As I make the transition from open-miker to occasionally-paid, still-broke, cross-country wanderer, I find myself at the mercy of bookers. That's nothing new, for entertainers or for me -- I've been playing some form of this game since I had to cold-call rock clubs with numbers cribbed from ratty alt-weeklies in other cities in 1994.
The default answer is no. That's accepted. Generally speaking, a club has 52 weeks to fill, minus whatever holidays they take off, and they've got a roster of people by now who can do just that. They're "always looking for new talent," sure, but it's a lot easier to get a few new faces that their favored old comics bring in, or throw in some newbies as a favor to another booker, than to click through and watch yet another hopeful asshole's shitty YouTube video or read his crappy list of credits. All understood. All processed on a rational level. But there'll always be that whiny, aggravated voice in the background going "come ON, man!" You booked me once, said I was good, paid me, and now you won't return my emails? Come ON, man! I'd rather get an honest, curt "hey, you really aren't what we're looking for, check back in a year" than get blown off with platitudes. You booked THAT GUY and not me? That guy sucks! Come ON, man! I've submitted avails and video how many times, and I can't even get a form letter back? Come ON, man! It takes a thick skin to be on stage, in front of sometimes-hostile, usually-drunk crowds, saying stuff you made up and trying to elicit a reaction. But sometimes it feels like you need even thicker skin to fire off emails and pester people on Facebook, scrounging for time, hoping to run into the right person at the right place and catch them in the right mood so that one more little tiny door pops open in the off-brand Advent calendar that is the midwestern comedy landscape of 2012. It takes big metal barrels of hope and pluck to assume you're ever going to get into rooms that seem as remote and untouchable as the surface of Mars. But we got a damn robot on Mars, and one of these days, I'm gonna get a foot on that stage. And I'm gonna make your drunk-ass customers laugh. And then, maybe once, we can be done with the endless dance of the one-sided email exchange, and I can just be the guy who comes up a couple times a year and puts the work in. That's when I'm having the most fun doing this - when I'm on the bill, putting the time in, getting a little something for my trouble, hanging out with some like-minded freaks, then getting back on the road and doing it again somewhere else. My goals are realistic and attainable. My voice is loud, my will is strong, and my coffee is hot. I'm gonna get there. NP: Milligram "This Is Class War"
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Having a good run of stage time lately. I kinda "bottomed out" a few weeks back, doing a few lackluster sets in a row that culminated in a terrible guest spot at Connxtions. I mean, not overtly-hostile bad. That would have been better. This was indifferent bad, the kind of sullen who-gives-a-shittitude that I never expect from people who got in their cars and deliberately drove to a comedy club. It was kinda bleak.
But I dug my heels in, tweaked a few jokes, and just kept going up. I had a few cool milestones recently - I performed at an outdoor music festival thing, doing almost 15 minutes and getting a great reaction from those who were listening. (To be fair, I had a sweet time slot, before everyone got too drunk.) I MC'd my first club weekend, opening five shows for Dave Landau and Brent Terhune, and all five went well - Dave told the manager he had no idea I wasn't already a working road comic, after seeing me on stage. I even got to participate in my first roast, of local headline comedian Steve Sabo, and it was a blast. My friend Owen Thomas put it together, and it ran like a charm - there was a good sized crowd, I went up early and had a strong set, and then a lot of other people did great as well. I got drunk and vociferously defended my comedy brethren later, which probably got me on a few of the wrong people's shit lists, but I still can't bring myself to care. I'll at least be diplomatic enough not to name names here in public (if you can call a blog no one reads "public"), but I will say I met one of the most loathsome human beings I've ever seen in person that night, and hated them almost instantly. It was weird. You could smell the rotten soul on this guy like dogs can smell fear on mailmen. Did a great new open mic last week at Andrew Z's Pizza Pub, where I really felt like I owned the place for my time on stage - very comfortable and confident, some new bits worked great, and I really feel like I'm getting a handle on pacing, pauses and crowd engagement. Not interaction -- not "crowd work" -- just stuff like eye contact, reading a room, finding pockets of laughter and really aiming jokes at them. It probably sounds stupid or motivational speaker-y, but as I get the hang of it, I believe