Lisa Denton and Barry CourterBARRY COURTER: Lisa, we can start off this week with laughter and end it with, well, dressing up in costumes. What could be better?
LISA DENTON: My evenings usually start with costumes and end in laughter, but I’m willing to mix things up. Go on.
BARRY: Josh Blue is at The Comedy Catch tonight only. He’s funny. He has cerebral palsy, as you know. I’m still laughing over his creating the “palsy punch” as a defense mechanism against bullies. “It’s effective,” he says, “because they don’t know where it’s coming from … and neither do I.”
LISA: He has a killer sense of humor. A lot of his jokes are about living with his disability, but he’s just generally funny and likable.
You know he won Season 4 of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing,” and Comedy Catch owner Michael Alfano has two more “LCS” alumni in the wings. Felipe Esparza, who won Season 7 in 2010, is there starting Thursday, and Joe Machi, a finalist on Season 8, follows the next weekend, March 5-8. Not a bad lineup.
Now where do the costumes come in?
BARRY: You can continue to wear one anytime you like, but specifically I wonder how many “Fifty Shades of Grey” costumes will be at ConNooga, which takes place at the Choo Choo this weekend. Of course, they’ll look very much like costumes worn there in the past, but now they have a new movie to attach them to.
LISA: I bet you’re right, and they wouldn’t look at all out of place. I heard that, when the film opened, theater managers were telling moviegoers not to bring any props, like rope or duct tape or what-have-you — like you might bring rice or rubber gloves to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
BARRY: Getting pelted with rice in a movie theater is one thing, but I have to believe getting clunked in the back of the head by a couple of D batteries would hurt.
And a relatively new event returns this weekend as well. Jazzanooga, which is actually several events stretched over several weeks designed to celebrate jazz, will present “Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog — The Life & Sounds of Big Mama Thornton” at The Camp House on Friday and Saturday. Thornton actually had a hit with “Hound Dog” three years before the King. Bet you didn’t know her other hit was “Ball ‘n’ Chain,” which Janis Joplin later turned into a bigger hit.
LISA: At least she got songwriting royalties from “Ball ‘n’ Chain.” Not only could she sing, but she taught herself to play drums and harmonica just by watching other musicians. Sounds like she was a force to be reckoned with. Local singer/ actress Azusa Dance will portray Thornton in the musical drama.
If you want more blues, you can catch Rory Block in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Patten Performances series Tuesday. She’s had an interesting life, including leaving home to travel and perform at age 15, which she chronicled in a 2010 autobiography, “When a Woman Gets the Blues.” Coming up, she met a lot of the old blues masters, and her recent releases have been tributes to them — Robert Johnson, Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, the Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James.
BARRY: Her Robert Johnson tribute stuff is really good. Well, all her stuff is good, but I like that especially.
LISA: Rolling Stone called her 1981 album, “High Heeled Blues,” “some of the most singular and affecting country blues anyone — man or woman, black or white, old or young — has cut in recent years.” And she’s still going strong.
Get event details every Thursday in ChattanoogaNow or online anytime at www.ChattanoogaNow.com.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354. Contact Lisa Denton at ldenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6281.