Back That Thing Up

I let the weather determine my destination.

Looking at options of Bollywood music, a punk documentary or comedy, I went with the latter solely because Richmond Comedy Coalition's theater is five blocks away and I just couldn't see driving anywhere on a 66 degree December night.

Walking over there, I passed a crowd of kids in front of the hookah bar and saw the beginnings of a line of scantily-clad girls starting to form at the club across the street, all signs of Saturday night in the city, albeit a scaled-back one given how many people have already left town.

I arrived at the comedy club just minutes before the 10:00 "Middle Management" improv show began, tonight with guest Barry Hite from Chicago and a Second City alum.

Asking for a song lyric to get the show started, the guy next to me called out, "Back that thing up" and they were off and running.

I've seen these guys before but I never cease to be amazed at how quickly and cleverly words flow out of their mouths as they create comedy on the spot.

The first sketch involved bags of onions, repressed traumas and using caboodles to compartmentalize your feelings, surprisingly funny elements.

And while Barry explained what a caboodle was in the context of the sketch, I'd like to point out that I already knew.

Next they riffed on an alleged murderer and his lawyer trying to get a long-time friend to vouch for his character, not easy when every memory seemed to involved the guy doing something truly awful.

And hysterical.

Another sketch involved a father losing his job at the onion factory and making it up to his kids by taking them to visit their long-lost mother in jail, a woman who begins a conversation with her children by saying, "I thought I tried to abort you."

And all that came out of "back that thing up."

For the second half of the show, additional RCC members came onstage and Barry would tell a story from his past that they would then spin into comedy gold.

He began with the story of his first post-high school job working at a Spaghetti Warehouse, which he called a budget Olive Garden, where he smoked eucalyptus cigarettes and dealt with a staff composed of drug addicts, burnt-out chefs and losers.

The ensuing sketch involved a creative team "spitballing" to come up with ideas of how to create a restaurant like Olive Garden, "but shittier."

Bouncing ideas around, they came up with limited bread sticks as the perfect way to do it, at least until two of the guys started fighting over whose idea it had been.

Barry told another story about his frustration when he can't find something - his wallet or keys, say- summarizing, "I'm a nice person when it comes to people, but I'm a terrible friend to objects."

From there, they took off with a rage-filled man who tosses all the furniture out of his house in frustration, leaving his cowering son to find his favorite chair on the sidewalk and beg to keep it.

He ends up going to a meeting of like-minded furniture haters, confesses he not only slept in a bed but used a cover at his wife's insistence, causing them to call her the devil.

The last sketch was about three guys who'd formed the Monday Funday Movie Club and were trying to choose their next film to watch.

One guy made a stellar defense of drama, but things got complicated because another guy didn't want drama because it's too much like real life and his sucked.

Along the way, they acted out scenes from "Three Men and a Baby" and a bad Japanese martial arts film while the audience cracked up.

That's the best part of all. I walk a few blocks, talented people entertain me and, after a day spent entirely in my own company, I am laughing out loud for an hour and a half with strangers.

For the record, this is why I can watch drama.