in it more and more. I ran my own open mic a couple times, had a lot of fun with it, and was hoping to make it a bi-weekly institution, but the club owners had their own ideas on how to run it. I'm looking for another room to host the event, but I'm kinda sanguine about it. If it doesn't happen, I won't be too sad. I did it, I got the experience, I had a lot of fun with it, and there are always more places to get stage time. It's kinda nice to go to a room and only have to worry about your own set, not getting everyone else on and off stage on time. This is a very nuts-and-bolts update. But the excitement I'm feeling about standup is hard to put into words without sounding ridiculous. Just as an example -- this weekend I MC at Connxtions again, opening the shows. My friend Owen, one of the best comics around here, is featuring. And a guy named Charlie Wiener is headlining. I used to hear Charlie on WMMS out of Cleveland when I was a kid. He'd be on the morning show with Jeff and Flash, doing comedy or playing songs. He was a big local name, like Alex Bevan, or Donnie Iris, or The Numbers Band, or Michael Stanley. Now I have this connection, from me in our crappy duplex on 2nd Street, listening to Dad's ugly brown radio in the living room, to me being on that stage, working with that same guy. It's still just a foot in the door -- it's just a toe dip in the pool. A lot of people would laugh at me making a big deal out of this. But a lot of people never even get to do this much. Time to get to work. I don't know if anyone reads these posts at all. If you read the last one, it sounded like I was about done with comedy, due to external factors. I probably should be. But the fact is, I can't be.
This isn't an optional thing. I can't not write. I can't not get on stage. I can't not want to make people laugh and get a reaction. Stifling that is like trying to go without food, or sex, or conversation. It won't kill you right away, but it will do some damage. If that sounds silly or melodramatic to you, that's fine. Y'ou may just not get it, and that's okay. You are probably better off for that, in the grand scheme of things. But you'll never know what we know. Good shows coming up, a new open mic room taking shape here in Toledo, and some other non-comedy stuff that may be huge, that I can't talk about right now. I still feel like my personal life is dangling from a precipice, but I've realized that if I give up on these things that make me who I am, I'm not saving myself or doing anyone else any favors. I gotta dance as fast as I can and trust that this shit's gonna work itself out, because if I stop, nothing else that happens will be a victory. It may be the fuzzy zen blather of an all-nighter, but that's all I got for ya right now. See you on stage. There's a great analogy in the book War Day, about people after a limited nuclear war, trying to rebuild their lives in an irradiated dust bowl of a region. The writer likens them to tiring swimmers who are valiantly giving it their all, and who have not yet processed what they already know, that they're going to have to give up eventually.
Without going into a lot of details, there's been upheaval of sorts in my life recently. I've had to cancel a few out of town trips, and I haven't actively tried to book anything new on my calendar. I'm not sure if I'll be curtailing my standup efforts for the foreseeable future, or just taking a break from pushing it so hard. Regardless, it's a bump in the road, and I don't like it. But maybe I'm just the only one in the room who didn't see it coming. I'm a 39-year-old man with a special needs kid, a bad ticker, and a day job that provides all the security and stability of migratory fruit picking in a blizzard. And I'm at the absolute bottom rung of the comedy ladder. Maybe all the pats on the back and encouraging comments from old and/or more experienced comics have been more of the "oh, it's so cute that you're trying" variety. I didn't intend for my standup career to be a Make-a-Wish experiment or a late-inning flameout before I started wearing Dockers, going to bed at 10 and cultivating an interest in lawn care products. And dammit, I still don't. But I have to bow to reality at some point, and to the responsibilities I have to other people. It's not all bad. The more I stay home, the more I work on my day job stuff, and the more money I make. I also can focus more on writing -- I have a proposal nearly finished for a novel, with an agent ready to read it, and it's possible that the time I've spent gallivanting to half-empty open mikes on the wide Michigan prairie would have been better spent at home, swilling coffee and finishing this damn book. But I know this. I haven't been on stage since May 3. I'm about to climb the goddamn walls. I need to get on stage. I have some great shows coming up, and hopefully soon I'll know if I can get back to it full-bore and start trying to book for the fall, or if I'll need to hang back for a while and play civilian