Christian Finnegan's Two For Flinching Tour: Northwestern

(Comedian Christian Finnegan is driving a Kia Sportage around the country on a massive campus tour. We asked him to keep a diary of his escapades. Here is the 3rd entry in Christian's Two For Flinching Tour Diary.)

Entry #3: Northwestern University

Ah, Evanston.  If Chicago is "my kind of town", Evanston is "my kind of crappy 3rd tier suburb"!  For this gig, we temporarily abandoned Megasus and flew out to O'Hare.  It was me, Nick Thune and the wicked talented Joe DeRosa (yeah that's right, I said "wicked talented"), who's also appearing on a whole slew of TFF dates. 

Upon in arriving in the Chicago area, we piled into a cab and told the driver the name of our hotel.  After about 30 minutes of idle banter, Nick noticed that we driving into downtown Chicago, despite the fact that our hotel was supposed to be "insanely close to the airport".  Have you ever had a shouting match with someone speaks basically no English?  In NYC we call that "every morning", but if you've never had the pleasure, let me give you this one piece of advice: try to avoid accidently imitating the person you're arguing with.  Shouting "YOU GO WRONG WAY!!" and "ME NO PAY!!" doesn't get your point across any more clearly than using proper English and chances are you'll be left wondering if you're a racist. 

Eventually we arrived at the Four Points Sheraton, or as I call it, "Purgatory's DMV".  I would recommend this hotel to anyone who is entranced by the scenery in the "Silent Hill" series of video games.  Yes, I realize that's two separate Playstation references in one tour diary, but that's fine because I'm married–I'm not trying to have sex with any of you.

The show at Northwestern was another good one.  Perhaps not as unabashedly kick-arse as the NYU gig, but an all-around good time.  Joe kicked off his Two For Flinching tour of duty with panache and Nick once again made sweet comedy love to the audience.  Unable to get the giant check onto a plane (The Hammer is working on a solution to this), Nick, Joe and myself spent waaaay too much time drawing a phony check onto a giant chalkboard.  Here's Joe, Nick, Me and Dan the Scholarship Winner in front of our de facto giant check:

FYI, Dan took home the prize after proving he could take EIGHT for flinching, which surely has to be some sort of intramural record.  Raising the spectre of a potential lawsuit, the eight arm-punches were administered by a seemingly pleasant, self-proclaimed virgin who seemed to relish beating the crap out of a stranger just a bit too much.  Seriously, it's only a matter of time before that kid goes on a shooting spree.  I wish we'd gotten the boy's photo so that we could submit it to the authorities, but as entertainers we can only do so much…

After the Northwestern show, we ate at Chili's and went back to the hotel.  I couldn't help but feel bad for Joe, Nick and The Hammer that they have been saddled with so lame a headliner.  I'm sure other comedians' post-show rituals include loud music, fast women and hardcore narcotics.  For me, it's a Quesadilla Explosion Salad followed by email-checking and cable television.  I imagine touring with me is a little like being a roadie for James Blunt.

Alright, I guess that's all for now.  Check back here next week for another (much shorter) update.  Toodles.

Christian's Tour continues through April, with new dates being added all the time. Find out if he's coming to your town, buy tickets, and enter to win his Kia Sportage here.

Related: Christian on MySpace