In Print

By JEFF VRABEL • 843-706-8140

Despite what I’m sure it looks like to people with real jobs, it is not easy to come up with ideas for what I call these “funny columns,” but which most people call “columns.” This is especially true in a writing landscape where anyone with an inside-joke phrase and a working knowledge of Blogger can more or less become a humor columnist, circumventing the old methods of getting published, which was either getting someone in management super-drunk or waiting until everyone else on the copy desk had gone home, and surreptitiously swapping out some other loser story with your column, and then, the next morning, acting all like, “That could have been anyone who put my extremely handsome mug shot on there, I AM NOT GOING TO STAND FOR THIS INTERROGATION.”

But in what may be a historic first for this column space, I’m going to be perfectly honest (although I’m pretty sure Farrell was honest in her piece about screaming at the checkout dude at Publix, which, by the way, shame on her): It has become more and more difficult to think of Funny Column Ideas with the soothing regularity to which my readers have become accustomed, and by “readers” I mean my Mom and the folks who scour each line looking for anti-Rush Limbaugh jokes looking to write letters to the editor about, such as this one: Rush Limbaugh sweats canola oil, rocks 38 lbs. of neck fat and bleats feeding-trough noises like the Walrus Man who mouth-snorts at Luke in the cantina scene of the first “Star Wars” movie. No, Rush, I don’t like you either.

Hey, fanboys. Yeah, you guys, the ones who flooded my inbox after I trashed Zack Snyder’s “300,” wishing birth defects on my unborn children and suggesting that perhaps my husband isn’t — ahem — keeping me satisfied.

Yes, I’ve read “Watchmen.” I understand why it matters culturally, why it’s considered revolutionary in its exploration of flawed superheroes, why it moved you. It moved me, too. And still — or, rather, because of that — I found director Snyder’s adaptation hugely disappointing, faithful as it is to the graphic novel.

Most of Kerry Pollock’s comedy/magic work is reserved for special events: cruise ships, casino shows, corporate events and the like. A lot of his other time is spent making magic behind the scenes, using his engineering skills to create props, illusions and effects for other performers from Penn and Teller to David Copperfield.

So when his wife of four years saw him perform on a club stage for the first time when Pollock visited the Hilton Head Comedy Club last year, she was a bit surprised.

“She said, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen that show before,’ ” Pollock said. “Sometimes I will loosen up more in a club.”

By JEFF VRABEL • 843-706-8140

The recession is ruining everything now, including real estate transactions, Salsarita’s on U.S. 278, much of the construction in Bluffton that will not result in a new Wendy’s, Michael Jackson, that $14 million house on Brams Point and positive accounting integers for everyone who bought a second home around here. Yet still, with everything falling to pieces, banks going sploof in the night, the regular discovery of middle-aged sweater-vested men sobbing in gutters and, of course, dogs and cats living together, one would think that things would be reasonably secure on Park Place.

Not so. The recession has yet to come anywhere near Monopoly (or its filthy rich monocled mayor), as the game has recently been “reinvented” for the 4,219th time, ranking it on the list of things that have been regularly reinvented somewhere between Batman, Duran Duran and Blackwater.

It’s time to reserve your seats for the First Annual Beaufort Festiv-ALE, an inaugural weeklong festival taking place from Feb. 26 through March 1 at Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park in Beaufort. The festival is designed to have something for everyone, especially on Friday and Saturday nights, when it will transform into a concert venue hosting a combination of local talent and national acts.

The Beaufort Irish Festival wraps up this weekend with three full days of Irish-flavored activities.

Friday night is the Festival Gala (6:30 p.m., St. Peter’s Catholic Church, 70 Lady’s Island Dr., Lady’s Island). A $35 ticket includes cocktails and heavy hors d’oeuvres, followed by a concert by the O’Carolan Irish Trio and the music and humor of Carroll Brown and Friends.

Monkey Business on Hilton Head Island officially returns this weekend with a Feb. 21 grand opening featuring music and free stuff. The club is moving away from its 2008 incarnation as Stages Music and More and back to its roots as a top-40 dance club. For information, call 843-686-3545.

Between them, musical legends B.B. King and Buddy Guy have been playing the blues for a century, but their show this week at the Shoreline Ballroom brought the blues to Hilton Head in a way the area hadn't seen in a long time.

Check out a photo gallery by Island Packet photographer Sarah Welliver.

'Steel Magnolias" the off-Broadway comedy hit that offers audiences a fly-on-the-wall peek at the inner sanctum of a small town beauty shop, opens Feb. 4 at the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina.

It's hard to remember, but there was a time when comedy had to flourish on TV before Comedy Central, before "Chappelle's Show" and crank-calling puppets and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's nightly sanity checks.

But if you're going to thank someone for helping end the tyranny of network sitcoms, comedian Tom Rhodes, who is helping re-open the Hilton Head Comedy Club starting Feb. 3, is as good a person as any.