I don't usually go to comedy clubs. Not because I don't like stand-up comedy or improv -- I do, and there are many good and some great stand-up comics out there. (I did stand-up once at the San Francisco Improv...but that's a story for another time.) And Bill-the-Honeybear and I spent one fine evening at the Toronto branch of The Second City. But I don't normally seek out entertainment at comedy clubs.

But Bill-the-Honeybear got free admission to The Stress Factory, the comedy club in downtown New Brunswick, so last night off we went. The place serves food, which was all right but not whoopie-wow. The comedians were, shall we say, uneven -- of the three we saw, each had good spots in his act, but not consistently good acts. So it would have been an OK, average experience.

Except for the audience. Not all the audience, mind you -- most of them, like us, were interested in hearing what the comics had to say, and there was some good comic-audience interaction. But seated behind us was a group of around 20-25 people, all of whom worked for the local branch of the New York Health Club. Apparently they thought they were at home, watching Comedy Central, because each of the comics (and the emcee) had to ask them to keep quiet multiple times during the evening. It wasn't that they were talking, or talking constantly; it was that they were TALKING LOUDLY AND CONSTANTLY as though it was their God-given right to be disruptive drunks who would have probably had a better time at a private orgy, had it not been that this was some sort of company holiday event.

Cell phones going off during a show are an annoyance, but at least the people with the phones make the pretense of being embarrassed. These people had no embarrassment in them at all. If I had been the club manager, I would have thrown them out and instructed the reservation staff to refuse any future requests from NYHC to hold events there. The comics were all used to handling unruly audience members (although not, I'd bet, in such large numbers). This audience member was not used to handling them.

This had been my first visit to The Stress Factory. It was also my last, for a good long time.