Standing Up for Himself

Comments (0) By Paul M. Davis Wednesday, May 25 2011

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Dave Foley has had many high-profile gigs during his 25 year comedy career — Kids in the Hall member, NewsRadio star, Celebrity Poker Showdown host (ahem) — but standup comedy is not among them. He clocked in a year working as a standup comic in the mid-1980s, but once he formed the Kids in the Hall with Kevin McDonald, he abandoned the red-bricked walls of comedy clubs for stuffed brassieres and cult television fame as a member of the legendary crossdressing comedy troupe. Decades later, Foley is back on the standup circuit. Why the return? Put simply, he needs the dough. As he confided to Marc Maron during an episode of the comedian’s WTF with Marc Maron podcast, Foley has fallen far behind on his child support payments, which are based on his income during his years as a well-paid NewsRadio star. The past decade hasn’t proved as lucrative, forcing him to take just about any gig available to try to keep up with the payments, which exceed $10,000 if you believe, well, a lot of different sources. If you’ve ever wondered why Foley agreed to full-frontal nudity in Uwe Boll’s execrable Postal, that’s probably why. Returning to standup is a far more dignified way to pay the bills. But don’t go out of a sense of charity. Standup comedy may not be his primary vocation, but his restrained intensity and dark sense of humor is as well suited to the comedy club as it is to the subversive surrealism of the Kids in the Hall.
Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Starts: June 9. Continues through June 11, 2011