Month: June 2014

My lady bought a Groupon to go rock climbing.  I consider myself fairly adventurous, but I’ve seen a hundred of those survival shows.  80% involve mountains and climbing accidents.  That said, I can’t get shown up, so I went along.

The guide was pretty good and very friendly, but I had no idea what was going on.  He showed a bunch of knots, used a lot of words I had never heard, and then the tutorial was over.  Poop.  I had to climb up a 45 foot sandstone wall.  Apparently, you’re supposed to back off the wall to see where your feet should go.  No problem, I’m 30 feet in the air with my fingers barely holding on to rocks that are 5000 years old, so let me hang off the wall and let gravity pull me to death or paralysis.

I did the first two climbs, but a nest of daddy longlegs crawling by my face was a nice curveball.  The third was a 5.7, which apparently means something to people.  I got stuck about two feet from the top when my hands and feet cramped up.  I slipped and fell, but the safety rope caught me immediately.  That means instead of being killed, I was safe to crap in my pants and be humiliated as I hang off a rock wall with the harness pushing my junk into new and undiscovered positions.  Is there a video game that has you climb walls?  I need to take that up.

I had a show in Virginia last week.  It went very well, sold out crowd plus a few extra to test the fire code.  Of course, no one really bought anything afterwards, I guess I can blame Obama or Bush or climate change or something, I know it wasn’t my act.  One guy wanted the headliner’s DVD and no one had any change…except for this guy!  I took advantage of the situation and sold one DVD because this boy scout is always prepared.  Of course at some point later in the week, I pulled my phone out and apparently dragged $32 out also, which some lucky asshole found on the ground.  There’s the Coen luck I was expecting.

The real fireworks was the next day.  I was getting gas in the morning when a woman pulled in on the other side of the pumps.  She decided to pass both of those, even though her gas cap was on the driver’s side.  She then turned around and pointed at me.  I topped off, then sat in my car and hit the “Take Me Home” on my GPS.  In the three seconds that took, she honked at me and I saw this maniac yelling at me…with two kids in the car.  Apparently, she couldn’t fit in the space in front of me.  I screamed an obscenity at her and backed up a few feet, waiting on the GPS to load.  Then she laid on the horn and lobbed several F bombs my way.

At this point, I realized woman had to have MY pump, the other three she passed weren’t good enough.  I squealed my tires and gave her the double hand shrug, as in “Is that what you want, nutty?”  She then went inside and cussed out the attendant because her card didn’t work.  I was ready to walk up and tell her she should have someone else watch her kids until her menopause had run its course or her prescription got refilled.  Then I looked at her kids and I felt the strange feeling some call restraint.  I stopped.  What is this feeling?  How did my brain develop this skill, unknown to me since puberty?  Now I’m sad.  I need to dip my hands in broken glass and cage fight a stranger to get my edge back.  Or carry an emergency fifth of Beam to use when I need a boost of redneck.

As part of the Columbus Brew Ha Ha, hosted at the Shadowbox Cabaret in Columbus, a comedy contest is going down next month.  I think that’s what they say.  Or is someone getting served?  Bring it on!  I hate teenage movies.

My pal and fellow comedian Nickey Winkelman contacted all the open mikes in town to host the preliminaries.  This is a great idea, because it gets the whole scene involved, keeps the contest from being too long at one location, and plus I get to run a contest for the first at my open mike at Rehab Tavern this Monday.  I will move two comics on to the contest, with one alternate.

The good news, is that any comic reading this blog will get several tips on what the winning formula is!  1) Bribery is not only accepted, it is encouraged.  2)  Crowd voting will be a factor.  They can bribe me also.  3)  I will shop this weekend for an authentic laughometer.  It’s very high tech, but it takes the amount of laughs from crowd and multiplies it by the amount of dollars slipped into my palm.  4)  All comedians doing jokes about how cool bald eagles are get bonus points.  5)  Any contestant going more than 30 seconds over their time will be penalized and/or kneecapped ala Nancy Kerrigan.  I will also have judges.  One of them may be my dog, depending upon what mood I’m in.  I am thinking I’ll write the names on a piece of paper and whatever one he poops closest to will win.  Only fairness in my competitions!

