Duo entertain at Comedy Attic

About an hour into the set of playing off each other and getting a lot of laughs from the audience, comedian Michael Showalter was flipping through his pages of notes for something to mention.

His partner, Michael Ian Black,  decided to make something perfectly clear to the crowd.

“You should know that Michael and I did not prepare for this show.”

For these two, that just made it better.

The Comedy Attic has comedy shows Thursday through Saturday, but the Michael and Michael show was extended to Sunday.

Only Black was able to do the Sunday show.

The club’s owner, Jared Thompson, and the rest of the staff worked hard the entire weekend to handle the number of people who showed up. Thompson expected every show to be sold out. He acknowledged it would “basically take a hurricane to stop that
from happening.”

He was right. The club was packed.

Hosting for the Michaels on Friday and Saturday was local comedian Jamison Raymond.

Jamison told the crowd he has always been a nerd and bad at sports. This led to a bone he had to pick with author J.K. Rowling about her invention of a sport for wizards to be good at.

“Even at a wizard’s high school, I would have to make varsity to get laid,” Raymond said.

Showalter and Black bantered with each other and also with the audience during their set, asking the crowd about tattoos and telling stories from their time on the road.
Showalter also read a few entries from the notes that he brings to many shows so he can “feel safe.”

It was by chance that the Attic booked the duo for this week.

“We originally had Brian Posehn booked for Welcome Week,” Thompson said, “but he had to move it to December. Michael and Michael pretty much fell into our laps, and we couldn’t pass it up.”

Michael and Michael were brought to Bloomington to speak at The Combine, a technology and entrepreneurial conference also going on all weekend.

In the end, Michael Black mentioned that although the idea of coming to Bloomington originally sounded like a terrible idea, he said they enjoyed their time and the crowd.
“Looks like the coolest group in Bloomington came out tonight,” Black said.