fealing grey

I caught the show at the Bone last night, which I normally don't do on Mondays as it makes me late for the Lloyd and Harry's show. I showed up a little after ten, I think, and caught Brian Dowell's set. He was doing well, so I had high hopes for the audience. Especially since I wanted to try some new stuff out. But when I got on stage, the audience didn't seem that participatory; which really sucks. After my set, some guy told me I had the best timing he had seen of anyone on stage.
Generally I would have accepted the compliment gratefully, but after having eatin it for about six minutes, I simply wasn't in the mood for some drunk dude. I asked what he was talking about, and then he gave me the best advice I've every gotten¹. He said: Drop the bit about the kids, man, I think it made people uncomfortable. (breathe in)

I DIDN'T DO ANY JOKES ABOUT KIDS LAST NIGHT

(breathe out) Maybe he was talking about my new Jesus joke (which you can check out on my MySpace page). I don't know. Anyway, I hung out for a bit and borrowed a CD from Stevie P. I've listened to it a couple times, I have to say: it's alright.
Anyway, there's no show tonight as it's Halloween, so I'm not sure what I'll be doing. Likely grocery shopping and other capital L-lame stuff. Maybe I'll get inspired for a new Bucket of Fish. I hope so.

¹ The fact that I have to mention that this is sarcasm saddens me a bit.
Check out my MySpace blog for jokes on which I'm working.


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Cookin' raw with the Brooklyn boy

3 shows enter, 1 blog leave

Last night, the Cardinals game got over around 11:00 or so. Minutes later, the Cocktail hour at Laughs on the Landing started. We had, to my knowledge, 1 audience member who was not a comic. I didn't stay very long as I had work this morning (my last day at Express Scripts) and didn't want to be late and get accused of not-caring...

[it's now Monday, as I didn't have time to finish my thoughts on Thursday night, I seemed to have forgotten everything I wanted to say. I know I tried a couple new jokes (I know, to an all comic crowd, good idea, right?), but some of them got laughs and whatnot. I'll likely try them again soon...]

Saturday night I had two shows: TWO! One was a private party for a coworker's brother. I was booked to do about 20 to 30 minutes in Eureka (two words, BIG HOUSE!). I showed up a little early and hung out, I was the only person not in costume, so I kind of stuck out, but I didn't care. My set went pretty well, the host of teh party, Matt, thought that I did very well and said if he ever wanted something like that again, he'd give ma a call. Nice.
I split out of the party at about 11:10pm and headed down to the Landing, where I was in a showcase with Janine, Gabe, The Dizz, Adam and Jeff Wesselschmidt. I went up first (after Adam) and had a pretty decent set. This weekend's really helped my confidence, as I have been in a sort of slump lately. The show room had about 20 people in it, but i got audible laughs, which really helped. I did forget to try out a new joke I've been working on, and I really need to get on that as i want to work it out before I forget... Tomorrow, I'll try to get it on my myspace blog, but mooching internet at Panera makes it hard to kick these things out. I should probably just email it to myself and cut and paste it. There's an idea...

Check out my MySpace blog for jokes on which I'm working.

Visit RooftopComedy.com. Watch videos. Laugh. Feel warm and fuzzy.

I could get a haircut, and I'd give up the video games

Hit F9 to send email.

Monday was the weekly show at Lloyd and Harry's. Brian Dowell hosted, and I went up second to last. We didn't have many comics near the start of the show, but as it got closer, probably three or four more walked in. The crowd was kind of big, but a little unruly until they got fed up and left. So when I was on stage, I kind of had an easier time than the guys who kicked off the show. I'm working on some new jokes (I know, it's about time), but am not sure what perspective to take on a few of them. Lately it seems I have a lot of good ideas (ok, some good ideas) but I don't know how to develope them to their fullest. I'm nto sure if that's a weakness in my writing or a weakness in my general creativity, but I've been running stuff by Janine as usual and that seems to help. Brian Dowell also had a good idea for my new Male-Actors joke; which I freewrote about yesterday. No show at the Bone last night, Janine, Andy Faasen and I were there just in case; I ended up watching game 3 of the series with Matt and Scott over at Back Street. I don't know a lot about baseball, so I asked some questions (many of them probably very stupid). The game was pretty good, though I was told it was not as emotion as games 1 and 2. No show next Tuesday either, as it's Halloween. Not much else going on, I went through my voice recordings on my phone (my voice recorder is full and acting up so I can't upload/empty it). A couple good ideas I'll be working on. Hopefully they'll be funny enough to get on stage or at least try out on my MySpace blog. We'll see.

