Best Medicine with Eric Brown: Comedians on Halloween, Helene and humor amid horrific disaster

Normally this column involves me making jokes with fellow local comedians about traffic on Patton Avenue, weird breweries — that sort of thing. But the fact is there’s no way to not talk about the impact Tropical Storm Helene has had on our community. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Like everyone in Asheville, life is totally different for me now. Fortunately, I didn’t lose anyone or anything in the storm. I keep thinking I’ve been incredibly lucky, but I don’t really feel lucky. I read somewhere that what I’m feeling is called survivor’s guilt, but in fairness, that was from an Instagram story I only looked at for a second, and I wasn’t wearing my glasses when I saw it. I was going to look more into it later, but lately my schedule has been filled with crying and dissociating while I play dumb games on my phone.

Anyway … how am I doing on this comedy column, everyone? It’s a laugh riot, right?

My whole life I’ve used comedy as a defense mechanism to take power away from tragedies, but Helene is a tough one to make funny. We all lost so much, but I guess picking frogs out of buckets of creek water so you can flush your toilet is kind of funny. It’s like having the Little Rascals as your plumber. (Note: The fact that I thought the Little Rascals was a timely reference tells you just how shaken up I am post-Helene. We survived a storm so bad it pushed my already dated references back another 40 years. At this rate, by the time I’m 80, I’m going to have very funny jokes about Y2K and how bad it hurts when you hit your shin with a Razor Scooter.)

They say tragedy + time = comedy, but unfortunately, there hasn’t been much time. It feels like it’s been years, though it’s only been weeks. Hours seem to stretch on forever, which is kind of similar to my experience watching that new Joker movie (more on this later).

OK, on with the show. I’ve gathered some of the funniest people I know — Marlene Thompson, Tim Hearn and Nora Tramm — who personally helped me weather the storm. I don’t know if we have the words to make any of this funny, but we’re going to try.

Eric: Let us start with the question that everyone is asking everybody these days, how are you holding up after the storm? I would also like to know how you are feeling about comedy these days, especially here in Asheville?

Nora: I just got the internet back on at my house after 3 1/2 weeks — shout out to Spectrum, which approached this crisis like that one guy in a high school group project: procrastinating until the last possible moment and then claiming they were held back by the other kids (NCDOT and Duke Energy), who in reality did most of the work. So, I’m just now getting online and catching up with all the discourse. And frankly? I’m disappointed by the quality of the misinformation that has been circulating. FEMA is going to take your land — really? As unfounded rumors go, that one is tired, unoriginal and lacking in local flare.

So, I’m going to take this space to pitch some better misinformation that I want y’all to start spreading instead. Ready?

• My neighbor flushed with water from Beaver Lake and now his toilet has rabies.
• I heard from my mom’s gardener that everyone’s favorite assistant city manager, Ben Woody, is actually a large language model AI trained on AVL Watchdog exposés, brewery tour scripts and the owner’s manual for a 90-gallon aquarium tank filter.
• My friend said she read on the internet that Spectrum actually employs at least one human being in its customer service department. (Remember, this is misinformation. The more implausible and outlandish, the better.)

Marlene: Like many of us, my feelings have been coming in waves. I feel hopeful as I see progress being made on broken infrastructure and the distribution of water. I see a city coming together as a community to help each other in some of the darkest times in our lives. My optimism is then dashed with every story I hear about folks who have lost their entire livelihood. Whether it’s the survivor’s guilt that’s been eating away at me — as it has been for many of us — or the dose of reality that smacks me in the head when we see another favorite spot has been decimated, another small business lost, another house swept away by flooding. My house is fine. My life wasn’t destroyed. We were displaced for a little while and were able to stay with friends. I can still call Asheville home. That’s not the case for many people in WNC right now. Their hopes are gone with a million different microdecisions they must make in order to survive — from where to get food to where to take a shower. The effects of Helene are rewiring our brains in real time.

All of that said, am I still funny? Sure. Will I cry the next time I’m onstage? Who’s to say? (I am, and I say, “Highly likely!”)

Tim: Okaaaayyyy, how do I feel after this terrible hurricane that left all of our lives in chaos and dissaraayyyyy?

Honestly, I probably won’t know the answer to that for a while. I know I feel lucky to be alive and grateful for the people around me. I feel very sad for our community and those who have it the worst. I can’t help but be thankful for my life and for the wonderful mountains we call home. Don’t get me wrong, the entire experience has been truly Traumatic (Big T trauma), but I have seen really wonderful parts of humanity. I’ve seen ALL of WNC taking care of each other and spreading love, resources and attention. That has been a breath of fresh air and incredible to be witness to and take part in. I also saw my roommate not shower for a week — different but still coooool.

I heard some great hurricane jokes, too. I think we will all probably have some funny jokes and experiences from the last seven months. … Wait, how long has it been?

