Dropkick Comedy brought comics from all over the Midwest together to Bloomington’s Orbit Room June 21. The showcase featured talent from here in Bloomington, as well as Indianapolis and Louisville.
Neal Meyer, the event’s master of ceremonies, took the stage for a brief set to introduce the show. Meyer said the company’s monthly show was “Bloomington’s premier comedy showcase set in a hot dog basement.”
Although reductive, this statement was not inaccurate. The Orbit Room is an intimate basement venue seating fewer than 100 people whose kitchen specializes in extravagantly topped hot dogs.
After Meyer’s introduction, he invited Juan Arellano to the stage. Arellano, an Indianapolis-based comic, commented on his Latino heritage extensively in his humor, telling of his struggles to connect with his white roommates about sports like pickleball and cornhole.
He said his favorite food was Little Caesar’s $5 pizza, adding that he uses it as a benchmark to which he compares other expenses. For example, of a $35 Uber ride he said, “That’s, like, 7 $5 pizzas.” His drink of choice was a non-alcoholic beer, which he called “bread-flavored soda.”
Next up was Eric Groovely out of Louisville. His set was eclectic and wide-reaching, touching on politics by poking fun at Congress and neo-Nazis, as well as his own struggles with alcoholism and dating. His longest bit told the story of how he “accidentally dated a furry.”
Meyer next introduced Mariah Davison. Her set focused on the humor of family and parenting, detailing the complexities of her own divorce, as well as those of her parents.
“Where most people have a family tree, I have a family wreath,” she said.
Davison’s wordplay was especially clever; she said her attraction to anyone with toned upper arms made her “biceps-ual,” and ascribed her return to the Midwest to “cornstalkholm syndrome.”
The next comic, James Tanford, was not originally scheduled to perform in this set, but held his own nevertheless. His opening bit dealt with a car accident he had gotten into in the process of moving out of Bloomington.
When Tanford’s father came to pick him up, he said it had “gotten him out of a social obligation,” an imprecise way of referring to a funeral.
“My dad’s 73,” he said. “His ‘social obligation’ isn’t too far away.”
The final comic to perform was Mandee McKelvey, whose voice immediately betrayed her Louisville roots. She riffed on her accent, talking about her struggles to sound smart and classy.
“I could be up here in a white lab coat giving a TED talk about how I cured cancer, and I still would’ve lost y’all 15 minutes ago,” she said.
McKelvey’s set was the longest of the night, but it didn’t drag on. She had an energetic demeanor which kept the audience engaged and in high spirits throughout.
Much of her set opined on her progression through middle age, calling it a “purgatory.” She talked about a Cleveland audience’s grief-stricken reactions to her recent breast reduction surgery, as well as the various struggles and intricacies of dating over 40.
As sparsely attended as the event was, the Orbit Room felt full and cozy. Jokes landed consistently, and each comic quickly and effortlessly established a warm rapport with the small audience.
The room would likely struggle to accommodate a crowd much larger than this one, but the comics themselves would not.
