Fooling Around
Punchline Philly
33 E Laurel St.
Philadelphia
June 24, 2026
I’m laying on my back on the Punchline Philly stage, trying to bite into and thereby pop a balloon nestled between someone’s thighs. I have a brief thought about competition and failure. I don’t really see myself as competitive. I was never one of those kids in gym class who played a soccer or flag-football game like my freedom was on the line. I liked being a goalie during those and the intramural league games I was low key forced into participating in as a kid because I got to sit down, look at the sky, or dig holes when the team was worse than mine. But after the Bingo and Spelling Bee experiences I’ve had this year, maybe I need to reassess?
I feel like Taz from Looney Toons. I’m biting the shit out of this balloon, and it won’t give. For an agonizing six seconds, I’m down on the floor gnawing this thing repeatedly before I angle my face toward its bottom, sinking in my gold and silver grilled teeth and shaking my head vigorously from side to side. This shit is just bouncing off my face, and there’s a person on top of it. I now know what any given patch of ground on this earth felt like during the era of the Hopper Ball, which I just learned was not at any point called a Sit-N-Bounce, and I guess I understand why. Its rubbery flesh loudly tears away and the audience cheers. I and my partner, a Philadelphia comedian by the name of Finessica, exchange a clean and victorious dap. You might be wondering how I got into this situation.
Fooling Around is a show hosted by Philly comedians Spark Tabor and Sonia Z. that is a blend of party games, a dating show, and a standup comedy showcase. I was one of two guests on the show, otherwise known as ‘a random mf.’ I saw on an acquaintance’s Instagram, Delaware-based electronic musician and very tall man Aaron Fisher, aka No Sir E, that the show was seeking a man whose description I fit and I had nothing else going on that night. Bing-bang-boom. I get to the venue 20 minutes before doors, meet Spark and introduce myself, and then wait patiently for instruction. I’ve been in a lot of backstage areas💅🏾, but a comedy club is a first for me. As I’m looking around, I get to peruse the names of past performers who have signed the walls near the green rooms; two names I recognize are Godfrey and, ahem, T.J. Miller.
I then meet Sonia in an empty green room, who describes the details of the event and the run of the show to me. I go back to the wall before I hear someone else enter the green room that I was just waiting in behind me while talking on the phone. Having completed my scan for names, I want to sit back down in the green room, but I don’t want to disturb the privacy of the person on the phone. Choosing potential rudeness over discomfort, I sit down quietly before the person tells me, “Oh, don’t worry, I’m just being ghetto talking with my phone on speaker.” With the ice immediately broken, we introduce ourselves: “Finessica,” “Pierce.” And I realize that I recognize this name as that of the host of an event I’d been invited to DJ earlier that day.
Between our discussion of mutual friends, music, comedy, our dating preferences, her being on a Netflix festival, and what we were going to order as our comped meals and drinks (if you ever go, get Punchline’s frozen dragonfruit margarita, The Knockout, as Finessica said, “The low-effort drinks are the strongest,”) we had a good lil’ time chopping it up pre-show. This rapport eased my mind about this experience and even assuaged my quiet fear of having to date a stranger for real after the show ended, once Finessica clarified that making a connection wasn’t mandatory. Once the show began, each of four comedians, of which Finessica was one, took the stage and did a five minute set before the guests were brought onstage. Onstage, I slipped maybe a little too effortlessly into a heel character. When asked what my preferences were, I simply leaned back in my chair and replied “A hole is a hole,” before informing the audience that I texted my ex about this show and that she hadn’t responded. When it came time to choose a partner for the games, Finessica was the only choice.
I had to lock in though. The first game was charades, and we were first. When Finessica looked me in my eyes with a startling conviction and told me that she was “competitive as shit,” I knew I wasn’t about to be the reason we lost. The first game was charades, and Finessica had to act out “Stone Top,” which she struggled with, largely because she didn’t know what it was and wasn’t allowed to look it up. Admittedly, I would’ve too, because how the fuck do you act that out? When it was time for me to act out the word “Bear,” all I had to do was rub my exposed beer gut and raise my hands into a claw position before she called out the winning word. During this round of the game, a woman repeatedly insisted that I get on all fours to further demonstrate the word, to which I replied without even thinking “You’d fucking like that wouldn’t you?!” Again, maybe a little too effortlessly.
For the second round, the game was some version of Truth or Dare. I think they changed the name but I don’t really remember because I was drinking throughout this entire experience. When I was asked to either describe the last place and time I had sex or twerk to a random song, I told them to put the music on. They told me the DJ would be picking the song, which I didn’t feel qualified as “random,” but still I obliged. As the end of the pre-chorus to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” came on, I loosened my belt and threw my shit. This is usually the kind of performance I get paid for, but I was willing to do it for this crowd and for Finessica. After this round, comedians and guests exited the stage for a game involving the hosts and audience while we prepared for the third game, coyly entitled “Balls Deep.”
This was essentially an anthropomorphized version of Kendama, in which we had a cup tied to our waists with a bell tied onto the cup, both with ribbon or string. The ribbon tied to the bell was referred to as a “dick,” and the singular bell was referred to as the “balls.” The team who got the bell in the cup the most times won and would be factored into the frankly confusing scoring system in place for pairs that somehow combined points and audience applause. Anyway I got my “balls” in the cup more than almost everybody — a whopping seven times — even though my “dick” was off-center. Truthfully, that has never been a problem for me in life, so there was no reason for it to be a problem in this game.
The final game was balloon popping in suggestive positions. The pair who popped it in the most suggestive fashion would win the round, and there were two rounds. I followed Finessica’s IP when it came to each method for popping, but it turns out, I had very little skill here. The first position was a kind of doggy-style situation that ended with me on top of poor Finessica on my stomach with the balloon squirting out from between us. I’m not a small man, and I probably weigh about twice as much as she does. She popped up, unfazed, once I rolled from on top of her. A true team player. Her next suggestion was to have me pop the balloon with my face and teeth as she sat on it, the force surely would explode it instantly.
This is where our story begins. I get up from this second position, sweat glistening on my forehead as I reach for my hat to cover my desperate need of a retwist, and I wonder how our team will fare in the judging process. It turns out, better than half of the pairs, putting us in second place. Finessica and I were gifted a branded Fooling Around tote bag full of snacks, stickers, and, for some reason, an emery board. I took some stickers, a Twix, and the emery board, a triumphant night all things considered. Shoutout to Finessica; you’ll be able to see us both at Ruba Club on August 15. More info soon.