Eric: I guess as far as comedy goes, there really isn’t much right now. The 2024 Asheville Improv Festival was canceled, which was a huge blow to the improv community and myself. A lot of venues for comedy, which were already scarce, are also closed or just gone. That being said, my friends in the comedy scene, including everyone in this week’s column, are a lot of what has kept me going. Knowing that we are all still here and lifting each other up until we can all get onstage again has kept me from really spiraling into the dark. I’m excited to see what we all build together now. I’m truly optimistic that Asheville and its comedy scene will emerge stronger than ever. I can’t wait to be back onstage with you all, and I’d also like to apologize to my therapist for all the jokes these last few sessions. I haven’t had an audience in a month, and you shouldn’t have had to hear so many first-draft jokes.

Eric: Finding the humor in hard things is also what keeps me going, or at least that’s what my therapist says. On that note, do you have any funny stories that happened during the storm or in the immediate aftermath?

Marlene: I’m not sure if it’s funny or just gross, but I’m going to tell it anyway. For about two days after the storm, my house had running water. Probably from our water heater, but who knows? I was doing my business in our toilet like normal because toilets are a modern-day convenience and we live in the modern day. Well, I did my you-can-guess-which-kind-of business after the water stopped flowing out of my faucets, and I had no way to flush the toilet. My mind was functioning on rote memory, and I never stopped to think that I couldn’t flush my toilet without running water. We had stocked up on drinking water, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to use that to flush waste. But what if you used liquid waste to flush solid waste? That’s right, friends. I peed in a plastic cup and dumped it in the top of my toilet until I had enough pee to flush the solid waste. I’m not proud of it but I am. Kinda.

Tim: I just want to give a shout-out to the awesome names of people in the wonderful town of Hot Springs, N.C.! We did some volunteer work up there, and basically everyone we met had trail names. I actually met a guy who was named Trale. (Shout-out to Trale!)

Our first day we met a guy named Ya-Ya, who sent us to the Spring Creek Tavern to meet Cowboy and the owner of the tavern, Tim. I mean, what are the odds? Two Tims in North Carolina? We locked eyes and immediately began a duel in the street, where a used Tyvek suit blew across our battleground like the tumbleweeds of old. … I’m sorry, what was the question? I believe I have what the doctors call “Hurricane Brain.”

Also! There was a wonderfully cheerful man named David, who has had the Spring Creek Hotel in his family for generations. Almost every day I saw him wear a hat that said, “This actually is my first rodeo.” Made me smile every time.

So, a big shout-out to the community of Hot Springs and all the new friends we have made. Please continue to contribute and donate to the businesses and towns impacted by this hurricane, they need it and they deserve it.

Nora: I’ve spent post-Helene either cutting trees into sticks and then putting sticks into piles, or hunkering down with my cats, trying to stay out of people’s way. Not exactly story material, so you’ll have to settle for a few anecdotes.

• Whenever anyone asks the guy at the New Bridge Baptist Church FEMA water truck if the water is potable, his answer is always, “It’s from Louisiana!” That seems unrelated to what I asked, but I felt like I would be a choosing beggar if I pestered him with follow-ups, so I’ve just been drinking it and hoping for the best.
• The number of people willing to loudly announce that they’re from Florida early in your acquaintance has gone way up lately. Are we cool with Floridians now? How long is that going to last?
• I’ve learned that sometimes it’s better for everyone involved if you just accept help because helping is how a lot of us are coping. Sure, you may not need a jar of peanut butter, but that person needs to give you that jar of peanut butter. When you think about it, you’re really the hero of that exchange. In unrelated news, I ended up with an extra jar of creamy peanut butter that somebody can have, just HMU on Insta. Nothing wrong with it, I just prefer crunchy.

Eric: So, we were lucky and sheltered out of town for two weeks. The storm was on Thursday, and we drove out the middle of Sunday. It was a stressful time being crammed in a tiny hotel room in Hickory with my girlfriend as well as a dog and a cat who had never met before. I never experienced the phrase “fighting like cats and dogs” so directly before. I have a really funny story about trying to cry silently in the hotel bathroom so I wouldn’t wake my girlfriend, but the cat and dog wouldn’t stop trying to get in the bathroom. Trust me, it’s very funny.

Another story: My girlfriend works remote, so I decided to get out of her hair and see the movie Megalopolis. By all accounts, I’d heard it was an awful movie, but it was at least something to do. But as I was leaving the hotel, I was hit with a debilitating bout of food poisoning. Frankly, I’m probably to blame for ordering Indian food in Hickory. (I’d also like to issue an apology to that particular bathroom in Hickory.) Needless to say, I didn’t make it to Megalopolis.

At the end of that first week, we went to stay in Charlotte, and I decided to try to see the movie again. I’m on Letterboxd (follow me there at EricJBrown), which is a movie review social networking site for movie nerds like me, so on the drive over to the theater, I was thinking of joke reviews for this allegedly awful movie. As I thought of the review — “Seeing Megalopolis was worse than surviving Helene” — the low-tire light came on in the car. I stopped to deal with that. In that moment, I thought that both my body and the universe were trying to keep me from seeing this movie. But at that point, I had bought a ticket for this film twice with my rapidly dwindling money. I was seeing Megalopolis one way or another.

