Hello, friends and weirdos searching for that girl from the “one weird trick to stay asleep all night” ad (we get about 10 search engine hits a day for this one now)! I’m back from my first of three casino shows this month. Wednesday night I was at Black Bear Casino opening for the hilarious Paul Hooper (who you kids in the twin cities can see at the Joke Joint Comedy Club this weekend). Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to leave the hotel and stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down including but not limited to tiny bottles of shampoo, scratchy towels, single serving packages of coffee and Gideon Bibles –

Placed by the Gideons. Stolen and eaten by Bill Young. That's right. I eat bibles.

I noticed that this hotel provides shower caps. Even before I started going bald I never had my hair long enough to require a shower cap. Frankly, I don’t even know if you can buy these in stores. Maybe shower caps haven’t been used in decades but nobody bothered to tell the hotel industry.

Whatever. I don’t care why they have them but whenever a hotel does provide a shower cap I promptly make sure to wear it.

Why wouldn't you wear a shower cap?

As I packed up my remaining items and got ready to leave, Mr. Hooper knocked on my door. I opened it and told him it’d be just a second. He asked why I was wearing a shower cap and I told him “uhhh… because it’s funny? (see above photo. It is). He agreed but told me he asked in case I had lice or something (which I don’t!). He then dared me to wear it in the casino as we checked out and left. I agreed.

We walked to the front counter, dropped off our key cards and then went to the coffee shop inside the casino. Plenty of people saw the bald guy in a shower cap but nobody batted an eyebrow. I’m not sure if it’s because people hanging out at a casino at 9AM on a Wednesday aren’t exactly self aware or if people think I have a weird medical thing and they’re making an effort to not stare. Either way I’m not getting any the attention that I’m quite plainly craving. I ask to stop at the diner to grab some food to go and we walk all the way to the back of the casino. While we’re at the diner, Hooper ups the ante by suggesting I cry as we walk through the casino back to the car.

I dismiss the idea at first, thinking it’d be too much of a hassle to fake cry for three full minutes but when I get the food and we start walking back I start weeping softly. Squinting, misty eyed and a few sniffles. Hooper is walking a few steps ahead of me and doesn’t even notice I’m crying until we pass a group of people and they just stare at me. He asks if I’m okay, playing along and I say “I just… *sniff* I just, can we go home? I wanna go home”.

Now fully aware of what’s going on, Hooper starts snaking through the casino, trying to walk by as many people as possible as I follow behind, sobbing softly wearing a shower cap and carrying a breakfast sandwich. When we get to the front entrance a double decker bus is parked and and a stream of senior citizens walk into Black Bear, their first sight of their casino journey is that of a grown man walking out crying and wearing a shower cap. Once in the parking lot Hooper looked back and said “Okay, we’re in the clear. You can stop. Seriously, man. Stop it. Please stop crying.”

I’m method. Once you’re in character it’s hard to pull out.