some more. Quitting is not an option, and no one wants to hit pause on something good, especially when they're creeping toward middle age and trying to make up for lost time. I'll do what I have to do, and I'll do the right thing, but every warm night when the windows are open and I hear the faint thrum of the semis whirring down the expressway, I'll think of how the moon looks on blacktop in the middle of nowhere, and the taste of bad gas station coffee, and beers with fellow misfits in the back of bars and comedy rooms, and people in dark rooms looking toward the front wanting to laugh. I'll do what needs to be done, and then I'll get back to work. Lots of ups and downs since last report. I think I had my best show so far, of all places, at a golf resort in Belding, Michigan. I drove up there to do a short set, having the usual "what am I doing?" internal monologue the whole way (six hours of driving, no hotel, ten minutes of stage time). But it was more than worth it -- packed room, great people, applause breaks seemingly after every joke. It was exhausting, it went so well. I got to meet Jerry Donovan, a headliner with an amazing handle on crowd work - he had them falling out of their chairs. We were all rock stars that night, posing for pictures, shaking hands, and then (in my case, at least) climbing back in the car and driving back home in the dead of the two-lane Michigan night.
Got to do some time in Youngstown, for a small and subdued audience at a pizza place - great guy running it, Rick Cribley, and some good comics to share the stage with, but kind of an off night. From there, it was off to Alabama the next day, to see family, and do some time at two different events in Tuscaloosa. Small audiences but very receptive, and great to get to tell my dick jokes for some longtime friends and some family members. Didn't get to headline the Wise-Ass Wednesdays showcase in Toledo two weeks ago, because the show got called due to a low turnout. It happened again the following week, while I was out of town, and I had zero expectations for this last week being any better. Luckily, we had a great little crowd roll in, and Milton Wyley got to headline, doing an awesome job - that's one funny SOB. I started the room out with a quick five, and everyone had a lot of energy and turned in great sets. They needed the show to go on longer, so after Milton's set, they asked me to go back up and tell more jokes - I ended up doing another 15 and the crowd was cool, despite rustling around to pay checks and getting a little restless. Left there, went over to Sukit Hookah to give that room one more try - I feel bad, because a year ago I was there every week and it was a great workshop to get started in, but it seems like every time I go there now, people aren't that into the show. It's not just me, either. I gave it my best shot, though, and after that was done, three of us went over to Rocky's for some drinks - only to be asked if we wanted to get up and do some material there, too. Three sets in one night (four if you count the two separate times up at Connxtions)? Don't mind if I do. I'm on the schedules of the Toledo and Lansing Connxtions to MC some weekends this summer, which I hope will be a foot in the door for getting some entry-level work at the clubs once the busier fall season hits. Got a few other paid gigs on the horizon, making new contacts around the area, and generally sorting out how I'm going to get things to the proverbial next level. It probably seems really tedious and hopeless to anyone who's not in the game - driving hours to do short sets in front of what might be an apathetic crowd, endlessly reworking jokes, chasing down contacts and stage time. Like my friend Dustin Meadows says about it, "I did this to myself." But I find myself in love with the process, even the parts that make no practical sense whatsoever, or seem like shooting myself in the foot over and over again. A night of driving to an open mic for the fourth time to see if anyone's gonna finally show up to it is still better than a night watching TV. Active beats passive. Creativity can hit you in the weirdest, least likely places, and you can meet amazing people when there's almost no one in a place. And once in a while, a show like the Belding gig cracks the door open and lets some light shine in, and gives you a glimpse of an amazing future that could possibly be around the next bend. A couple weekends ago, I was talking to a fellow comic about the Sunday Night Funnies show in Grand Rapids, MI, and we agreed that it's almost TOO good of a room. The place is always packed, the crowds are usually way into it, and it can be a massive ego boost to do well there. After performing in bars where everyone's trying to talk over the guys with the microphone, or doing sets to crowds small enough that no one wants to be the first to laugh and disturb the cathedral-like silence of the place, SNF is a tonic, a place where your crowd sounds like a crowd on a TV show.
