Firelands Winery presents State of Comedy

Featured comedian Aaron Foster is a native Chicagoan who spent his youth on both the north and south sides of the city, Aaron Foster later graduated from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana with a BA in Speech Communication. He is supplementing his comedy career through real estate. Aaron is presently a touring headliner for many concerts, colleges and clubs. He discovered his love for comedy as an employee of the nationally recognized- All Jokes Aside Comedy Club and has performed in as many as 45 of the 50 states as well as three international countries. Johnny Dam has been performing comedy ever since he could utter a sentence. As the resident class clown, he deprived his fellow students of any semblance of a public education all in the name of comedy. They still haven't thanked him. A native of Los Angeles, Johnny began his actual comedy career out of necessity in December of 1991 because he couldn't afford therapy. Since then he has toured the U.S., Canada, and traveled into war zones to entertain the troops. When asked if he did the latter out of some sense of patriotic pride, Johnny will simply say he wanted to finally serve those who serve his country, and he's pretty sure that had he actually enlisted in the military when he was 18, he'd be getting out of Leavenworth right about now. In 2004, Johnny began teaching stand-up comedy for the internationally famous Improv comedy clubs in Irvine and Ontario, California. His logic being, if he could keep just one person from having to get a day job, it would all be worthwhile. In September of 2006, Johnny released his first CD “The Painful Truth”, which, after months of harassing letters, a well-documented court case, and a strategically-placed ad between a pizza joint and a custom shoemaker in the PennySaver, was begrudgingly picked up by iTunes. In February of 2008, Johnny Dam left the stage to produce his own 2x award-winning politically funny Internet radio show – The DAMage Report, where he would bring together 4 comedians, 5 headlines, and two hours of open microphones. On the heels of such success, and his head filled with an artificially sweetened ego, he then created Porn Star Pundits, foolishly thinking that porn stars actually cared about politics. This venture ruined porn for Johnny, and he has not been the same since. In 2012, Johnny, his wife and two cats that disavow all knowledge of his existence, moved from Los Angeles, CA, to the small rural town of New Castle, PA, which incidentally has one of the highest unsolved murder rates in the country... which is a good thing since Johnny really isn't a detail oriented kind of person. In 2013, Johnny reformatted The DAMage Report into a 2-3 minute FCC-friendly satirical newscast that was instantly picked up by three different radio stations across the U.S. This format change was inevitable once he realized that, politically speaking, nothing ever gets better, only crazier. He has since gotten back to his roots and is performing comedy to appreciative audiences all across the nation. And in July of 2013, competing against 31 other comedians, Johnny took home the $500 first prize in an annual comedy contest in Ohio. Unfortunately, he cannot divulge the name of the contest until he has been cleared of all doping charges. But beware, Johnny's humor is brutally honest, and if asked to define comedy he will tell you that every joke has a victim, and the only thing funnier than the truth is the painful truth.