North of the Border, South of the Sanity: A Costa Rican Comedy Report
Now that the dust has settled on my month in Costa Rica and my February 28th homecoming show at the Black Walnut, I’ve had a chance to process a trip that felt less like a vacation and more like a high-stakes sociological study. I spent my weeks in Coco and Ocotal performing for a cast of characters so polarized they made a magnet look indecisive.
The Tribes of the Tropics
In one corner, I had what I affectionately called the "Drunk Texans." These were my people—oil field guys and ranchers with wives who don’t take any nonsense. They were loud, they were fun, and they were ready for a laugh.
In the other corner was my lovable neighbor from Colorado, who wasn’t certain she could survive an evening with the Texans—even though they seemed to share similar personal values. She was so far to the left that she seemed to live in a different reality. When I mentioned the stock market had been doing exceptionally well over the long haul, she didn’t just disagree; she looked at me like I’d suggested we stop recycling. As a retired Wall Street "anal-yst," I spent decades looking at spreadsheets, but I’ve never seen someone treat a growing retirement fund like a sign of the apocalypse just because of who is in the White House. Even with the recent "March Madness" dip, the data shows a resilient trend—but to her and many others, a rising tide only matters if the right person is at the helm of the boat. Yet, she was a tremendous supporter of me and my comedy, and I realized that at its core, good comedy speaks to the contradictions we carry within ourselves.
The Borderline Delusional
The real prize, however, went to a group of Canadians. My overall experience with them was relaxed and fun—they were genuinely some of the nicest people I met—but one woman in particular was the "black swan" of the group.
She spent a good portion of her afternoon lecturing me, convinced that the moment she touches down in the United States, her cell phone will be seized and her every movement tracked. She was so insistent that she is staying in Canada and visiting with her dying sister over the phone rather than risk a trip to Ohio.
As an "anal-yst," the math of her paranoia simply didn't add up. I wanted to ask her: “Ma’am, do you have a Starbucks app? A GPS? A credit card?” The reality is that we are tracked with every breath we take. If the government—or more likely, a marketing firm in Omaha—wants to know where she is, they don't need a tactical raid on her iPhone. They just need to check her Netflix history.
Yet, here she was, standing in the middle of a jungle, terrified of a bored border agent while her Fitbit was busy broadcasting her heart rate to a server in the cloud. When I told the Texans about her later, they didn’t offer a sympathetic ear. They were still struggling with my last name—was it Is-it? Izatt? Finally, one of them settled on a "Lone Star" solution: "Mr. I-zutt, you should’ve just worn a hat that said 'Canada: Future fifty-fist state.' That would’ve given her something real to worry about."
It was at that moment I realized that in this tropical melting pot, everyone was equally baffled by everyone else. The Coloradoan couldn't fathom the Texans, the Texans were bewildered by the Canadian, and the Canadian was so adamant that her frustration with the U.S. was more important than visiting her very ill sister that she was willing to settle for Zoom. It seems everyone is just baffled by everyone else's reality!
The "Coco" Freeze
The comedy road isn't always smooth. One night in Coco, I stepped up to the mic and... the system crashed. Not the sound system—my internal one. I hit a wall, my lines evaporated, and I stood there in the humid jungle air in a state of total cognitive lockout.
The audience thought it was part of my routine when I proclaimed, “I can’t remember what I want to say.” But the host realized I had a legitimate brain freeze and said, “Time’s up.” It’s a humbling thing to go from being a top-ranked Wall Street financial analyst at firms like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns (both bankrupt now—LOL) to being outwitted by a silent microphone in Guanacaste. But whenever you perform, you accept the risk of embarrassment. Besides, what will any of this matter 10 years from now, or even five minutes from now?
The “Mahi Mahi” and Grand Finale
A few nights later in Ocotal, everything clicked. The timing was back, and even the skeptical expats were leaning in. All of that—the irrational lectures, the political eye-rolling, and the humidity-induced mental blocks - was just the dress rehearsal.
Because at the end of the day, regardless of the arguments or the delusions, everyone eventually puts down the phone, stops the lecturing, and goes out to find a nice 'typical' Costa Rican dinner. Whether we're eating together or at separate tables, we’re all chasing the same fresh Mahi Mahi caught from the sea that morning. It’s a metaphor for all of us: we spend our lives getting emotional and upset, thinking the world is collapsing over politics or religion or whether we should own an iPhone or Android, but we all still have to eat and can hopefully enjoy the dinner.
The true grand finale happened on February 28th at the Black Walnut back in Texas. The room was packed, the timing was back, and after a month of navigating the 'borderline delusional' world of travel, it felt good to be back with an audience that knows the difference between a real threat and a punchline. I wasn't just an “anal-yst” anymore—I was finally home."
