hits the road next week to open for Tammy Pescatelli – tried out some funny new quasi-racist jokes, which were met by the thrift-store crowd with silent disapproval. Hilarious. Also: the beer’s cheap. Check it out. – Joe P. Tone