Meet our new humor columnist: Poppy Champlin!

Have you ever laughed so hard that you can’t stop?  You want to stop, you keep saying, “Stop! Stop it my stomach hurts!” And after a while you don’t even know why you are laughing and then you are laughing at that. It is a phenomenon and one I’m quite sure is very good for you. You’re body derives so many benefits from a belly laugh.  Laughter is such a release. Don’t hold it in. If you hold it in, it looks like you are in pain.  I don’t understand why people do that. And how do people hold in a sneeze?  That is an explosion that is traveling at 100,000 miles per hour and they try to hold it in? Hold it back? Where does it go?  Up into their head and makes their hair fall out or wipes out their short term memory? Something bad surely must happen. It is shocking to me that someone would stifle themselves like that.  People, let it out! That’s freedom, to let out a sneeze with all the combustible fury it possess. My father used to scare the crap out of me with his sudden sneezes. I almost drove off the road:  “Today’s accident was caused by a sneeze.” Some people half stifle, half let it out – and end up with snot in their hand.  It is the same with a laugh. Let that laughter out and spread it around to your fellows because not unlike yawning, laughter is contagious. Watching someone yawn makes you yawn – just writing about yawning, I’m actually yawning right now.  But laughter is infectious and there is no known cure.  Have you ever laughed ’til you cried or cried til you laughed? I actually had a gal tell me she was having a hard time breathing at my show last week because she was laughing so hard.  I believe you actually could die laughing. So, I am getting dangerously funny. Come to one of my shows and see me before I am put in jail for woman and or manslaughter. Or just keep reading this column.

Poppy Champlin has been a working comic since 1990. Making a living and doing it her way. Now a producer of her hit tour The Queer Queens of Qomedy, Poppy is still on fire. Her stand-up pedigree is flawless; from her latest SHOWTIME SPECIAL: PRIDE: The Gay and Lesbian Comedy Slam hosted by Bruce Vilanch to her LOGO SPECIALS: ONE NIGHT STAND-UP, to Oprah Winfrey, and a featured story on Entertainment Tonight, as she was the winner of America’s Funniest Real Woman on The Joan Rivers Show, to a panel guest on Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen, Poppy can also be seen working on the formidable cruise lines with Atlantis and Olivia cruises. Poppy has opened for such comics as Ray Ramano, Denis Leary, Bill Maher, Bill Hicks and Rosie O’Donnell. Her club appearances are many ranging from Gotham Comedy Club in NYC the Comedy Cellar and The Improvs, Laugh Factory and all in between. She is teaching a standup comedy class in her home town in Kingston, Rhode Island.

Catch Poppy at the Michigan Comedy Fest on March 12