At the Nut House

Damn you, Roy's.

I've been craving Roy's Big Burger since I got back from the beach last week without having made a stop at Dune Burger. Only problem was that once I found a friend willing to take me there, Roy's was closed.

Good god, Roy's, what self-respecting burger joint closes at 4:00 on the weekends?

With his taste buds all set for a burger, Friend insisted we make the best of our bad luck, so we ended up at Five Guys, which is nothing like the same but at least scratched the itch for greasy. You really can't compare a foil-wrapped burger to one wrapped in parchment paper with grease spots galore.

And don't get me started on the loss of one of Roy's mammoth chocolate shakes.

Once fed (if not fully satisfied), we walked over to Coalition Theater for tonight's Riot! show, featuring the Pigeon, da Vinci and Ambassador teams doing their best to improv us into Saturday night laughter.

Because of our burger delay, we walked in just as the show was starting, hearing the dire warning that the bar was down to just two Diet Cokes. While I wouldn't drink a Diet Coke if you paid me, my companion sucks them down regularly along with those cancer-causing packs of artificial sweetener I continue to insist will eventually kill him.

But I digress.

The Pigeon team took (lame) inspiration from an audience member calling out "Hunger Games" (and sounding more than a little embarrassed at having suggested it) and next thing we knew, we were at a gaming convention with a chubby guy ("He's not chubby!") taking names at the door and Princess Willow Whisper wowing him.

While I have absolutely no frame of reference for gamers or dating apps, funny is funny.

We heard about "Bumble," which was "like Tinder but girls have to swipe you first" ("Sounds like a horrible idea" - from a guy, of course) and how the judges eliminated a guy because his BMI was too high ("What? I'm 5'11" and 312 pounds!"). Only guys make so many fat jokes.

At the convention bar, mead (of course) was served with power crystals on request and wizard cops made random arrests ("That cave was a known hangout for crack dragons").

Pity the Ambassador team who had to get started with nothing more than "mirror" for inspiration ("What's something you find in an antique shop?") and somehow devolved into a story of real-life mannequins, missing children and pot smoking in the thrift store stock room.

Don't ask me how their minds work; it's just our job to laugh.

Acronyms flew (tt = turntable, IB = incense burner, pp = peace pipe) and before long, '70s clichés abounded while "Dark Side of the Moon" played. "Did you feel that? That was you killing the vibe and harshing my mellow."

Before it was all over, live mannequins were cutting off their genitalia (per Dad's instructions), killing cats (ditto) and being posed with obscene and Nazi-like gestures. Clearly, mirror was a challenging starting point.

The da Vinci team began brilliantly with a nerdy science couple discussing how they'd met over a geological dig. Her apple ass had been seductively clad in J Lo Glow jeans (I have no clue if this was really a thing or the joke was on me) as she leaned over a hole in the dirt and he'd had an article published in "Mineral Monthly," meaning they were a match made in heaven.

Later, a pregnant woman is distraught because she wants a celebrity at the birth of her child but none are available. They settle for an extra on JAG (yes, I had to ask my friend what "JAG" was) until she proves herself unworthy, but fortunately George Clooney's butt double on "ER" shows up.

That's not really a thing, right? Or does George really have a butter butt?

Along the way, we saw a scene from Black Friday at Wild Birds Unlimited - who buys a blue parakeet with a wonky eye?- and meet a woman who did squirrel voiceovers - "What you talkin' about, there ain't no nuts!"

But the cleverest bit involved a woman who'd fallen in love with a pre-Venetian chair and was trying to deal with her addiction through a 12-step program. Stop stroking the chair's cushion.

Yes, she was a recovering chairaholic. Their motto? "If you're not sitting, you're living."

Light up the IB. I feel another laugh attack coming on.