The problem is, once you leave there, you go back to doing sets in those other places again. I wrote my last blog while high on a seductive whiff of that temporary crowd buzz, stupid on my own vapors, and then I did some shittier shows and came back down to earth again. It's been a little bit since I flat-out ate it, but I had some crowds recently that maintained that respectful patter of half-interested laughter, and that was as far as we got together. Not every show, but some. Too many. I like my material right now, but I'm at the point where I have to start tailoring sets to rooms, and I'm still working on that skill. I'm also at a weird point where I have enough decent stuff that usually works, that it's getting hard for me to want to try out a shaky bit, or work on honing something, if it's gonna come at the expense of a tried-and-true bit that will make more people laugh. I can see how older comics get in that comfort zone and just stop writing - it's hard to do five minutes of tested, honed stuff and then deliver a brand-new bit and get silence. It kinda hurts a little, so it's hard to keep doing it when you can so easily avoid it. I gotta start spending some more home time writing, and really going over my material. I want every piece of my set to be in there for a reason, so I gotta go over it all and make every word justify its existence in the lineup, or out it goes. I got to perform at LaughFest over the last two weekends - I did a semi-pro showcase set on the 11th, then went back up on the 18th for another one, and my third Sunday Night Funnies stint. I also got to do a guest set at the Connxtions Comedy Club in Lansing, which is a great place with awesome people on staff. I had a little scare in between, though, spending 24 hours in the hospital with chest pains and heart-attack-like symptoms. I inherited hypertension like a mofo, and I had an aortic dissection in 2004, and I should be taking care of myself better than I do - I got some new meds, got the blood pressure down from its stratospheric levels, and went home. I still had sticky tape residue and a sore arm from my IV when I did the second LaughFest weekend. The shows went okay - Lansing's set especially went well, I thought - but I had some melancholy moments in there, I think partially due to getting used to the new meds. There were a few points while driving or sitting around waiting for something to happen where I wondered why the hell I wasn't at home. The sense of adventure temporarily left me and all I had left was halfway-okay sets, uncomfortable places to sleep, sad afternoon drinking and mediocre food. Head's on straight again, though, and I'm eager to get out this week and hit some shows. I'm doing a 20-minute set this Wednesday, possibly going up Thursday in Detroit, then doing a show at a resort in Belding (near Grand Rapids) on Saturday. Gonna go over these jokes with a fine-toothed comb between now and then, remember that it's a privilege to be on stage, and enjoy the hell out of myself while I'm out doing it. My time is too short for cynicism to get in there and spoil the game. (The guy in the picture above was one of the patrons at the open mic in Taylor, MI last night. He enjoyed the whole show, but got so drunk that by the end, he was yelling out tag lines and spoiling bits for the final comics. That's not too abnormal. But he then realized what he'd done, and put his head down on the table like a scolded child, leaving it there till the show was over. He came over, apologized profusely to us all, offered to buy the whole table a drink, then got a funny look on his face, headed for the door, and was never seen again. If that's you in the photo, you owe me a beer, dude.) Things are really starting to happen. I updated my calendar tonight for March, and then took a look at the finished product, and it frightened me a little bit. Who the hell is this presumptuous dickweed who's gonna be away from home TWO weekends in a row? Who's doing a comedy festival? Who's doing paid gigs, urban rooms, benefit shows? This is ridiculous. It's a dream come true and it's just the very beginning of the trip. I'm more excited than I can tell you. I did some great rooms in the last couple weeks. The LOL Lounge, in downtown Toledo, is a black room (I think we're supposed to say "urban," but what the hell ever) with a great, welcoming crowd. Sidney Smith put on a gig in suburban Detroit that had a big, diverse crowd that was eager to laugh. My second trip to Sunday Night Funnies in Grand Rapids, MI turned out to be one of my better sets so far, and the audience reaction was unbelievable (I'll be putting the video of that show on this site shortly). The following Saturday, I had the chance to do a guest set for Sal DeMilio up in Wyandotte, Michigan, at a room where I'd just