Seattle’s comedy community puts on shows to honor and support its best supporter: Carl Warmenhoven

Please put your hands together and your knees where we can see them to read this important message about an important man.

This is personal for me. I suppose every post is a little personal, as I decide it's worth spending my time and energy bringing you comedy news or analysis or even just something silly. But this is a bit more than that. Because it's about Carl Warmenhoven. If you have ever performed comedy in Seattle, then you likely have met, known, worked with and/or heard about Warmenhoven, the longtime assistant manager (or as he calls his job, Ass. Man.) at the Comedy Underground.

Warmenhoven not only has started shows there with his own witty charm, but also has been very supportive of the comedians there for, well, decades now. He's a funny man. He's a fine man. He's a decent man. I can't think of anything but nice things about this man, who was there at the very beginning of my own career in and with comedy.

Before there ever was an Improv Everywhere, Carl, Carl's son and I practiced our own public comedy on the unsuspecting visitors to Fremont's Summer Solstice celebration, urging people to sign our two petitions for the 1998 elections — one petition would amend Washington State's laws to remove the speed limit on light (why should the speed of light have limits, we still wonder?), while the other petition would end petitions. Indeed, we did get plenty of people to seriously sign our petition to end petitions.

Of course, if you mention me to Carl, the first thing he'll bring up instead is "Dancing Boy." But that's for another time and place.

This post, and this week, is about Carl Warmenhoven, and helping him recover from a stroke he suffered in March. Within two weeks, Carl got back onstage at the Underground. The flying Dutchman of comedy may have had one of his wings metaphorically clipped, but nothing could stop him from being just as witty and charming. Roll the clip!

This week, over the next three nights, the Seattle comedy community is gathering together for a series of shows to help Carl make up the costs of his rehab. There also will be separate auctions happening at the Underground during what's being billed as The Warmenhoven Festival of Warmth.

If you cannot make it to Seattle's Comedy Underground to help out, you also can donate money to help Carl Warmenhoven via this PayPal account.

Via the P-I, here are partial lineups for the shows tonight, Wednesday and Thursday, hosted by Travis Simmons, Peggy Platt and Rodney Sherwood.