NORTH PALM BEACH – It’s an hour before Friday’s performance, and Greg Hahn is experiencing a flashback.
Seated behind a partition that’s serving as a surprisingly effective delineator between the show room and the green room, Hahn launches into a story about his gig in Jensen Beach two nights prior.
“A guy in the front row had a parrot,” Hahn said in amazement. “For Real. The guy was drunk and screaming. And his parrot was the same.”
A talkative wife, a screaming baby and a dog joined the man and bird at the table.
Hahn shakes his head and says he didn’t mind the dog.
Almost immediately Hahn scans Friday night’s audience and his eyes open wide again.
“There’s a guy with a dog in the front row,” Hahn says.
He quickly recognizes the dog as Nico, show producer Jen Hellman’s Chihuahua. Nico attended Hahn’s November show at Arturo’s Ristorante in Boca Raton.
“That dog’s seen one of my shows before,” Hahn says. “That dogs going to be bored out of its mind.”
Nico was his usual well behaved self during Friday night’s Lettuce Laugh show at the Farmer’s Table in North Palm Beach, which benefited Hellman’s Comics Crushing Cancer charity. If he was bored, it didn’t show. While the dog might have been the only one in attendance that wasn’t howling in laughter, Nico certainly had plenty to keep his attention.
Hahn’s frenetic set, arms spastically flailing, is an attention grabber. The visual perfectly compliments Hahn’s bizarre imagination.
If only a portion of Hahn’s dating ideas are true, it’s not difficult to understand why he’s single.
One COVID joke nimbly, albeit non-subtly. includes an aardvark. (No, sadly, it’s not a live aardvark.)
And while that joke lands, it’s Hahn’s lone COVID reference of the night. He’s purposely scaling back those jokes.
“I think people are even tired of COVID jokes by now,” Hahn says. “It’s old. People don’t even want to think about it. They don’t even want to hear the word.”
A resident of Los Angeles for the past couple decades, Hahn spent much of the COVID pandemic with his bird friends.
He take’s pride in his hummingbird feeder, which he fills with the proven 4:1 mixture of water to sugar.
“I know the birds,” Hahn says. “They are good.”
Hahn is back in South Florida this week for several more shows. On Saturday night he’s headlining at the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce. Casey Peruski, Friday night’s feature comic, produces and hosts that show.
On Monday Hahn headlines at the Tin Roof in Delray Beach. Nik Macik, the host for Friday’s show, produces that Atlantic Ave. show.
If Hahn looks at home in Florida it’s probably because he grew up here. He returns frequently to visit family.
Recent trips to South Florida have Hahn at least considering leaving L. A. and moving back to the grounds he once haunted in high school. The slow launch to his acting career isn’t anchoring Hahn to Hollywood.
“I keep looking at the TV, watching TV shows, going to movies, watching movies – I don’t see me,” Hahn says. “So I might as well move back to Florida.”
How serious Hahn is about Florida – it’s almost always difficult to get true read on Hahn’s visions – and how many years it will take to commit to such a move remains to be seen.
But even with all the dogs, parrots, screaming men and babies, Hahn still clearly has an affinity for the Sunshine State.
“Florida’s cool,” Hahn says, perhaps already considering how to work a manatee feeder into his act.