had a good set working a benefit show, and I killed again. Of course, not everything comes up roses all the time. I got the van back home from Grand Rapids last week without incident, only to have it die on me in front of my son's school that afternoon. The mechanic couldn't find anything wrong with it, so I took it to Wyandotte, planning to bail out of there after my guest set and go see Dave Attell at Connxtions in Toledo. I stopped off halfway there to take a piss and get a cup of coffee, and the van wouldn't start up again. Nothing. Sat with it for a couple hours, trying it every fifteen minutes or so, till my friend Jake Dickey finished up in Wyandotte and headed my way and could pick me up. Missed Attell, and I'm not sure I wanna even know how much the tow bill is gonna be. But I've got guest sets for bookers coming up, new rooms to play, and a schedule that's making my head spin. This is where I find out if I can really keep track of this kind of schedule, keep myself healthy and rested, get my work at home done, spend enough time with the family, and still go do all this cool shit that I've been wanting to do for so long. Most importantly, I gotta keep my set fresh, decide what older bits are out the door, and what "greatest hits" are staying. I've finally had a little bit of success with "murdering my darlings," or cutting out bits that just don't work even if I personally think they're awesome. I've reworked a few things that didn't kill before and made them better, and I've ditched some stuff that I just couldn't fix. My set is tight, I'm hungry for more stage time, and I feel like I'm in a roller coaster car at the top of a hill. I have no idea where any of it leads. I'm certainly not presuming it's taking me to headlining status or a paying career any time soon -- hell, the dates on my calendar I'm thrilled about would probably bum out most road comics out working right now. But it's forward motion, and there's energy I haven't felt for years behind what's happening for me right now. I'm grateful for the opportunities in front of me, and I'm gonna go tear into every one of them. Monday was one of those rough nights that either grinds you down and makes you quit, or inspires you to dig deeper and get your shit together. I went up to two open mikes in Michigan, both of which were pretty sparsely attended - not an unusual thing on a weeknight, but I was running on fumes and in a bad mindset from being tired. I don't think either set went too bad, but little things became amplified - I went a minute over my time at Joey's in Livonia, a stupid rookie mistake. I was in the middle of a new bit and didn't have a good "bailout point" figured out yet, so I blathered on, eating into someone else's time, for the benefit of the other comics and an audience of maybe six. Embarrassing.
I'm at an odd place in my evolution right now. I have some tried and true A-game material that works more often than not. I have what I consider to be a "signature bit," a chunk of about 8-9 minutes of material that comprises a good bit of my feature-length set. The problem is, I'm still not working as a feature much, so most of my stage time comes from MC'ing or open mic nights. 5-8 minute sets are the norm at these places, and long bits don't generally work as well, since you're expected to get up, get done, keep it tight and leave room for the other 14 people who want stage time. As a result, I seem to devote most of my open mic sets to newer bits, trying to work out where in my "real set" they could go, or if they work at all. My best material gets left out, neglected except for practicing my set at home. My worry is that I'll get sloppy or rusty with that stuff, so that when I do get the opportunity to stretch out and do a feature set, suddenly my tried-and-true bits aren't the highlight of the show, as they should be. If I get to the point that I'm featuring a lot, this problem will solve itself. Right now, it seems like the height of luxury to have 30-40 minutes on stage on a regular basis, to hone that feature set, deliver the strongest stuff I've written to date, and work new material into that context. I'm sure once I get there, I'll have some other weird issue that I overthink and worry about... but hopefully I'll have the sense to enjoy that larger window of stage time I'll have earned. Tons of shows in the next week and a half, some new rooms, hopefully some guest sets that will lead to new opportunities. Feeling pretty fortunate right now, and enjoying the hell out of the ride... just gotta make sure I get more sleep on show days so I have the focus to keep an eye on the damn clock. I've never worked with Scott Long, but I enjoyed his headlining set earlier