Check out my MySpace blog for jokes on which I'm working.

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I'm a Genius.

I lefe my Index-Card-Box of jokes in Bloomington Thursday.
I called and they said they would mail it to me.
I said I would pay for the shipping.
No telling when it will get here.

Take a spoonful of sugar with a grain of salt

Yesterday, I left work early. All of my coworkers were going to play Demolition Ball as some sort of reward/team building exercise. Because 1) I am not officially part of the department, 2) I am quitting, and 3) my boss was gone yesterday (and is gone today), I was not invited to go play so I took the afternoon off. I eventually got an invitation to go play, but I had plans to meet Janine and Gabe and head over to Bloomington, IL to test out the new stage at the Castle, where the FunnyBone now resides.
The trip was pretty fun, and I'm not just saying that because Janine and Gabe read my blog. The ride up was fun, though I almost killed us once, and we talked shop, worked on a couple of jokes and generally just shot the bull. When we arrived in Bloomington, we ate at a place called the PotBelly, where they served very good sub sandwiches and pretzels and mr. pibb. At the Funnybone, teh opening order was me, Janine, Gabe then Rick Gutierrez. My set was good (so said Janine and Gabe) but I wanted to work on some re-written porn material and I should have done my Halloween stuff. Janine had a good set, as did Gabe, though when he was finished the emcee was nowhere around, so after a bit of empty-stage time, Gabe brought Ricki up.
The sound system was weird, very loud. I could really hear myself on stage, and it kind of threw me; I'm still not entirely used to hearing myself speak through a sound system (and not even close to hearing myself on audio or video). After the show, Don said would like Janine, Gabe and I to come up more often and open in the Springfield and Bloomington clubs, which would be really cool. I really want to start getting 10 to 15 minute sets more often so that featuring won't seem like such a scary ordeal.
Anyway I didn't get in until about 1:00am, so I'm running on even less sleep than normal and don't have much else to write about.

Check out my MySpace blog for jokes on which I'm working.

Visit RooftopComedy.com. Watch videos. Laugh. Feel warm and fuzzy.

they won't be pretty

I just looked at my blog, and realized I haven't posted anything in 8 days. Wow. Quick re-cap, then:

Thursday: Craig Gass headlined a "special" open mic at Laughs on the landing. 6 or 7 open micers got to do sets to open up for him. We had 8 audience members, he called it the worst show of his life. Not sure if that's disrespectful or if he was bonding with the audience.

Monday: Lloyd and Harry's. The show was good. I'm not sure if it's doing anything for my confidence, though. Since I've been working on being more conversational (which for some reason seems to mean less energetic) and since I work clean (though I am not sure if that has anything to do with it) it seems like I'm getting less of a responce from the audience, especially compared to the dirtier comics. Since working blue is out of teh option, maybe more energy...

Tuesday: Last night I was on at the Bone; tenth or eleventh. I had four jokes I wanted to work on; and I went quick (like a bunny) only doing about 2:50. I'm still working on my stage persona. Chad Huff talked to me a bit about in, which inspired a new Bucket of Fish comic. The only problem is, I don't have a decent drawing program for my Mac yet. Once I get one, I've got about three strips I want to do.

Check out my MySpace blog for jokes on which I'm working.

Visit RooftopComedy.com. Watch videos. Laugh. Feel warm and fuzzy.

