The Purple Rose

I'm back. It occurs to me that you may not know I left. I did. And I'm back.

I left this morning, found myself in four different states, gave a comedy performance, and am back home. This marks the first time I have ever been in four states in one day while ending up in the same place I started. Epic. Kind of.

My show was in Cairo, IL (pronounced kayroh ilinoy - that was more for the Cairo part than the IL part!) at the Elks Lodge over lunch for the Municipal Gas Workers Safety Association Number 3. I know, right! How ever did I land such a sweet gig?!? Just luck, I guess. I should probably buy lottery tickets.

Cairo is a small town. Very small. I knew of it from Huck Finn - I'm pretty sure it was one of the stops during Huck's and Jim's big river trip (which I have always dreamed of recreating, but that's for another time). When I got to the town, an hour or so before my show, I began to worry that I was not going to be well-received (I even worried a little that I wouldn't make it out alive, but really only a little bit). I'm a city boy with city humor and I have been rebuffed by small-town comedy crowds before. In the end, though, the show went fine and the very hard workers for whom I performed at their association's Christmas luncheon were very nice and receptive. I enjoyed being with them.

I saw a number of interesting (I tend to throw that term around rather loosely!) things over the course of my journey. I passed a town called Cooter, MO. That's all. I just liked that there's a town with that name. Its residents live in Cooter. I passed through New Madrid, MO. That town shares its name with the tectonic fault along which it lies and is likely to be very near the epicenter for "the big one" - the big ol' earthquake that seems to be an eventual certainty for the Memphis area. The fault was the source of an earthquake in 1811 that is said to have caused the Mississippi River to flow backward and church bells to ring as far away as Philadelphia, PA. (Ben, that could be a reason not to move to Memphis, but do not let our mayor's boxing match against retired champ Joe Frazier dissuade you!)

Just before leaving Missouri for Illinois, I passed signs for Fish Lake. I don't know if that's a clever nickname or if this body of water's most unique feature is that it contains fish. A few miles later, just off the interstate a few miles outside of Cairo, I passed a sign that said "Future City." I didn't get a chance to ask anyone in Cairo whether that is the name of the town or if it is marking the site of a city-to-be. I am inclined to think that it's the name of a town, but I can assure you that it did not even look like a present city, let alone what I picture as a Future City. If that's the future, I wouldn't feel any need to hang around.

That's it for Michael Ziggy Danziger's Bluff City to the Tiny Town Stand-Up Comedy Extravaganza 2006, or the MZDBCTTSUCE06, as I like to call it. It was a hell of a day!