His name is Jules Winnfield

Tonight's show at the Forum started really late. We literally had 4 audience members at 8:00 and only one more person showed up by 8:30 when we started the meeting. I kind of harped on the other comics pretty bad about not bringing people out. I cursed a bit, and I feel kind of bad, especially since I didn't bring anyone. However I did leave over 90 comments on different myspace pages for my "friends" in the St Charles/St Peters area; so that helps my conscience a little bit. Before the show, I wanted to make it a relay-race/tag-team/piggy-back deal, where each comic brings up the next comic. Almost not one was able to smoothly bring up the next comic, including myself.
On stage, I played around with my Mia Wallace joke a bit, more talking out my ideas than actually delivering the joke and I talked about my recent (and failed) attempts at quitting smoking so I closed on my joke about "Justin's plan to quit smoking". When I tried to bring up Dan Walsh at the end of my set I said, "That's it for me, keep it going for your next comic," and I forgot who I was bringing up. Like I said, not smooth.
The best news of the night though is that Al offered me the chance to emcee at a show Saturday in Ft Leanordwood with Dan O'Sullivan and Jim Stout, but he said he'll still let me emcee Thursday and Friday.

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

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

You did not desert me

Calling it a night

The Funny Bone's website was down a bit, and so there wasn't a list published this week; so when the comics who showed up showed up, pretty much all of us got on stage. The audience was a little weird, though; very greedy with the laughs pretty much all night. I did about the same set I did last week, but I added (or tried to add) a bunch of stuff to the Mia Wallace joke. There's so much that came out while I was writing yesterday, I'm not sure how I'm going to work on all the ideas. It seems like it might be too much information for a crowd to handle, but it's all good enough to be told. I'll play with it tonight and the rest of this week at the Forum.

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

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

163 hours late

I'm a week late writing about last Tuesday's show, and my only excuse is my buddy Leroy was in town and we played computer games ALL THROUGH his Thanksgiving vacation. From what I remember of Tuesday's performance, my Married woman joke is getting close, but needs some tinkering, and both my gay bar and gay friend jokes are pretty much back in the set because they're doing well and I'm enjoying doing them. Not sure if I'm on tonight or not, if I am, I'll try to write about it before Christmas.

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

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

Work vs. games; decisions, decisions

Both shows Saturday were awesome; the first one because the there were a TON of people in the audience, and the second because I made super progress with my Mia Wallace joke. Both of my sets went really well, and I didn't have to go too over the top to sell my set. Since Tommy had borrowed a camera to film his sets, I offered to help him make a DVD with the best set. We were supposed to work on that at his place after the second show, but we ended up playing Call of Duty 4. I like to think I put up a good fight for it being my first time playing, but Tommy won. A lot.

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

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

Dr. PC

Friday's shows at Fairview (for me) were very different. The first show, I seemed very relaxed and conversational on stage and I had an amazing set. Second show I was a little more excitable on stage, but I don't think that affected my set as much as the temperament of the audience, they were a little stiff. However the rest of the second show sailed along smoothly. Tommy gave me a tag after Thursday's show, and I tried working it in, but he and I both agree I need to add a "beat" to let the audience laugh instead of just continuing on with the joke.

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

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

Deep end of the car pool

Tonight I got to emcee for Tommy Johnagin and Ricky Guitierrez. The show was awesome, Tommy and I both had great sets, and so did Ricky even though he has bronchitis or something crazy-bad like that. The audience wasn't as big as I had hoped, because it was "Free Wings" night, and college night and SIUE apparently did an article on Tommy and advertised the show. On the ride back, since Tommy and I carpooled, Tommy and I talked comedy and he gave me a line for my blind skier joke, which I really like, and we also "talked shop" a bit, about writing, video games, and getting away with touchy material. The weirdest part of the night, though, was when Anthony and Chrissy asked me to fix their computers (since I had just done some work on the one at the club). Since I only know how to fix problems I've encountered I'm always scared to agree to fix someone else's machine, since there's the possibility of me making it worse. But then again, I have a hard time saying no to people, so I said I'd take their computers home Friday and try to fix them Saturday. I can't wait for the shows this weekend, because I'm hoping to switch around my material a bit, I literally had no idea what I was going to do tonight until I started talking. Those sets are usually pretty fun, but it makes me nervous because if you're not paying attention to what you're saying, things could go terribly wrong.

