Comedians tickle locals’ funny bones

Recent IU graduate Megan Geurts experienced her first taste of live stand-up comedy this weekend at the Funny Bone Bloomington Comedy Club.

“I like watching it on TV,” she said, but “I’ve never really been to stand-up before.”

Local and imported comics kept audiences laughing this weekend as New York City comedian Jon Fisch entertained the crowd with self-deprecating jokes and audience interaction, such as knuckle-bumping men in the front row.

First on stage was regular Funny Bone host Brain M. Frange, who was introduced as “judged No. 1 comedian by a jury of his cats.” After a short set from Frange, the first of the night’s two local feature acts, junior Josh Cocks, took the stage, starting off with lines about five-hour energy drinks and jelly bean recipes.


“I eat jelly beans to get around the work of eating actual food,” he said, before wondering aloud about Jelly Belly’s Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bean line. “How did they come up with the flavor of ‘booger’? Wouldn’t you have hated to be on that taste panel?”

After commenting that “you know you’re a starving college student when dog food commercials start to look delicious,” Cocks regaled the audience with a tale of a bar fight he got into “the same way a trailer gets into a tornado.”

“He hit me so hard, I forgot what adverbs were,” he said.

Cocks was followed by fellow Bloomington resident Ben Moore, winner of last week’s open-mic competition, held every Wednesday night at the Funny Bone. Moore informed the crowd that “I’m happy to be here. Actually, I’m just happy not to be in Terre Haute anymore.”

At one point, he addressed the women of the audience with a warning.
“You say you want the fairy tale, but you don’t say which fairy tale,” Moore said. “I disappear right before the check comes.”

Moore also contemplated the violence in recent superhero movies, which he views as the twisting of what should be stories for children. Books he sees coming out of this trend included “Charlotte’s Web of Lies” and “I Found Waldo ... Sleeping with My Wife.”

When Fisch took the stage, he kicked off with a series of jokes about his own baldness and its effect on relationships, warning men in the crowd to “lock it in now – you have hair, you marry her.”

“I date women my age, but they’re bitter and desperate,” he said. “I date younger women, but they don’t understand my desperation and bitterness.”

As for dating and social networking Web sites, Fisch protested that most only have one photo of the person’s choosing.

Instead, he wants to see three pictures: one when the woman first wakes up, one of her mother and one in which she’s disappointed and angry. He wants the last because “that’s what you’re going to look like for most of the relationship.”

Fisch also said he is getting over his most recent girlfriend.

“We’ve been broken up for about 463 days,” Fisch said, adding that the breakup was very abrupt. “I feel like it should be more like a job, with two weeks’ notice ... I’ll train the new guy.”