DAILY DIRT: What do you do when the crowd does not laugh?

Daily Dirt for Wednesday, March 12, 2025

For the record, I’ve never received a Botox injection … Welcome to today’s three thoughts that make up Vol. 1,226 of The Daily Dirt.

1. Just when you think you’ve heard everything …

A world-famous comedy club has banned people with Botox — for a hilarious reason, according to a March 5 report in The New York Post.

The Top Secret Comedy Club in London has prohibited attendees from sitting down to enjoy the show if their faces are “frozen” from Botox injections.

Club officials have started conducting “expression tests,” along with standard ID checks, at the front door to guarantee everyone who enters can depict how funny — or not funny — they find a joke. The “tests” were implemented after comics repeatedly complained of looking into an audience of straight faces after telling their best jokes.

Botox is the brand name of the most popular neurotoxin injection, which temporarily disrupts the nerves from communicating with the muscle, which prevents it from contracting, often reducing the intensity of facial expressions. While this may have you looking younger, it won’t help you get into Top Secret Comedy Club.

Obviously, this is not a laughing matter.

2. Did you know (Part 300)

• That if a tomato is a fruit, which it technically is, does that make ketchup a smoothie?
• That Elvis Presley once received a “C” in music while in junior high school.
• That Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia.
• That a cow produces around 200,000 glasses of milk in its lifetime.
• That actor Tony Danza released a few albums in the early 2000s, containing “classic standards”. There are reportedly plenty of copIes remaining.

3. Back to the “two-hit wonders”.

Today it’s the 1980s, Here are my top five groups/individuals whose only claim to fame were the following songs:

1. “Pretty Ballerina” and “Walk Away Renee,” by the Left Banke: Lead singer Steven Martin Caro died in 2020 at age 71. Caro was just 16 when the group hit the bigtime … and then disappeared two years later. The Left Banke was classified as “baroque,” combining a Beatles-style of vocal arrangements, accented by instruments more familiar to chamber music. For the record, I bought both of these .45s as a wee lad. Also for the record, the Four Tops had monster hit with their own version of “Walk Away Renee”.

2. “The Pied Piper” and “You Were On My Mind,” by Crispian St. Peters: “The Pied Piper” was truly one of the great 1960s records and arguably my first “favorite song”.. St. Peters died in 2010, also at age 71. His real name was Robin Peter Smith.

3. “Red Rubber Ball” and “Turn Down Day,” by the Cyrkle: These guys were once the opening act for the Beatles in 1966. “Red Rubber Ball” was the better of their two hit songs. The Cyrkle was originally known as the Rhondells.

4. “Society’s Child” and “At Seventeen,” by Janis Ian: She and Billy Preston were the musical guests on the first episode of “Saturday Night Live” way back in 1975. Janis is still with us at age 73.

5. “Hitchin’ A Ride” and “Early In The Morning,” by Vanity Fare: The group is still performing today. Not band for a band that has not had a hit since 1969.

Next: The 1980s.

Steve Thought O’ The Day — Did you ever stop and think that “fat” chance “slim” chance mean the same thing?

Steve Eighinger writes daily for Muddy River News. While he hasn’t had Botox, he has a tummy tuck scheduled for next week.