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

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

Wednesday the 14th

Last night's show at the Forum was different than normal; we had two or three new guys, one of whom brought a lot of people, as did Stevie P, who is back from California. I can't remember all the jokes I did, but I know the Gay bar joke and the Gay friend joke went over well, which is awesome because they're both "newly returned" to the rotation of jokes. Initially I did not think I was going to make it to the show, because I thought I'd be emceeing at Fairview, but I learned Tuesday that they aren't having a Wednesday show this week, so I called Al and he told me to come on out. I'm trying to add a bunch of myspace friends at the moment in and around St. Peters so that I can get people to come out to the contest (which has been moved to 5th, I believe). It'd be cool if a bunch of people came out to see ME, especially since I can't win since I'm hosting.

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

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

I still won't EAT bananas

Yesterday afternoon, I drove to Cincinnati to Go Bananas Comedy Club for their Pro-Am Open Mic. Since I am having such a hard time finding a job, I really want to try getting to more clubs and making more connections, and now seems like a perfectly reasonable time to do that, unless you mention that traveling costs money or something based on fact. Anyway, my drive started out terribly because I kept forgetting stuff and home, and had to air-up my front tires of my Taurus, and I literally was in the car and turning-around-and-getting-stuff and leaving-my-place again for about a half an hour before I actually got away. I was super afraid that such a bad beginning would make the rest of my trip suck, but much to my amazement, it did not. I found the club easily, they had an abundant supply of coffee and they had a HUGE crowd for a Pro-Am show. While there I bumped into Chris Wagel, whom I had met in St Louis couple of months ago, and so I hung out with him which was cool because I was a little worried I wouldn't know anyone at the club, but everyone was VERY friendly to me. During the pre-show meeting, I learned that they were going to do the show "piggy-back" style or like a relay race where each comic brings up the next comic. I'd never seen a club actually do that, but it was really cool to watch, because some of the transitions from FINAL JOKE to INTRO were a little hard to spot, but some of them were flawless. After the show, I gave Jeff my promo package and we talked a bit about booking, and then I apologized for leaving right after the show and he said it was cool. And then I got in my car and drove back to St. Louis, I left at about 10:00pm EST (or 9:00 CST) and got home around 2:30. And then I went IMMEDIATELY to bed, because I was tired.

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

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

Three's and Five's

Tuesday night was a pretty small crowd at the Funny Bone, and since we had quite a few comics, Matt had me light everyone a little early. As a result, I was only able to do about 3 minutes. I opened with my old Alzheimer's joke, because I thought of a new tag for it, and it did not go over very well at all. My new tag is "I really need 12 dollars", and some dude heckled "One for every year", to which I replied "Yeah, because I look like I'm twelve". I don't think my response made much sense, but neither did his heckle, and so I'd say we tied, or whatever. Unless you give me points for having the microphone or a sweet beard, then I totally win. But my third and fourth jokes (the one about the gay bar and the one about my gay friend) totally got the crowd on my side (I felt). I closed on a joke about my parents being stingy when I was a child. I'm pretty happy with the set because the last joke and the gay friend joke are hopefully going to turn into keepers, and that's super exciting.

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

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

I'm not sure what happened

Joel Thornton invited some guys down to Sulard to Trueman's Bar and Grill on Monday where he's hoping to get a weekly open mic started. Myself, Gabe Kea, Andrew Topping and Cory Rayburn all showed up. We didn't start until around ten, and we only had an audience of four to eight (including on waitress), and we went relay-race style where each comic would bring up the next comic without ever discussing an order. That's a fun game I like to play simply because it makes you be ready or go up and wing-it. I wung-it. For some reason, I decided to work on some of my suicide material, and I also talked about my mom and the stuff my old coworkers and I did to make fun of each other. Since there wasn't an audience per se my manner of speech and presentation was very different. Gabe said I looked comfortable, which I take as a compliment. Anyway I tried a very similar thing Tuesday at the bone and just came off as depressed. I think I really made the audience uncomfortable, but usually talking about suicide can do that, so it's not like I'm shocked. I believe there's a right way to present it, or there's a funny way to look at it, but I just haven't figured it out yet, so I guess I have to keep brain-storming.

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

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