1991 was kind of a big year. I'd been getting enough club work that I could quit my dayjob (which countless people heckled me to never do - FCUK THEM, I guess), and why stay in dreary, gray Milwaukee where a sickly 3 full-time clubs existed when my sweet home Chicago had countless Zanies, Funny Firms, Improvs, and FunnyBones to be conquered?

So off I went. I loaded up the beige Tercel with my 8 items or less and hit I-94 south, headlights aimed towards the bright city lights.

This was in April, and the death of summer awaited me. See, no one attends comedy clubs in the summer, and the people that do have been enticed in by waved cover charges or no drink minimums. Therefore, they feel no obligation to have fun, and therefore, mostly, they don't. Hurrah!

I'd booked a few weeks here and there on the road (yes, the irony of moving to Chicago so I could return to the road was fully realized, but I needed dough - I had hair gel to buy!), and by mid-June, bookings had dropped off steeply. My only gig in the foreseeable future was a 2 nighter called the Comedy Womb in beautiful, scenic, and fucking filthy Lyons, Il. The club was run by an hornery biker, Mark Shufeldt, who, for some god damned reason, was incredibly giving when it came to handing out stage time to new arrivals. He liked my act, I suppose because I had a penchant for telling the audience how aggravated I was by them (I can still hear his gruff, "Sh-sh-sh" laugh echoing from the behind the bar), so he was liberal with bookings. It paid shit, but the club lineup was untraditional in that instead of 3 comics, there were 6 to 8, all doing roughly 10 minutes. This led to unbelievably fun times, getting shitfaced with 7 of your friends, mocking them when they returned to the rear of the room with their bloodied tails between their chafed legs.

So on the weekend of June 22, 1991, I was booked at The Womb along with my buddy Bob Jay, my friend Kevin Anderson (in an earlier post, I revealed that he and I did stand up a few times back in high school), and a few other cool mutherfarkers. One name stood out to me when I glanced the club lineup in the Chicago Tribune a few nights before the gig: Dara Modglin. I remembered meeting this spunky, wee little blonde about 6 months prior at another club. She was absolutely adorable, incredibly funny, and, if I thought about it back then (and I didn't), wickedly flirtatious.

We worked the weekend together, the lot of us, and had arguably one of the funnest times I've ever had working a club.. We're talking thousands of nights, and this weekend was filled with side-splitting insults, playing memory games after the club closed, and impressions of every comic that had ever crossed our paths.

I was incredibly attracted to this Dara person. When we went out after the shows for "breakfast" (comics call it that, but it's really 3am and you're downing a francheesie and chili fries), we jockied for position to sit next to one another. By the end of the weekend, Dara Modglin had asked me out on a date - but it wasn't a date, she said. "If you want to bring someone else, that's okay", which confused the hell outta me, until I realized that I'd mentioned in my act something about a "girlfriend". Totally fictitious, but I needed one for the joke.

I could type on and on and on and on about the following months of '91, but suffice it to say: We fell big time for each other, I was on the road 2-3 weeks a month, and we were young kids with big hopes.

1991 was a wonderful year.

This pic above we took on my 21st birthday (!!!???!!) at a B and B that Dara surprised me by taking me to. She'd planned an entire weekend for us, "RustyFest" as it was officially deemed, and it was the single most amazing birthday I've ever had.

As you look at this photo, ask yourself: Who in the hell says men age better than women? Dara looks exactly the same. I, on the other hand, well, ahem, who IS that young, goodlookin' kid?