COVID-Conscious Host Requires Comics to Bring Their Own Stool to Hump

Olympia, WA ⁠— Open mic host Mason Hernandez recently restarted his comedy open mic at Shooty’s Brew Pub with new safety precautions in place requiring each comic to bring their own stool to hump.

“We desperately need live comedy to start coming back in Olympia,” said Hernandez, who had to discontinue his Zoom open mic after what he described as a few too many “Toobin-style” incidents. “Every Zoom mic either becomes a big shit-talk session or people start getting, you know, a little too comfy on the webcam. But we’re still playing it safe, so if you’re gonna hump a stool, which, let’s face it, you probably are, you have to bring one from home to prevent the spread of crotch-COVID.”

Shooty’s owner and front-of-house manager Ash Nesmith welcomes the extra business the weekly open mic brings, despite the extra work of enforcing safety precautions.

“A couple of these guys have asked to borrow barstools and I’m thinking I should charge them a fee,” she admitted of the increase in inanimate plus-ones. “I know it sounds harsh, but you should see the kind of nasty stuff they’re doing to this furniture on stage… we end up sweeping up the remains of notecards and pages torn from journals, scrawled with confounding sexual phrases like ‘condoms while fisting?,’ ‘one-night-stand smegma wrestling,’ and ‘upside-down dog fucker fantasy.’ And that’s not even the half of it.”

Open micer Brett Sternbauer said he was initially opposed to the new rule, citing, for some reason, the First Amendment, but he eventually came around to the requirement.

“It’s actually kind of nice having my own stool,” Sternbauer confessed while smoothing his hand over the stool’s taut leather seat. “I’ve made it my own. I put a little makeup on her.. er.. it, and I know no one else gets to touch it the way I do. She’s.. I mean, it’s become special to me. I still can’t get on any shows but at least I know I’ve got my sweet stool to comfort me at the end of the night, and I can use it for whatever I want — no holds barred.”

At press time, no new comedy-related COVID cases had been reported; however, local positive tests for gonnorhea were up over 250%.

By Emma Jonas.