Ladies and gentlemen, your headliners this week: Bill Bellamy at Hilarities and and Valarie Storm at the Hard Rock Rocksino. And now, the host of the Laugh Track column ... Mike McIntyre.
Thank you, Cleveland! Memorial Day weekend is upon us and that can only mean one thing: Only three more weeks of winter!
At the Comedy Zone: Valarie Storm talks all about relationships (don't get counseling, she says, she was prescribed Prozac and he was prescribed Viagra and he got excited and she didn't care). And she talks a lot about being a parent.
"I recently caught my son skipping school. Didn't quite know what to do about it. When we were younger, we got in trouble, they sent us to our room. He has the Internet, cable, X-Box. Hell, I hang out in his room," she says in her act.
She wasn't the biggest fan of going to school herself. Storm says she got her first laugh at age 5 on stage at the "Little Miss Fort Myers Beauty Pageant" when she was asked whether she liked school: "Hell no, I'd rather stay home and watch cartoons," she answered.
She's brave.
"Last year I took a trip across the United States in a minivan with my son and four of his friends. That didn't make ya want to yank the wheel into oncoming traffic!" she said. "It was all belching and poop jokes. But they told me I had to knock that off."
And she's proud.
"I also raised two teenage girls, my nieces. I'm going to take a moment to brag: The oldest is getting her master's in business. The second is in her third year of getting her electrical engineering degree. My son will graduate high school this year with his AA in college done and he wants to go on to be a doctor," she says. "I am officially the black sheep of my own family."
Storm headlines the Comedy Zone at Club Velvet in the Hard Rock Rocksino at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 7:30 and 10 p.m. Friday, 7 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $15-20 plus tax. Call Ticketmaster at (800) 745-3000.
At Hilarities: Bill Bellamy performs at 8 p.m. Thursday ($23), 7:30 and 10 p.m. Friday, 7 and 9:30 Saturday ($28) at Hilarities, inside Pickwick & Frolic restaurant, 2035 East Fourth St., Cleveland. Call 216-736-4242.
Next week: If he has time after recording a live comedy album over two shows at Mahall's in Lakewood May 30, Mike Polk Jr. will bowl a 300 game, convert a 7-10 split and drain the bar of its IPA directly from the tap. But showbiz first. Polk performs at 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Tickets are $12-$15 and Bill Squire of the Alan Cox Show on WMMS also is on the card. Find tickets at tinyurl.com/MikePolkJr