this year when he came to Toledo, exchanged online pleasantries with him, and became a fan of his "Flyover Comedy" blog. In one post, he tells it like it is about being a road comic who's also a dad, laying out a typical day in his insanely hectic life. After my weekend, I decided I'd rip that idea off and throw together a little post. Saturday was a typical day for me, at least as typical as I expect them to be in the near future. I juggled the demands of old-guy domestic bliss with one of my first paid comedy shows, and it was a blast, but it took a bit out of me. For those who don't know me personally (and who the hell else reads this shit?), I'm a 39-year-old father of two kids. My daughter is four, and has special needs, so she's a high-maintenance handful most days. There's medicines, bottle feedings, therapy and play time, and occasional freakouts, meltdowns or epic throwing-up episodes. She's a lot of fun to hang out with most of the time, but there's a lot on her to-do list. Meanwhile, my son is ten, and is vying for a spot at a really awesome arts-based high school here in our town. We started the day with an open house at that school -- mom took him to that, while the little one and I got through her morning routine. All the while, I was checking on a pot of chili I had made. I was entering a chili cookoff at my son's school, and I wanted to make sure it was just right. I won the last two years, and this is his last year at the elementary school, so I was really hoping for a three-peat. It's kind of embarrassing, how into this shit you get. The first year, I was laughing it off, enjoying it ironically, not too worried about it. By year three, I've got a game face, I'm mean-mugging the other parents, I'm hovering while people try my chili. I'm taking it WAY too seriously. I'm guessing that's either a sign of aging, or a desire for that Kroger gift card for the grand prize. The boy and mom get home from the open house, she leaves early to go help set up the cookoff, and I wrangle lunch for the kids and hustle to get a little bit of stuff done around the house. I had big grandiose plans for a long, hot shower, and then an hour to go over my notes for the show that night, but it was becoming obvious that none of that shit was remotely gonna happen. I packed some orders (I sell shit on Ebay for a living - more on that some other time), then loaded kids, mail, chili, and - at the last possible second - some comedy notes and a couple bottles of water for my show. I grabbed the GPS and printed out a map (us old fogies don't entirely trust the GPS, although some half-assed unverified Google Map is gospel), and I was out of the house. I won't keep you in suspense. I won the chili cookoff, and the gift card, though by a smaller margin than in previous years. (For the record, there is no secret ingredient - the andouille sausage and chick peas are right there where you can see them, and there's a shit-ton of chili powder, cumin and red pepper). I hung out till the last minute, then left the wife and kids at the cookoff and, unshowered, tired, with a belly full of various types of chili, hit the road for Commerce Township, Michigan. State route to expressway to typical bombed-out Michigan four-lane road, to a bowling alley called Wonderland Lanes - packed parking lot, lots of bowlers, and an enclosed lounge area where people were paying $5 cover. Me as one of five comics, then an improv troupe, and I was getting paid? Hell yes! Well, two of the comics didn't show. I got asked how much time I could do, and told I could do "at least" 25 minutes. The crowd was really talky, and not paying a lot of attention, despite the ambitious efforts of Hailey (the MC, improv trouper and the one who set the show up) and Eric (the guy before me). The owner even went on stage before I did my set, thanking everyone for showing up but imploring them to please be quiet because "some of these people up front want to hear the show." Not suggesting that they themselves pay any attention, just asking them to consider the weirdoes who paid $5 to see a comedy show and then, ya know, wanted to see said show. I went up, and I tore it up. I started really strong, got 'em on my side, got a good bit of the room listening and laughing... and then I lost them. I have a bit that I loved, that just didn't work that well, and when it DID work, it was usually due to residual good will from the previous few jokes going over well. This night, it died a horrible death on the floor, and several bits after it tanked as well. It was getting really quiet, and the conversations in the back were starting up again. I thought I was probably done for. But I kept at it, I didn't let it externally rattle me, and I tried to stay strong as I went into the last half of my set. And somehow, I won them back - it was amazing. I got some applause breaks, I had people singing along with