A Bird In The Spotlight

I learned an important fact yesterday evening: a bird in the spotlight is worth two good jokes. Craig and I went to see Brian Regan perform at a place near where we live. Brian Regan is a comedian who has been around for a number of years. I consider him to be the funniest man in American, possibly the world. His jokes are all clean and with no swearing beyond the word "hell."

Yesterday he was about a third of the way into his show. It was funny. Let me tell you, I will never think of automated phone systems the same way again and I used to navigate those things like a pro when I worked with insurance. Anyway, he started a new joke and suddenly a bird flew into the spotlight. I actually thought someone had released it as part of the joke for a moment. But, no, it was just in the theatre. It took refuge up above the stage. Half the crowd made a high pitched bird noise. Brian did not see the bird, so all he knew was that people were making a really weird noise. He laughed it off and made a few jokes about the audience response. We laughed and he got back to the show.

Near the end of the show Brian Regan introduced a joke with the words, "A bird flew into our house." At that moment the entire audience went into throes of hysterical laughter. A bunch of people made the bird noise again. It quickly became apparent that Brian had no idea why we were laughing. He still managed to make a joke out of it, but every time he tried to start the joke again we would go into gales of laughter. Eventually he got the joke told. When he came back on stage for his encore he asked the audience what was going on that we had laughed so much at the beginning of a joke. So we told him about the bird, whose presence he had not noticed. He will definitely never forget us.