I can't make it work your way
Thanks but no thanks

web.mac.com/marcusisfunny

I was working on my website a lot this weekend and hopefully I'll have the new one up on my .Mac address soon. All the website working (and the fact I don't have internet at home) led to my not blogging about Saturday at the Landing. My bad. Saturday I hosted the 10:00pm show at the Landing for Kevin "Squishy Man" Barber and Stevie Caminiti. Janine hosted Friday and I heard very good things about her performance, which is cool. I think mine was a little rougher. There were a couple of minutes where it seemed the audience didn't want much to do with me, I had them laughing at some places, but not consistantly and certainly not contantly. They were weird.
Last night I was at Lloyd and Harry's with Jeff Wesselschmidt, Dan Walsh, Nick D, and Clayton. We had a small audience, and again, they laughed at parts of my set, but not all of it. I've been working on being conversational on stage, but I'm wondering if I'm too 'passive', in that I don't have the strength of voice or pressence that people care what I have to say. I wanted to try a joke last night, and it was in the back of my head before the show, but I completely forgot once it all started. I did get to try my new Child Abuse Prevention Awareness month joke, and I was thinking about my email joke-I think I'm going to stop keeping it recent. Instead of "I got dumped this week", just saying "I got dumped in an email once...". Show at the Bone tonight; Longhorn invited me out to his show, which would make for a long night, but I might stop by, he's invited me out numerous times. I guess I should find the address he wrote down... that might help.

?

Check out my MySpace blog for jokes on which I'm working.

[insert funny here]

Last night, I got to host at the Landing. I also had to make the list, whichis pretty stressful, as far as I'm concerned. Adam is letting me help with the pre-show meetings now, which is cool; but it's weird because I'm trying to do a good job. Adam and I decided if people don't make it to the meeting, they get put at the bottom, the later you show up, the later you go up. So if the meeting starts and we have 19 comics (plus one host) then whoever walks is after the meeting is 20th. So I have to make a list 1-19, and a list 20++. I don't want to short any of the 1-19's, so making sure I write every name once is kind of tricky, especially since I have bad handwriting.
Anyway, I basically ate it for my set. Either that crowd was collectively PMSing or my mood really showed on stage (I was not in a good mood after more than one person complained about their place on the list. Most of them let it go, after they saw I was serious, but one just kept hounding me to move them. Sorry, no). Anyway the show had about 25 comics in it and was pretty good. The crowd warmed up about 5 or 6 comics in, and the rest of the show went pretty well. I did forget one guy's name, which was embarrassing, but I'm terrible with names, so I hope he didn't take it as an insult.
One piece of good news; Adam asked me to host Saturday at the Landing. I'll be working with Steve Caminti and Kevin Barber aka "Squishy Man".
One piece of news news; my website might go offline for a bit, I'm transfering over to my .Mac account (http://web.mac.com/marcusisfunny and dropping my current web hosting provider, in the mean time I have to rebuild my site because if iWeb (the software that came with my MacBook) doesn't support the current styles and layout. I'll try to keep the blog up, even if I have to use the Blogger.Com's server.

Check out my MySpace blog for jokes on which I'm working.

That was a tasty burger.

Last night was Nikki Glaser's going away party/open mic at Lloyd and Harry's. I showed up at about 9:10 and Clayton handed me the list, which meant I was emceeing. My sets at Lloyd and Harry's are pretty polar, (one weak: strong / next week: terrible) so emceeing wasn't exactly what I wanted (eating it up front). But I was in a pretty good mood last night and I went up, did about 9:45 and had fun. I worked on the Child Abuse joke from Mason City, and a couple other things. I goofed off a bit, but enjoyed it. The crowd was mainly comics and regulars so it's not like I had a bunch of new or "surprising" material, but it was a good time nonetheless.

Check out my MySpace blog for jokes on which I'm working.

"Relax" dijo el portero
Por mi es honor recibir
Puede salir cuando quiere
Pero nunca yo partir

*beep* You have no Friends

Friday night I drove out to Mason City Limits to do a spotlight with Nikki Wilhelmina Glaser and Rob Busboom. The room was run by Chris Speyrer (who I have worked with before) and Dr. Gonzo. I did a spot for both shows and the crowds, though small, were good. The room itself was really cool, very well decorated and had an intimate feel (it sat about 90 to 100).
Before the show, I saw a weird advertisment/poster in a window and told Nikki about it and a joke I had come up with; she tagged it (once or twice) and helped me get it into an order I liked and I tried it out second show (I'd type it out here, but I'm planning on dropping it in my Myspace blog...). Anyway, the club was really cool, and I had a good time. They offered to let me crash and drive home Saturday, but my new laptop was calling (I didn't bring it because I figured they wouldn't have an internet connection, turns out they had wireless!). Stupid me. Strangely though, the city didn't have a cellular tower for Sprint (only Cingular, I think) so my phone didn't work. It was good to know I didn't miss anything, though. I got back home safely and pretty much just hung out at the Bone for the rest of the weekend.
Alright, time to do some "work"...