Oho. After such quips as the above title, where will our sides be? Split with laughter? Is this because I did two comedy gigs tonight? Is it funny to write such titles? Should I admit to it? or should I remain "pun-onymous"? And so forth.

I drove to Lincoln today, expecting to arrive late, but arrived in time to be early instead. The plan was to do an opening set at the gig there, then during the middle section of that gig, drive across to Newark to close the show there. During this gig, the act who opened in Newark would be doing the opposite journey to Lincoln. That was the plan. That is, in fact, exactly what happened, so don't get all "ooh, something's going to go wrong" on my ass. Nothing much went wrong, unless you count my mp3 player refusing to record the second of my performances, which is a shame because it was the better of the two I did tonight.

Anyway, the end of the day sees me 360 miles of driving down, and 50 minutes of performance given.

The first gig started oddly, with the MC and middle act having to swap roles as the pair of them arrived late and the MC had to immediately go to the toilet to be ill, having had a migraine start on him on the way. When I hit the stage, there was also a general sense that the audience needed taming. I said some stuff... some of it was quite wrong. It made the audience laugh, though, so what is wrong.

At the second gig, I also started oddly, but a heckler, with her youth and short-brain-to-mouth-distance, pretty much gave me the room, and refreshed the room's energy whenever things got a bit quiet. I tried to hint at advising her not to heckle, but she needed it signposted. I seem to recall one exchange, after the audience had tired of her heckling, that went like this (we'll call her Fiona, as that's the name I made up for her when she refused to give me her real name - bizarrely, I came to assume that that's what she was called, and she answered to it when I spoke to her):

Me: I don't want to be horrible to you, because you're pretty.
Fiona: Yes, and you're ugly.
Audience: Ooooh.
Me: Now look. They're on my side. In fact, it looks like they'd rather believe that I'm attractive than you're right.

A very silly time was had.

I spent the the gigs tonight wearing contact lenses. This proved somewhat unsettling and had me literally climbing onto the sinks at the second venue when I had to get as close to the mirror as possible to work out how to get one of the little blighters out. I think that wearing lenses is a better look/convenience for me. I'm still unsure whether I can tolerate the effects of the eyes drying out, which makes vision next to impossible.

Time will tell. A short answer is that doubling up to do two gigs in one night is fun. Having double vision is not within my comfort zone.