Ope! Comedian Charlie Berens plays to Midwesternisms

FARGO — Charlie Berens may be best-known for his online “Manitowoc Minute” videos poking fun at Midwestern accents and mannerisms.

He’ll bring that sense of humor to the Fargo Theatre stage Saturday night, March 12, with two sets of his stand-up comedy.

The Wisconsin comic expanded his repertoire last year, releasing his first book, “The Midwest Survival Guide: How We Talk, Love, Work, Drink, and Eat... Everything with Ranch.” The book showed his Midwestern jokes have more than just regional appeal, making it onto the New York Times bestsellers list.

For the record, according to the book, the Midwest is Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. “In alphabetical order, so no one gets their feelings hurt. (Which is the last thing anyone wants to do in the Midwest),” he writes.

Here are some other Midwestern nuggets from the book:

“If you take a Midwesterner out for dinner you might already be seated and ordering while your date is still holding the restaurant door for total strangers.”

“Where you went to high school usually matters more than where you went to college.”

“When someone says I have something nice, my instinct is to tell them I bought it with a coupon.”

“When someone asks me if I want to drive 45 minutes to a Friday fish fry, there’s only one answer: Perch or walleye?”

“A proper Minnesotan will help paint a friend’s house for five hours, even volunteering for ladder duty, and then she’ll apologize for not staying longer.”

“The waiter brings you the wrong meal, you say sorry. (And genuinely feel bad he has to go all the way back to the kitchen.)"

“A respectable Midwest goodbye isn’t complete without five attempts to leave, six beers and a bag of fresh rhubarb stalks.”

“Yes there are Biblical swarms of mosquitoes, but without mosquitoes there’d be fewer hummingbirds.”

“One of the most important words/sounds you'll need to know for playing nice in the Midwest is ‘Ope!’ It’s like a Harry Potter spell.”

“Any opportunity to wear shorts is a celebration of how much worse and colder it could be. It also provides the illusion that it’s warmer than it actually is.”

Who: Charlie Berens
When: 4:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday, March 12
Where: Fargo Theatre, 314 Broadway
Info: Both shows are sold out