"He wears the basketball jersey and jumps around on stage, and I'm the
exact opposite," Thomas said. "He just hit 40, so I started asking
him 'how much longer are you going to keep this up, old man?'" Little did
Thomas know, he and the Fryman, an ex-Marine, would be working
together again in Grand Island on May 16 and 17. The show will take place at
the Liederkranz and is a benefit for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Seriously, no animosity exists between the two, but they do have chemistry.
The Fryman is sharp with the one-liners and improvises freely with the
audience. Thomas, while also quick-witted, is more of a set-'em-up, knock-'em-down
kind of guy. Together, they compliment each other well, Thomas said and, if nothing else,
will make for a very interesting and funny show. "When I'm up there you'll have to follow more while he has more
one-liners," Thomas said. "We'll match each other laugh for laugh,
but you won't have to watch the same style of stand-up for an hour and a
half." Thomas, a finalist in the HBO National Talent Search for the US Comedy Arts
Festival in Aspen in 1999, got his start on the stage after going to an open
mic night to give a friend moral support.
Now, he says, after seven years on the job, he's convinced there's nothing
else he'd rather be doing -- or could be doing for that matter.
"I'm spoiled for other workplaces," he said. "I get up at
noon, I smart off all the time. They'd fire me before I was there a
week."
The Fryman also has a fairly accomplished resume. One bit he's proud of,
however, is the completion of a recent USO tour, done before the war with Iraq
got under way. While he said he took his patriotic duty very seriously, the
USO audiences were some of the best he'd every played for.
"They were starved for entertainment so they were laughing at
everything," Fry said. "They responded great, no matter what angle I
came at them with. It was very cool to play for them right before they went
off."
Fryman said the shows he put on involve the audience, and on good nights
create a party atmosphere through his energy on stage. His energy and his
show, the Keflavik, Iceland native said, are very much part of who he is and
he enjoys sharing that with the audience.
"I don't know how much control I have in molding it," he said.
"It comes from within. It's something you can't become, it's something
you are." A lot of the same principles apply in Thomas' comedy, he said, especially
when it comes to beliefs and politics, although he is by no means a political
comic. It's more about having a personality, he said, and letting that
personality come through on stage.
"I don't do a lot of stuff about myself but a lot of my stuff comes
out in my act," the Chicago native said. "You get a good idea of who
I am. What I like about the Heartland is I relate to the way of life a lot. I
can really let it rip."