my ridiculous closing bit, I got big applause at the end - it was incredible. I felt really good about the whole thing. I had another beer and watched Hailey and her improv troupe do their thing - they were great, Eric and I ran up on stage and participated a little bit. It was a triumphant night overall. As I was walking out to the parking lot, feeling ten feet tall, I texted home to make sure everything was okay. "The little one just puked up her dinner all over me." Awesome. Instantly I go from rock star to deadbeat dad who's an hour away getting clapped on the back by strangers for being funny while my wife is squeegeeing toddler vomit off her clothes and trying to calm down a tired, screaming four-year-old. I rule. I text back to tell her I'm on my way home and I hit the road. Of course, in my hurry, I don't stop to take a piss first, and I soon have to hit the facilities. Which, on this desolate stretch of post-apocalypse Michigan, seem to be few and far between. I pull off at an exit and follow a sign's instructions to turn right, only to drive for miles till I finally see a Citgo sign. I dash inside -- "restroom is broken. Sorry for incovience." Yeah, I'm real sorry for the "incovience" too, assholes. It's only my lingering worry about getting ticketed for pissing on Michigan that keeps me from going around the back of the building. Back to the exit, over the overpass, off to the other side, to a Shell station where yes, the bathroom works, but there's not one cup of coffee to be had at all. The dregs of all their shitty picnic cooler dispenser thingies equals about a third of a cup of cold sludge. "Sit tight, I make you more," the guy tells me. "No thanks, I gotta go." I fill my tank up, press YES for a receipt, and get a ribbon of blank paper. I go back in to get a proper receipt and the guy actually looks up and says to me, "what now??" Piece-of-shit gas stations aside, I eventually make it home, bone-tired, to find my wife and the little one passed out on the couch, each half-dressed. I got the little one to finish her meds, got her in pajamas and took her to bed. I even managed to pry my wife off the couch and get her upstairs as well. And then I laid there next to her, staring at the ceiling, amped up on Dunkin Donuts coffee and poring over my set in my head, like you do. If comedy's gonna be what I do, there will be nights I don't get home at all, and lots more where I roll in this late or later. There'll be a lot of sleeplessness and sacrifice. Is it worth it so I can burn up a bunch of fossil fuels and squash the last bit of life out of my long-suffering Astro Van, just to tell dick jokes to rooms full of strangers? I obviously think so, and my woman has so far been nothing but supportive, more so than anyone would have a right to expect. I'm not sure what the point of this whole war story even is, besides bragging rights for surviving a day that felt like it took a week to get through, and not screwing up any of the stuff on the to-do list. I guess if anything, just remember that the person you see on stage for ten minutes, or thirty minutes, or an hour, didn't pop out of a coma in a padded road case ten minutes before showtime, like a stage prop. He or she drove halfway across fuck-all, or had a weird and crazy and sometimes dreadful day, or did three people's worth of shit, and THEN got up there with sore feet and hat-head and too much coffee burbling in their gullet, and entertained the hell out of you. For my part, I'm gonna try to remember that that works both ways, and that maybe the obstreporous drunk who's irritating me mid-set is drunk because he can be, for the first time all week, and he's gonna enjoy it, my over-wordy premises be damned. That to two chicks yakking at the bar, my hopes and dreams for my life's calling don't mean shit, and it's up to me to make them care, or at least keep on keeping on while they yammer about whatever moves them. (Long Islands, apparently.) Most of all, though, I'm gonna remember that unsullied good feeling I had when I walked off stage Saturday night. I took the mic and I ran that oom like a man, I did the work, and I made people I've never seen before happy, and hat felt really, really good. The older you get, the fewer moments of undiluted joy you get, and that's one I'm gonna savor for a thousand cold and indifferent nights to come. Lots of cool stuff happened in December. I got to do my shows in front of my family members (see previous post) and both of them went great. I headlined the Wise-Ass Wednesdays showcase at Connxtions Toledo, did 20 minutes on the nose, and the whole set was strong. Held my own the week after doing a guest set on a show with Kevin Bozeman, Joe Zimmerman and Jake Zamonski, and got to show off for my sister and brother-in-law, which was also cool.
