On June 8th, I was the lucky recipient of complimentary tickets to The Funny Stop, Cuyahoga Falls’ renowned comedy club on State Road. Before the show, I asked the server who was going to perform, and she pointed to the back corner, gushing, “he is, and he has on some really good shoes; they look like alligator skin, but they’re Keds.” She went on to say that the “he” she was referring to, the Akron-born John McClellan, who now calls New York City home, is really funny, and that the show would be enjoyed by all. She wasn’t wrong.
In his apolitical routine, he delivered punchline after punchline, leaving the crowd in stitches, telling stories about everything from Australia to obituaries—the latter of which, of course, is always good for laughs. Probably his funniest joke was about hospitals—again, comedy gold. The idea was that hospitals are always named after dead people, which is the opposite of what you want to be if you end up in one. McClellan also lamented that the healthier a product is, the harder it is to open, and for the next few days, I really had to think about how true that was, and what it says about our overall beliefs regarding health.
As a man who carries around his own self-written obituary, so that it will say just what he wants, McClellan is making sure that he is living life to its fullest, even if a bit angrily. He lets the smokers know right away that they are no longer accepted in society, and labels vapers, in a word, annoying. He even takes on married people—who surely make up a large portion of the crowds in today’s comedy clubs—concluding they are simply not fun. Not at all.
McClellan’s web address probably describes where he ends up after each show: www.boozecoma.com. He doesn’t seem to be playing a character on stage, but is quite the performer nonetheless. He has opened rock shows for David Lee Roth and Collective Soul, as well as won quite a few awards, including a grand prize in the Seattle International Comedy Competition. This isn’t hard to believe, though, as his comedy is funny at the time, and keeps you thinking about it later, possibly while trying to open a 100-calorie pack and pondering why it takes so long to travel to Australia—if the world turns, why can’t we just hover in the sky? I’m pretty sure physics is involved in the answer, and it may take a comedian to figure it out, but John McClellan is busy after the show.
