now you know the rest of the story

On August 23rd, a big crowd at The Comedy Zone had to be evacuated due to a fire in the back building. Einstein Simplified did a show there this past Saturday. Before the show, we walked around back to do some warm-up exercises and I finally got to see the damage. How long does it usually take for the insurance money to arrive and repairs to get made? I went back today with my camera phone:




The most recent Metro Pulse had a paragraph about the fire. No, they're not a month late covering the news. The paragraph was included in the September 30th edition of the nationally syndicated column "News of the Weird." The story was also mentioned in the August 24th edition of "News of the Weird Daily."

Before "News of the Weird" was a newspaper column, it was a newsletter sent to a few "kindred spirits." Its creator, Chuck Shepherd was a professor at The George Washington University. He must have listened to the morning show on WAVA because I started getting a copy of "News of the Weird" in the mail. And by mail I mean the USPS. It was still a few years before email would take over the world.

My "before they were stars" moment with Chuck Shepherd reminds me of an encounter I had after moving to California. I liked to go to the CBS Studio Center store to do some Christmas shopping for the relatives back East. When I told the talkative sales clerk that I would be sending my purchases to the DC area, he told me that he was from suburban Maryland. He remembered me on subsequent visits and eventually offered to put me on the distribution list for his fairly new email newsletter. His name? Matt Drudge.