Some people call it the worst shot in the world. I call it: a perfect corporate sponsor.
The Blackout Diaries is very excited to announce that we are partnering with Jeppson’s Malort –America’s most honest shot– for all 2013 shows.
Malort is a unique taste- some where between tequila and an alley fight. And it is Chicago-strong: 100% owned and operated in Chicago, by Chicago, for Chicago alcoholics (the only Chicagoans that matter).
But don’t take my word for it, come to The Blackout Diaries in 2013 and taste Malort for yourself! Jeppson’s will be giving away free tastes of their product and the audience members with the most unique description of that taste –or the best slogan for Malort– will win merchandise and, who knows, maybe even more tastes!
The Blackout Diaries: a comedy show where there are no stupid questions
Very excited to announce that The Blackout Diaries is going to move to a weekly schedule in 2013. Not only that, but we are partenering with one of the city’s finest comedy venues, and the very place where The Blackout Diaries debuted: The Lincoln Lodge. Like all great drunks, The Blackout Diaries has decided that the beer tastes best back home.
I might start posting some microblogs to my site; stories and jokes that are too long for twitter, but perhaps funny enough to stick around. We will see…
I remember being in a symbolic logic class in college and the professor was explaining Leibniz’s Law (“∀F(Fx ↔ Fy) → x=y.“) and the ontological implications of it, when a dude in a Phish shirt just yelled from the back “What if I’m just a brain in a jar, man!”.
I then let out a laugh that I am pretty sure, even if you went back to Aristotle, was the loudest laugh ever issued in a philosophy class. It is possibly the loudest laugh of my life. My Vesuvius.
1) my one man show “Never Been to Paris” is returning from its summer break at The Comedy Bar Thursday October 18th
–and–
2) Jim Belushi is opening the show that night.
As some of you may have read, Belushi is partnering with The Comedy Bar.
“Never Been to Paris” will be the launch night of the partnership and Belushi will open my show with his own near-death story. After the show, at midnight, there will be live music from Rob Stone and the C-Notes, also with Belushi.
Tickets are expected to sellout so if you are intersted in attending, please purchase in advance:
(after opening night, show starts at 8 PM each Thursday, not 10 PM)
Many years ago, I walked off a roof, broke my back in three places and my heel in several more. My friends found me in a nearby
lawn, and if they had said,
“Flannery, one day you’re going to write a comedy show about this and the guy from ‘RED HEAT’ is gonna open for it”.
I’d have said: “you raise that damn roof ten more feet and I’ll do it again, pal!!”.
(FYI: RED HEAT is my favorite buddy movie of all time)
ages: all ages but under 21 must pay a $2 surcharge
51 East Market Street
Akron, OH 44308
Once online sales are available, I will share the link.
If you’re in the area, I think this show will be a lot of fun.
Normally, I’m performing this show in some
far off city, where I’ve only killed myself by accident a mere 1 or 2 times. It will be good to go back to the source.
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be launching my Blackout Diaries show as a podcast soon. The show will be a mix of stories from our live show, monolouges recorded in studio, letters, drinking facts and more. I believe the show will be funny.
More importantly, for now, I am looking for funny drinking stories to share on the show. As you might know, our live show is a collection of stories from professional comedians plus ‘regular’ people (cops, teachers, house wives, etc). It’s a very fun environment for sharing stories that may or may not have been fun at the time.
The live show as been a critic’s pick in The Chicago Reader, Timeout Chicago, Chicago Red Eye, Onion AV Club and more. So this isn’t just some jack ass looking to disguise drinking stories as art. …OK it is.
It’s sort of a re-packaging of my ungoogleable project, which documents how I attempt to argue at bars, in the modern world of fact checkers and smart phones (you can read more about ungoogleable, and my thoughts on phones at bars, here).
It might make you laugh.
And we should update it often. I say ‘we’ because I plan to give the password to my drinking buddies, as they are usually better at remembering my claims.
Several days after September 11th, I was on the Red Line in Chicago. An overweight man left his car via the emergency exit and entered ours. He walked down the aisles of the train attentively, like he was on patrol.
Two tan men were speaking in a foreign tongue. The overweight man stopped at their seats,
“What do we have here?”, he demanded.
He was dressed in shorts and a huge tee shirt that said “Let Freedom Ring!”; above it, a bald eagle was flying with liberty bells in each talon. He wore an enormous hat that read, “The Price of Freedom is Not Free”, with eagles flying in every direction.
The tan men did not answer. They stared at each other a little puzzled; a little scared.
“I will ask again: what do we have here?”
The two men were visibly Mexican. Tan, bushy mustaches; dressed in Mexican soccer jerseys. They spoke clear, unambiguous Spanish.
“Let’s try it a different way: do I need to be concerned about anything here?”
The Mexicans got up and left.
As they were exiting the train, the American raised his hands, as if to make an announcement: “PASSENGERS, do not panic- I have handled this situation”.
He then walked through to the next car, to continue his patrol.
It was in that moment, that I realized: the rest of the world needs to take note.
I was asked to contribute to Scholastic Jive, a blog that publishes the notes of standup comedians. I shared some rough drawings I did for my one man show, which were nothing more than stick figures. My friend Angel Busque, who was a huge supporter of the Chicago standup comedy scene, turned them into a series of amazing visualizations.
After each performance, people lineup to ask me questions and the first is often “who did those drawings –they are hilarious– the one of you driving is perfect”.
I’m sad to say, Angel passed away last week.
She was an incredibly talented artist and great, fun-loving friend. Her drawings are the first illustrations people see in the show and I’m often contacted by people who find the images so striking and well-placed, they ask to receive a digital copy.
When I asked her if she’d be interested in illustrating a story about a car going off a bridge, she said “that’s perfect- let’s do it”, and started immediately. She was always game for a weird-sounding plan and she will be missed very much.
If you have a moment, checkout more of her art at,
A couple of my shows have been added to the TBS Just for Laughs Festival, this summer.
Stop by if you have no plans; they should be fun:
The Blackout Diaries
Some of the best comics to recently come out of Chicago will be sharing real drinking stories, then you, the audience, can ask them questions. With Kyle Kinane, Matt Braunger and other amazing performers.
You know, a lot of people say Bill Engvall is a middle-of-the-road comic who takes no risks on stage, but I think it was awfully brave of him to become the spokesman for a HIV-related-belly-fat pill:
The Onion AV Club asked me to do a preview for The Blackout Diaries this spring. Directed by Sam Mechling and staring Bernie Brice and The Puterbaugh Sisters:
The Onion AV Club previewed the Blackout Diaries again and asked me to put some drinking stories together in a video. They said some nice things about the show and I think, due to the talents of the Puterbaugh Sisters, Bernie Brice and Sam Mechling, the video turned out well too:
This may only be funny to tech people (and perhaps not even them), but it’s a kind of mini-Hell I experience at work so often, I decided to turn it into a blog.
CONFESSIONS: normally the process ends at #2, with me saying “f-it, I’m gonna install Chrome”.
Also, technically step #9 and later didn’t work. The Internet Explorer Search extension for ABC Action Action News points to the wrong URL, throwing a 404 every time. I had to manually use the search feature on their domain.
All that said, it makes me like Microsoft more and I’m going to stick to ABC Action News (Philadelphia) as my default provider. I love delusional people in real life, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t look for the same in my technology companies. To pretend that Google isn’t even one of the companies that you would consider, when listing internet search providers… Well, that’s a pretty hilarious ‘happy place’ Microsoft has sent itself to. I need to be working more closely with them.
