Greetings, good and bad people!
If you live anywhere near Denver, Colorado I will be at the Comedy Works this Friday and Saturday, Aug. 23rd and 24th. It’s one of the great clubs so come down even if you’re not a comedy club person. This place is the real deal.
I’m on a plane coming flying back to LA from Salt Lake City. I did one night at Wiseguys, West Valley. It’s always weird in Utah. I don’t think I am projecting that. There is a very distinct feeling of being someplace remote and odd. I am not trying to be condescending. I may be projecting but one gets the feeling that everyone there has a secret of some kind and the people that aren’t part of it are outsiders.
That secret is to what degree are you Mormon. If you aren’t Mormon you are completely out of the loop, but I talked to different Mormons there. Most of the comics are Mormon. Most of the people are Mormon. For the most part Mormons are all supposed to be on the same page but clearly some are drifting and from what I hear the church isn’t quite sure what to do about that. I really don’t have too much issue with what people believe or how they do it if it is what they want to do. We all have the right to choose how we want our minds fucked and how much that is going to cost us, financially and emotionally and psychologically. Religious affiliation and spiritual community comes with a price. Sometimes it is negotiable, most of the time not so much. There is a literal price with the Mormons. How to keep that money coming in and how to keep track of who owes what is a complicated business that is done through a very organized hierarchy. It’s a big business. It’s an American business. Mormonism: Made in America. I don’t know why they don’t use that slogan.
The reason I love performing in SLC is that there is a real feeling that some people are stranded there. Physically stranded or stranded because they are struggling with the church and trying to figure out how to keep what they like about it in their lives and adjust or defy what they don’t like about it. It’s a deep issue for some people. I think because the religion is so new and so homespun that they haven’t really had to deal with the upheavals that shattered and fragmented the other religions of the world that have been around for centuries into different, more practical branches that are a bit more forgiving. There are also people that are just living there for work.
The fact is that it is a church town through and through. That raises the stakes as a performer in that if you make it real and provocative it means something. There’s an electricity to being on stage in a church town because you feel like you are doing something bad. I love that feeling. I like the people in SLC. I’ve had nothing short of great and truly weird shows there.
This week, on Monday the elusive and mysterious Maynard James Keenan from the bands Tool, Puscifer, A Perfect Circle and others is in the garage. He’s a level-headed dude with a past in pet projects. On Thursday I talk to the hilarious Tom Segura about life and being a comic who is married to comic. Tough stuff. Dig it.
Enjoy.
Boomer lives!
Love,
Maron
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