Yes, it’s April, which means that there is even more foolishness going on than usual, and you can come join in. Tonight I’ll be at The Alley in North Adams at 8:30 for their free open mic comedy. This weekend is also the Fools Fest in Pittsfield, a celebration of foolishness that contains many many events. The two I’m involved with are the free open mic comedy at Mission on Friday night, and the Royal Berkshire Improv Troupe dinner theatre at Dottie’s on Saturday (tickets by advance reservation only).

I’ve been celebrating the foolishness at home as well. Yes, in addition to simply living like I normally do, which many would say is foolish enough. But I recently finished Christopher Moore’s new novel “Fool”, which follows the behind-the-scenes skullduggery* of possibly my favorite Foole** of all time, King Lear’s. For those of you who enjoyed “Lamb”, or who are Shakespeare buffs, I highly recommend it. I’m currently reading “Ship of Fools” by Katherine Porter, a classic book which like too many classics seems to be starting rather slowly, and has buckets of POV racism. Still, I will inevitably finish reading it anyway, as I am incapable of not finishing books once I start them.

Blog posts, on the oth–

*Apparently Wordpress is attempting to fool me into thinking skullduggery is not a real word by underlining it in red. But then again, it dislikes “Foole”

**I cannot type “Foole” without thinking of George Carlin, whose routine “Occupation: Foole” no doubt had some effect on me.

Or seven, possibly. That’s why you should go read this article about the seven powers we really want to see on Heroes. If you dig it, Digg it. If not, well, then maybe you’ll prefer my most recent column, which was about tissues.

Last week, I performed my stand-up act for the first monthly Comedy Open Mic at a new local restaurant. I used a lot of the same material I used four years ago at a conference in Ohio, but for some reason, it didn’t go over nearly as well. I’d have thought a crowd of humor writers would be a tougher crowd then a bunch of local folks attending a comedy night, but I was wrong.  Oddly, the local folks seemed to really dig the improv we did post-stand-up, which (to my mind) wasn’t a patch on my carefully crafted routine. Oh well; that’s why I do improv stuff.