Well, it was a Thursday just like any other.  Suddenly, I got the most amazing Facebook update.  No, it wasn’t an invitation to play Candy Crush Saga.  (I’m starting to think these aren’t exclusive invites…and why is every one a saga?  That sounds epic.  Also, if you’re going to invite me to play a game on Facebook, it better have sword murdering or superheroes for me to even consider it.  Someone invited me to play @HUGS.  There is a better chance of me joining a drum circle than playing a game called @HUGS.  Who can hug the most people?  I can!  YAAAAAYYYY!!!!  HUGS!!!!  I love strangers!  I win!  Some people don’t know me at all.  I digress.)

Back to my blog.  A comic named Chelsea I met a few years back tagged me – she found my shirt in a store near Put-In-Bay.  Suck it, Miley Cyrus and whatever K. Kardashian is plugging some slut gear at Whores R Us, my comedy shirt is being sold in all corners of the state!  Then I realized it was a Goodwill.  This means someone bought my shirt in drunken stupor after a show, then woke up and said, “Who in the blue hell is this turd?” and promptly tossed it next to their bellbottoms, silk button ups and bib shorts in the Goodwill bag.  Or even better, they wore it, read my blog, got offended my the content or lack of humor, and gave threw it away.  Then a homeless guy dug it out of the rubbish, wiped his ass with it, then gave it to Goodwill to sell for a buck.

I run an open mike every Monday at the Rehab Tavern in Columbus.  I have had some really good comics come by and some open mikers that I’ve never seen before (or again).  The good thing about new comics is that they usually bring a lot of pals, which is always encouraged.  Doing a great set for small crowds is probably the hardest part of comedy.  Example – if there are five people, and you make one laugh, that’s 20% of the crowd and it sounds like you’re being mocked.  Now take that same percentage and put 100 people in a room.  Sounds like you’re killing, but not really…but it sounds better.  Plus laughter is contagious.  Sadly, so is silence.

The great thing with new comics bringing people is that they are usually pretty weak, so it balances out the newness and it helps the other comics as well.  The downside is that new comics (especially males) usually do way too many body fluid and sexual assault jokes that make their non-friends cringe.  One new guy this week talked about eating pico de gallo after being smeared on a dead person’s leg.  Sigh.

The show went well and afterwards, a greenhorn approached.  He had a solid set and asked me a few questions.  “Do you ever perform anywhere else, like for money?”  That could have been offensive, but it’s an honest question, I guess.  I told him yes and gave a few  examples.  Then came the fun question.  “Where can I get paid?”  I asked, How many times have you done comedy?  “This was the second time.”  Nowhere.  Come see me in about 100 more times.  If you want to get paid any kind of real money, you need at least 20 minutes.  He stared at me, then said he had to talk to a buddy and left.  To give an example, he hit a baseball off a tee, then asked if the Yankees had a tryout.  OK, never mind.  I guess I was supposed to say if you have one good five minute set, you get a Comedy Central special and a 100 grand.  If that’s true, I’d be worth about a half a million by now.

One of the least fun parts of comedy for me is promoting shows.  “Hey, support me!  I’m funny!”  It’s awkward for me, much like human contact.  I was thinking about it because the workshop the Columbus Funny Bone has before each open mike was going over topics and this came up.  I figured I would relay what little experience I have with this and list the things to do and not to do.

Do create Facebook events, feel free to invite people and post on your wall.  Don’t privately message every single person until they block you.  I know this because some guy asked me if I would like his band then proceeded to privately message me every f’n time they played in the city.

Do use social media.  Don’t tweet so much you forget to write jokes.  If you have three solid minutes of comedy, don’t worry about tweeting seventy times a day to build up your followers.  That said, I have about ten twitter followers, so what do I know?

Do get a head shot.  Don’t take one yourself wearing a funny t-shirt, smoking a cigarette, trying to look funny or cool.  Wearing a funny t-shirt is the worst sin in comedy – if your shirt is funnier than you, you stink.  I know this rule thanks to this, from 2007.

That’s about all I have for promotion.  Oh, you can blog on a website.  That helps, I think.