Comedy performance at Foothills to benefit veterans

Mar. 29—Life is full of unexpected events, according to comedian Mike Bova.

Bova, of Utica, came to Oneonta on Monday to promote his comedy show, scheduled for Saturday, April 2 at 8 p.m., at Foothills Performing Arts and Civic Center.

The comedy shows generally benefit local veterans' organizations. Bova said he plans to donate up to $500 from Saturday's show to American Legion Post 259 in Oneonta.

"We're always looking out for the veterans. Those are our heroes that kind of tend to get forgotten a little bit," Bova said. He said he is not a veteran, although his father, brother and three other family members are. He said he wanted to be a combat medic until shortly before enlisting, when he finally realized it meant he'd be in danger. "They are some of the bravest people in the world," he said. "We don't want to forget them, ever."

Bova drove through a morning snowstorm to do an interview on a radio station in Oneonta. The interview was great, he said, but when he came out to Chestnut Street, he found his rear right tire was completely flat.

That is why people need comedy, he said: "Everybody needs to laugh." After waiting three hours for a tow truck, he said, he started a betting pool: how long would it take him to get home to Utica?

"There's just so much doom and gloom that people need to laugh. ... Comedy is an escape from reality. And we just need to escape for an hour and a half with our show," he said. It beats spending too much time worrying about the COVID pandemic, two years of quarantine, new variants, Ukraine, Russia, "deaths and just depressing stuff, man."

He said he thinks it's healthy to put aside "everything that's going on in your mind and just laugh. And then you can pick your problems back up after the show," if you want.

The show features observational comedy from Bova and fellow comedian Ern Galano, talking about "life, kids and weed," and a series of parody songs they perform together. Bova described the humor as "edgy," but said the first hour of the Oneonta show will be family-friendly. The comedians are having the show filmed to create an edited half-hour show that they plan to submit to Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and other video streaming services.

It's not easy to be a comedian during a plague, Bova said. He and Galano had 60 shows scheduled during 2020 and ended up doing five of them. Now they are trying to return to touring full-time.

He's found large regional differences in audience response to COVID: in some towns, people have cocooned themselves, while other areas are sick of cabin fever, and "people are just hungry for comedy, they want to get out."

Tickets for the show are $20 in advance from www.foothillspac.org or $30 at the door.

Mike Forster Rothbart, staff writer, can be reached at mforsterrothbart@thedailystar.com or 607-441-7213. Follow him at @DS_MikeFR on Twitter.

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