I apologize in advance if this turns into spluttering gibberish. I'm writing it in the dizzy afterglow of the most insane spinning class in the history of yuppie sports clubs. New teacher today, some dude straight out of the Parris Island school of personal training. Think I'm exaggerating? God's truth: he had us work out to music from The Deer Hunter.

I had it coming.

If you measured this weekend's madness strictly by caloric intake, you would be under the impression that it was Roman in its excess. You would be right.

As is always the case, I started out with only pure and noble intentions. Get to Hyannis early to beat the traffic, work on some material for this week's shows in my hotel room, eat a calzone and do the show. Strictly professional, dig? One hiccup: I had to go to PIXY 103 at 5:00 to do a quick radio spot. What could possibly go wrong?

Two things: this impish little disc jockey and the fact that the station's doing a promotion with a local liquor store and has a fridge full of free beer in the studio. A 20-minute radio spot quickly degenerated into two hours of a live, on-air frat party. As part of the promotion, talent is encouraged to imbibe over the airwaves, and who am I to argue with company policy? I would not say I got drunk, but I was definitely toasty, and remained so even when Bruiser's shift ended and he dragged me to some Mexican joint named Acapulco's for margaritas and Tecates. That's where we met his drinking buddies, Big Mike and a couple of diabolic Texans who can really only be described as rootin'-tootin' and who would appear later in the night, during the show, with open wallets and mischief in their minds.

Thank you, Jesus, for Acapulco's delicious and (more importantly) highly absorbent enchiladas Jaliscos. A plate full of Tex-Mex glory left me energized and coherent enough to make it to the show just in time to hang up my posters, put up my CD display, and hit the bar for a Budweiser or two before my set.

I settled in to watch my feature act do an unconscionable amount of crowdwork of the most high-energy kind. True Comedy Fact: opening acts should stick to material when possible, for any number of reasons, most importantly because it is their job to warm the crowd up, not rile them up and make the Drunk Headliner's job that much harder.

But this particular cat violates that rule on a regular basis, and on Saturday, he left me a double-helping of chaos as a wasted stripper flashed her (spectacular) tits at him, per his begging and pleading, right before it was my turn to go up. The crowd was worked up, but the stripper was bananas, and she had every intention of heading right back to the Attention Trough on my watch.

I wasn't having it, though.

"Shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down!" I barked, to the audience's glee.

"I've got a light in my face and a lazy right eye and I can't see your titties anyway. So shut it!"

The place went nuts. She started hollering something at me. Nuh-uh, toots.

"No!" I yelled. "No talking! You are not for talking. You have tits, I have a degree. I will win talking!"

That's when it really busted loose, and I spent the next forty minutes or so riding a bucking bronco of an audience. The stripper got tossed, some other chicks walked out, but the rest of rabid maniacs in the club ate it up and only encouraged my bad behavior. Most of them had heard me boozing it up on PIXY and were there to see, well, pretty much exactly what they saw.

Then the Rootin' Tootin' Texans showed up and started sending me shots of Wild Turkey. They have my first album and knew the protocol. Only two made it past the club manager's defenses, but that was more than enough. I closed surprisingly strong and sold more CDs in one sitting than I ever did before. I figure the crowd was rewarding me for endurance more than funny, but their money will still spend the same. Of course, then I met a fella who didn't have any cash, and since I was definitely too boozy to work my credit card machine, we worked out a whiskey-for-CD payment plan that seemed to suit everyone nicely.

I enjoyed the denoument of the night's fun drinking with this fella, his ridiculously good-looking fiance, and two cool women who may or may not have been a couple, but who were Irish (from Ireland) and who insisted on a brisk pace of consumption. Not wanting to appear an ugly American, I went along with their wishes. At some point, I did an ad hoc wedding ceremony for the good-looking couple with the Irish chicks as witnesses, and then we all went to another bar for the reception.

One more pop, then a quick stumble back to the ol' Radisson, and it was 8 hours of brain-damaged unconciousness, a large black Dunkins coffee, a 2-hour drive home, and a weekend of soul-searching. I'm not crazy about what I found there, but that's the sort of thing I'll worry about on my summer hiatus. Right now, I'm just glad to be alive.