I Also Do Stand Up

MAN, it seems like someone could make a joke about this. I dunno!

We sent an intern to intercept the man known as "Patrick Jerome," who has been masquerading as our own FPJEROME, during one of his supposed "Stand-Up Comedy" routines. We here at Pearl River Flow believe that comedy is best done by delivering people things that we find in swamps.

Our intern never returned from the viewing, claiming to have found "a better way of life" and also an employer that will not force him to fight racoons in dumpsters. What he sent in reply were the notes of the comedy set Mr. Jerome planned to do that night. We polished them up and have recorded them for posterity.

Hello, my name is Patrick Jerome. You can follow me on twitter, or stalk me on facebook. My twitter name is the same as my website - pearl river flow, pearlriverflow.com.


Uh, it is not about feminine hygiene products. Even though it sounds like it should be. Maybe it should. Maybe that would be more amusing.

This is my second time appearing at Hal and Mal's! It’s a great venue and you’re a great crowd. I want to thank you all for coming tonight, and listen, the last time I was here everyone had a good time, only one person cried, and that was my mom. She couldn’t make it out tonight.

Any single people here tonight? Man, being single now is so different than it was back when I was single. You’ve got your tinders, your grinders, your kindlers, your tumblers, your… wait, am I describing how to start a fire or how to get laid?

I joined a dating website once. It was called NOTOKCUPID. Yeah. It was all clowns. Just sad pictures of horny clowns. You couldn’t swipe left fast enough. “Down to clown” NOPE. “No juggaloes.” Well that’s great, but still NOPE.

I did get to go to an orgy because of NOTOKCUPID. Yeah. It was in the backseat of her car, but still. It counts.

I am married. Any married people out here tonight?


You can tell they’re married because they don’t care. Sounded like a pile of baloon animals deflating in the corner.

Two things went through the heads of every woman, and some of the men, in here: 1: “Whew.” 2: “Poor girl.”


Poor girl indeed. I married way over my head. I married a bellydancer. I don’t even have a dad bod. This isn’t a dad bod. It’s a dead bod. It’s a beach body. The kind that washes ashore on the beach. 

Getting married changes you. My idea of a wild night now is to watch german documentaries, have mustard, liver, and onions, and go to sleep early so I can get up and play D&D in the morning.

I married a Texan. Texans are just like regular people, unless you bring up Texas or try to put anything other than meat and hot peppers into chili. They hate that. They freak out. You can get a special dispensation to put tomatoes in your chili, but you have to get the ghost of John Wayne to sign it at the Alamo.

I just had my wisdom teeth removed. My face hurts and now I want to vote for Donald Trump.

We got any Donald Trump fans out there? 

No? Huh. Just me, I guess.

I’m not originally from Jackson. I’m from a small town north of here called Pickens. We got anybody from Pickens in the crowd tonight? No? Well sit tight, city-slickers. Let me tell you about PIckens.

Pickens is so small it doesn’t have a waffle house. There used to be a coffin factory there, but it went out of business, so now all they make is meth and dead people.

Pickens may not have a waffle house, but it does have a strip club. A strip club in a truck stop. And all you can eat wings on Thursdays. Yes, the truck stop strip club chicken wing buffet was the best place to be in town. It wasn’t the most sanitary. You have to be sure you don’t mix up your thongs and your tongs or things will get messy.

I don’t live in Pickens anymore. I’m here in Jackson now, I work at the Rainbow Coop, I do all their marketing, manage all their signs and their pictures and their social media. So, you know, my dad’s real proud of me. 

Pickens is a small town, so I misunderstand some things here in Jackson. Like, I went to a food truck rodeo recently. I didn’t get any food, but I did hog-tie a taco truck.

I met some hippies there. I like hippies. I know, they get a bad rap. But, they can make milk out of absolutely anything. Quinoa, oats, almonds, hazelnuts, hemp - any kind of nut. I don’t even know what a quinoa is, but there is a barn full of vegans out there somewhere milking those tiny little nut-tits so hippies can drink milk.


A hippy told me, you can make vegetarian chili in Texas, but you can only flavor it with your father’s tears.

I met some hipsters there, too. Or as I call them, “urban attention seekers.”  It can be hard to tell hipsters and hippies apart, you know? I have a test I use. You can’t ask them about music, they both have the same taste in music - they hate all of it, other than Tom Waits blowing Leonard Cohen, hobos yelling at trains and Julie Andrews, and Taylor Swift.

No, you give them some mustard. If they ask you “oh, where’s it from? Where are the mustard seeds grown?” Then, they’re a hipster. If they ask you if it’s got gluten in it, then they’re hippies.

What is gluten? It’s like quinoa. Nobody knows what it is. You’ve got to educate yourself. So I figured, I need to know what gluten is. I’ll turn on The Learning Channel.

...after eighteen hours of watching rednecks - I think I recognized Pickens on a few shows - I found out what gluten is. A guy on the learning channel found out about it on the mayan calendar, so you know it’s legit.


You see, gluten is a protein found in wheat. When it gets into your intestines, it dissolves into billions of tiny microspiders that crawl through your intestines, into your bloodstream, and make you vulnerable to alien mind control.

...I dunno if I can trust the learning channel.

People ask me why I do comedy. It’s because I’m a nihilist. It’s why I eat the waffle house.


You may think that a nihilist would eat at Arby’s, or at the truck stop strip club chicken wing buffet. But no. I eat at Waffle House, because on each Waffle House menu they print the phrase “you had a choice. And you chose us.”

I’m a nihilist. But I’m also an optimist. See, the thing is, one day we’ll all be dead, everything we do will be forgotten, no matter how many nights you spent watching hicks on TV or eating chili.

You've all been a wonderful crowd. Thank you very much!

- Readers of Pearl River Flow who attend one of these "shows" by Patrick Jerome can receive ONE FREE DRINK from him by bringing a piece of interesting trash. No wrappers or cigarette butts, please. This will send him a message from FPJEROME.