My favorite Pretty Paul Parsons bit: "I like to spoil my wife — so sometimes I take her out of the freezer and set her on the counter for a couple of hours." Parsons, who turns the kindly-old-man cliché inside out and then frolics in its entrails, has been performing stand-up locally and on the road for the better part of a decade. He usually takes the stage in coveralls that make him look like a cross between a pedophiliac janitor and a slasher-movie psycho, and I believe he'd take that as a compliment. NOTE: This show is NOT for the easily, or even grudgingly, offended. Wed., April 5, 8 p.m., The Tampa Improv, 1600 E. Eighth Ave., Ybor City, $10, 813-864-4000, www.tampaimprov.com.
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 4, 2006.