(This was after two straight nights of my brother-in-law, Ham Bagby, rolling in to some music open mikes and throwing down in legendary fashion. He blew the freakin' doors off some places, and made some fans for life up here in the not-so-frozen north. The night I saw was like a movie or somethin' - he walked in, no one knew who he was, no one much cared if he got on stage or not, and then he started playing and the place lit up like a fire on Christmas Eve. It was sick, man. Dude can play, he can sing, and he can put a crowd in the palm of his hand before they even know they're smiling. Unbelievable.) Capped it off on New Year's Day with a harrowing drive up to Grand Rapids to participate in my first Sunday Night Funnies show. They have it every Sunday in the bar of a Radisson Hotel, and they'll give you a free room if you come in from out of town to do it. I decided to take my 10-year-old son with me, so we could hit the town the following morning (he's into Ben Franklin, and there's a cool exhibit about the man at the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum). The last hour of the drive was through a big snowstorm; we did 35 the whole way to GR and passed a few big wrecks. Finally made it to the hotel, got some bar food, and got him settled into the room with some chicken tenders and a movie. The show was awesome - despite the blizzard on the day after New Year's Eve, there was still a pretty decent crowd, and they were really responsive. I'm told it's wall-to-wall people on regular nights, so I can't wait to go back. Some post-show beers and bullshitting with Stu McCallister, Adam Degi, Steve Pierce, and a few other comedy people, and it was time to hit the room. We got up and checked out the next morning after some buffet breakfast downstairs, and made our way downtown to the museum. Neat exhibit, with lots of original artifacts (how the hell has Ben Franklin's wallet survived until 2012?). Hell, we even learned a lot about Gerald Ford in the process. Drove home (the weather was much more cooperative), stopping for awesome diner lunch at a Coney Island in Lansing. We took some pictures of a "DADS INN" (the sign obviously a Days Inn until someone took duct tape to it) and then headed back to Toledo, tired but ready for more traveling. The boy is a trouper - he makes a great road dog. Two nights ago, I capped off the whole recent slew of activity with a last-minute MC'ing gig for the most recent Wise-Ass Wednesday, with my friend Jake Dickey headlining. I had a lot of fun hosting the show, getting some jokes in here and there, and roasting Jake a little before bringing him up for his 20-minute set. The momentum stopped cold, though, when I went over to the open mic held afterwards. I dunno if I've changed in the last year or so since I first hit this open mic, if the crowds have just gotten shittier, or if I just had nothing to compare to when I started out, but it's gotten to where this room and I just don't seem to click any more. I hadn't gone in weeks, and I went up this Wednesday and promptly got one of the worst, most hostile responses to my set I've ever had. Not overtly booing, but dead silence, even when the host came back up. I had a few minor laughs, mostly from the fellow comics, and then I launched into my last bit and it seemed to actually piss people off. I'd had a few beers, which didn't help my ability to deal with the situation, but I didn't go off or anything, I just powered through the bit and then went home. Not a big deal by any measurement. But there's that nagging feeling that THAT was the last time I was on stage. Sure, it was 48 hours ago, and less than 48 hours from now, I'll be hitting a new open mic up in Taylor, Michigan, and I can rinse the dust of that last debacle out of my mouth. But if I'd been done after the MC'ing gig at Connxtions, I'd be coming off a high note, and that would feel better. It's stupid and petty, but it's there. Everything else is going fantastic, though - better than I have any right to hope. Got a couple paid gigs in February, hitting some new rooms, and hopefully doing a few audition-type guest sets that will lead to more new rooms and paid work. If you called me right now and said you needed me to do 30 minutes on short notice, I'd actually have the material to cover it - good stuff that I'm happy about - with a little bit of old shit in the reserve tank after that if I desperately needed it. I'm getting more and more comfortable in my own skin onstage, and it's working more often than not - people I don't know are laughing, newbies I've just met at open mikes are mistaking me for a working comic. I know I still have a long way to go, but I can see and feel the progress being made, and that's a great feeling. |
DickjokeryWhere I write about the stuff I do when I'm out doing the stuff I do. Archives
February 2020
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