I get into the movie and I am absolutely staggered with how insane it is. None of the movie makes any sense. It is so pretentious and somehow none of the plot points line up or even seem to matter. At one point Jon Voight says to a person, “Hey! Look at my boner!” It is unbelievably bad. And I loved it. Megalopolis was definitely not worse than surviving Helene. I couldn’t believe I had even thought of such a crass thing to say about a movie I had a really fun time watching, and I felt ashamed for even thinking that.

Now, Joker: Folie á Deux, on the other hand — THAT’S a movie that was worse than surviving Helene. I saw that a few days later with Tim, and it was even bleaker and more unpleasant than making Kraft Mac & Cheese on a camp stove in the dark during a natural disaster and wishing you had cell service so you could find out if your friends and family are all alive. Trust me, I did both over the last couple of weeks, and Joker was worse.

Eric: Despite the storm, we can’t lose Halloween. What are your Halloween plans? What is your costume this year?

Tim: Well, my birthday is on Nov. 1, so this Halloween I’ll be turning 47!  Wait, what month is it? What’s my age again? This “Hurricane Brain” is no joke.

Anyway, I’m going to be a ghost this year. You won’t see me anywhere, but you’ll wonder if I’m still here. Hopefully, when you think of me you’ll think of me as Casper the Friendly Ghost or even Patrick Swayze the Sexy Ghost — but never a scary ghost. I also would like to clarify that although I will be going as a ghost, I do not condone “ghosting” as a form of communication, unless of course … (smoke explodes from the floor) that person be cray. (Tim vanishes from the room, children clap, mothers cry, curtains fall.)

Marlene: I do love Halloween very much. All things spooky and macabre make this my favorite time of year. The chill in the air gives me life. Not sure what my plans are yet for the actual day, but if there’s any parties going on where there are working toilets, let a girl know. My costume this year will be a mix of ease and millennial core — I’ve got a bright green coat and some construction paper. I’ll cut out the letters to spell “BRAT” and be the Charli XCX hit album cover. In my head, it’s BRAT fall because why not? Unless I change my mind and do something completely different. Nora, do you still have my hot dog costume?

Nora: Marlene, that costume (which was put to good use in Nemesis Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet this past summer) is very clearly a hot dog, not a BRATwurst. I will get it back to you, but please be advised that during my time with it, I sweated in it a lot.

As far as my Halloween plans this year, I am a remote worker, and my colleagues are mostly outside the region, so I’ve had to break out my costume early. That’s right, this year I’m going as “someone who is not five seconds away from either screaming, crying, taking a daylong nap or some unholy combination of all three.” Now, they don’t sell emotional stability at Spirit Halloween (and even if they did, the f*cking storm took that away from us, too), so this is a custom, bespoke costume that I MacGyver’d up out of a few unconventional components:

• A shower where I don’t wash my face.
• An extensive trial-and-error study of which anecdotes are not appropriate in a business-casual “how are you today” conversation.
• Long, frequent huffs of the fur on the back of my cats’ necks.

You know, normal sh*t. I think I’m pulling it off.

Eric: Halloween is my favorite holiday, and generally the fall is my favorite time of year. Clearly, the storm has put a gigantic looming shadow over all that this year, and not even a fun and spooky looming shadow. I’m still not willing to give up on Halloween. Halloween has been in my blood my whole life. I’ve written and performed a “Monster Mash” parody. I currently have a framed portrait of Vincent Price and two different Frankensteins hanging in my living room. When I was a kid, I was “the kid who was way too into monsters,” and now that’s just everyone it seems. (Am I bitter about it? Of course, I am!)

It feels weird to be thinking about monsters and horror in the wake of the storm. I don’t really know how to deal with Helene. Monsters I can deal with. I could theoretically escape a monster. I couldn’t escape the storm. Take Frankenstein for example. He’s slow and plodding and afraid of fire. That’s an easy one. Back up, kick him hard in the knee and set him on fire as he goes down. I couldn’t do that with Helene. She had no knees to kick and was resistant to fire.

Same situation with werewolves. One silver bullet, and you’re done. I tried it on Helene, and it was completely ineffective. And since Helene isn’t a vampire, you can’t fend her off with a cross and a wooden stake, although I did try warding her off with garlic. It didn’t work, but for a couple of seconds, the wind did smell delicious.

With all that said, I’m not sure what my plans are. But there’s no way I’m not celebrating Halloween. I had planned to go to the Halloween thing at Dollywood, but that’s obviously out now.  This is where I put out a call to you, the reader. If you know of any killer Halloween parties, let me know.

I was initially thinking I would dress as Dracula. That was my favorite costume and monster as a kid, and I probably went as him four or five times. Then I thought I’d be a cowboy, but I kind of just dress like a cowboy all the time, so that’s out. I was thinking I might go a little more current, so maybe I’ll dress up as FEMA support money. I figure I’ll ask whoever invites me to a party about 60 questions, then I’ll never really contact them and ultimately just not show up with no explanation.