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By Mark Miller Special to The Business Times Laugh and the world laughs with you. Maybe. Own a comedy club and you struggle during a pandemic.  Perhaps no small businesses depend more on tightly packing large numbers of customers into small spaces and mightily attempting to provoke them to forcefully aspirate into the air than comedy clubs–a coronavirus’s fantasy come true.   So, The Business Times has checked in with Santa Barbara’s comedy club owners and comedy show producers to see what improvised routines in business strategy have stood up … Read more

SOURCE MANCHESTER, NH–Returning to work after seven days off, Derek Olson, 31, confessed Monday that his plan to use his weeklong vacation to straighten out his life yielded mixed results. “This was the week all the shit I’d been putting off for years–big and small–was going to get done,” said Olson, a data-entry operator at A.G. Edwards & Sons. “From getting Steve and Kim a gift for their wedding two months ago to going through all those boxes I’d left unpacked since moving here in … Read more

Legendary comedian Eddie Murphy revealed that he plans to return to stand-up comedy after the pandemic ends. According to CNN, the “Beverly Hills Cop” star appeared on Kevin Hart’s SiriusXM’s podcast “Comedy Gold Minds with Kevin Hart and said had it not been for Covid-19 restrictions, he would have already returned. “My plan was to do ‘Dolemite,’ ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ‘Coming 2 America,’ and then do stand up. And then the pandemic hit, and it shut the whole sh*t down,” he explained. “The whole time last year I would have been out working on my act, trying … Read more

A British Columbia boy is bringing smiles and laughs to his neighbourhood during the coronavirus pandemic. Every day, once all of his daily activities are done, six-year-old Callaghan McLaughlin sets up a joke stand outside his Saanich home. Mom Kelsea McLaughlin shared a sweet photo on her Instagram account of her son sitting at the stand on his opening day, April 14. The sign reads: “Drive-by walk-by joke stand.” “Please drive by and hear a joke from this kid,” she writes. Callaghan usually sells lemonade at this time of year, CNN reports. He and … Read more

SOURCE COLUMBUS, OH—Calling bankruptcy an “unfortunate reality” for many current small business owners, a new study published Wednesday by Ohio State University found that most restaurants fail within the first year of it becoming illegal to go to them. “It may sound harsh, but our research found that over 90% of restaurants close just a few months after being declared a high-risk environment where people are no longer allowed to frequent or dine,” said lead researcher Professor Cara Coleman, adding that while many bistros, cafes, … Read more