Live, from Peoria, Illinois, it’s Saturday Night Cheeseburger featuring a cheeseburger from Five Guys and starring this week’s host, The Jukebox Comedy Club with special guests, Stephanie and Ryan and featuring live comedy from, Dan Conlin, Heath Thornton, Brandon McAfee, Ryan Hallam and comedic headliner, Costaki Economopoulos!

Now please put your hands together and give a warm welcome for The Jukebox Comedy Club (and a pit stop at Five Guys!)

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Part One: Saturday Night Cheeseburger From Five Guys

I thought since the main focus of today’s blog was going to be from The Jukebox Comedy Club, I’d go get our weekly cheeseburger from Five Guys.

I usually avoid chain stores and restaurants, but thought that since tonight’s cheeseburger was kind of a quickie before we go to the Jukebox, I’d give it a shot.

I got a small order of fries and a Baby Bacon Cheeseburger and a Baby Bacon Burger and the total was 27.94! Five guys isn’t cheap, so let’s hope it’s worth that hefty price for two Baby Burgers and an order of fries!

Wow, for a small order of fries, that’s quite an order. They gave me a cup full and there was a pile at the bottom of the bag.

The fries were made and cut fresh and were decent. I like them a little crispier, but they weren’t bad. Now on to the star of the show…

The Baby Bacon Cheeseburger.

First strike was that they put mushrooms on it and I ordered it with mustard and grilled onions.

Second strike was that the burger was pretty tasteless and the third strike was the cheese had an odd flavor and left a weird after-taste in my. mouth.

The other burger also had mushrooms and wasn’t very tasty at all, so I didn’t bother to take a picture of it.

This was definitely not worth almost thirty bucks!

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CHEESEBURGER RATING

What a disappointing bacon cheeseburger from Five Guys. And almost thirty bucks for two burgers and fries from a somewhat “upscale” fast food joint is ridiculous!

I’ll give their bacon cheeseburger a half a Wimpy rating. I don’t think I’ll be returning to Five Guys anytime soon!

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THE MBIP CHEESEBURGER CHART & LINKS

Cheeseburger List: Mike’s Tavern, Clink Bar & Events, Silver Bullet Food &. Drink, Blue Duck Barbecue Tavern, Agatucci’s, Peoria Pizza Works and Five Guys.

Okay, onto the live comedy portion of this post!

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Part Two: Saturday Night @: Jukebox Comedy Club!

Here we are at The Jukebox Comedy Club on Farmington Road. This place has been serving up comedy since 1990 and is a classic Peoria nightclub and destination!

I ran into local comedians, Heath Thornton and Ryan Hallam out in the parking lot. You’ll see both of them onstage in a little bit.

For now, let’s get inside and start the second half of this Saturday night adventure!

Here we are inside of The Jukebox Comedy Club and Stephanie quickly served us up a bottle of Bud Light with a beautiful smile. The night is off to a great start in here!

The bar in here has illustrations of local comedy legends, Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison.

There’s pictures above of some of the comedy greats that have appeared here including: Gilbert Gottfried, Norm Macdonald, Louis C.K. and Charlie Murphy.

The crowd is building in here and I ran into Ryan who saw the first show and said it was fabulous!

I went and got my ticket from the Jukebox owner and Peoria comedic legend, Dan Conlin! Always great to see Dan, now let’s go and get a seat at our table. It’s just about showtime!

There's the iconic Jukebox stage complete with a Richard Pryor painting and a jukebox, of course!

And there’s my table, “Wombacher.” I’m a party of 1 and quite a party at that!

Jukebox owner Dan came out and warmed up the crowd for tonight’s show and was hilarious as always!

Heath, who we saw earlier was the comedic host for the evening and he’s been a regular here at the Jukebox for quite a while. You can check him out online right here: Heath Thornton Comedy.

Local comedians, Brandon McAfee and Ryan Hallam were the opening comics and both were very original and funny. The crowd loved them!

And now, Heath introduced tonight’s headlining comedian…the biggest name in comedy…

Costaki Economopoulos!

Costaki has been doing stand-up comedy for over 20 years and is a regular on the Bob & Tom radio show and he’s written for Jay Leno, Bette Midler, MTV and BET among others.

He’s appeared here at the Jukebox in the past and he performed a killer and hilarious set.

He had some really funny bits and observations and he engaged with the audience as well, giving the performance some off the cuff and spontaneous humor.

It was a spectacular evening and you can check out Costaki online at his website and other links right here.