2015 Traverse City Winter Comedy Festival

I just returned from the 2015 Winter Comedy Arts Festival up in Traverse City, Michigan. To celebrate the festival’s fifth anniversary, and with perfect comedic timing, Mother Nature delivered a winter punch of terrific proportions, with temperatures down to -20°F, wind chills down to -40°F, and wind gusts pushing 60 mph. Guffaw!

We then bundled up and trudged over to State Theater to usher in Valentine’s Day with a Movie Interruption showing of “Pretty Woman.” (That’s when comedian, Doug Benson, invites several of his friends to sit up front and provide color commentary during a film.) Our esteemed movie interruptors for “Pretty Woman” were Kurt Braunohler, Natasha Leggero, Moshe Kasher, and Michael Moore, who helped us discover that nearly every scene in the film has a horse in it.

The snowstorm settled in hard overnight, and the winds kicked up well past hurricane strength. As a result, venturing outside was nearly impossible. We stayed in as long as our hunger permitted before suiting up and hiking through the weather to 7 Monks Taproom. To celebrate surviving our perilous walk from the hotel to the restaurant, we cracked a rare Barrel-Aged Narwhal with gusto.

By then it was time for our next round of shows, so the four of us fought the elements toward the Old Town Playhouse for a taping of Doug Loves Movies with guests, Geoff Tate, Nikki Glaser, Ted Alexandro, and Ben Bailey.

We then caught Bill Maher and Michael Moore, followed by a standup show with Geoff Tate, Doug Benson, and Todd Barry at the City Opera House. Somewhere in all of that madness, I also managed to spend six hours trying to find a way out of town the following day after Delta began canceling flights. (Good times.)