Page 36 - JULY 2016 Newsletter

Rookie comedian cops
take the plunge
Standing on stage in front of a crowd of people can’t be easy, even for a trained Chicago police officer.
But a couple of the first timers participating in the fourth annual charity comedy stand-up event Laugh Patrol – the search for Chicago’s funniest police officer – took to the stage for five-minute sets of jokes in front of a raucous crowd filled with brothers and sisters in blue.
Officer Rich Robles waited until almost to the last minute to prepare his stand-up routine. He said he had been using a story about Chicago Police Chaplain Rabbi Moshe Wolf “for about a year,” but otherwise had little material ready ahead of the contest.
“It was something I had been writing down here and there, but most of the material I came up with in the last 24 hours,” Robles said. “I really didn’t work on it prior to this.”
Initially, Robles thought about doing an entire bit about Wolf, but opted instead to mix things up to in- volve more material.
The contest was Robles’ first-ever experience at stand-
n BY NICK SWEDBERG
up. He said
he consid-
ered using
the old trick
of imaging
people with
their clothes off as a way to lessen the anxiety, “but there are some people in the room I wouldn’t want to imagine naked,” he joked.
Robles said the first laugh was the icebreaker that al- lowed him to sail through the rest of the routine.
“It was a very scary experience, but I had a good time,” said Robles, who added he likely will perform in the contest again.
Officer Milan Sipic, who is assigned to the Firearms Training Unit, also “winged it” during his routine, and faced what every comic new to the stage fears.
“I forgot all my jokes,” Sipic admitted.
Despite the rough go, he said he is on board for next year’s contest. And, what would Sipic do differently this time if he could do it all over again?
“Prepare,” Sipic quipped. d
36 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JULY 2016
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