Holiday Gigs!

This week I performed for two Christmas parties. One opened with a prayer, and it wasn't the party in Utah. I suppose it is a religious holiday after all. It's always tricky telling jokes at a party where you know there's probably a couple of Bishops or Priests in the crowd, interestingly enough they usually are the ones that laugh the hardest at the "iffy" jokes.

I learned a lot about myself as a performer this week. The audiences for these parties have higher expectations than ones for a regular night at a comedy club. First of all they pay a lot more, secondly the people who book the gig for you usually talk you up a lot. So I was a little nervous and it made me talk really fast. I told 45 minutes worth of jokes in just about 35. It's easy to get caught up in the philosophy that your strength as a comedian is based off of your ratio of laugh time to set up time, so you end up racing through the setup of a joke to get to the punchline. This can make you come off as more robotic and rehearsed, which is not what you would want from a live performance. Part of the appeal is to feel like you are part of the moment. So another thing I have been working with is engaging the audience a little more, just enough to make them feel a part of the show, but not too much that you loose control to hecklers. Talking with the audience helps make me feel in the moment more as well. I hate catching myself on autopilot and then realizing that I forgot to set up a joke. It's weird when a joke that usually kills gets crickets.

I have one more holiday show planned for new years eve. I think everyone will be drunk so I probably will be doing a lot more jokes about nudity and bodily functions, it's going to be an awesome night of comedy in Twin Falls Idaho!

Venues Opnening and Closing

So the gig at A Bar Named Sue only lasted about a month. The gig at the Complex is still going on on Tuesdays nights though, and since they don't have to pay any of the comics there is not really much risk for them to keep it going. The payoff for the comedians is that hopefully they will build up the fan base for the shows and start paying the comedians. There is also a huge potential for seating capacity there, in the thousands! They are looking at booking bigger named comedians for their larger rooms. If and when they do that the local comedians will have an opportunity to open for the bigger names in front of much larger crowds than Utah comedians are used to having.

In other news, I landed a New Years Eve gig in a country club in Twin Falls Idaho. The last time I performed there it went really well and they put us up in a nice hotel. I'm also booked to headline the West Valley Wiseguys January 7th and 8th.

Comedy VS Football

Whenever football season rolls around you can see a drop in audience attendance on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night.  Most comedians I talk to are pretty big fans of the game, myself included. It is America's most popular sport. So you would think I would have more football related jokes, but I don't. The only one I have is a pretty lame Micheal Vick joke. It's not even worth me typing it out here. As far as social cometary on the subject I could work on the premise of how popular the sport is but how non of the mother's want their boys playing the game. My wife pointed out how that might be different if they had woman's football and how many girls would love to tackle one another. Personally I would love to see more woman's football. The powder puff games were awesome! I would have been a bit intimidated though if they had girls football in high school to ever ask out the quarterback, especially if she was on steroids and had a mustache. Maybe I'm a bit shallow.

Week off for Halloween

This week I didn't do much as far as performing. I have been building a computer with my brother so I can have more power to write. It is good to take some time off though, there is a point where you are just spinning your wheels. This week I've just spent brainstorming about new things to write about. I have come up with a few new things to rant about...mostly how annoying it is after playing Fallout New Vegas for 20 hours my wife gets all up in my face about not being "productive enough".  She doesn't realize that our new project for the Writing for New Media class is to come up with our own video game idea. I was doing research babe!  I think I have about 120 more hours of research to do for this assignment before I feel like I'm ready to move on to the writing phase. I better get a few more games to play as well. I don't want to pigeon hole myself.

By the way how many times can the Mario Brother's franchise get away with the same stupid set up. The princess should go into hiding. At least the Zelda franchise comes up with different characters to represent Link. I guess it all comes down to brand recognition. Maybe I should work on branding myself. From here on out all of my jokes will be about kidnappings. 

Canceled Gig, Oh Well

So I didn't get to go to Boise this weekend. Apparently the Booker didn't tell the company who hired the comedians that the original Headliner had a family emergency so they hired me and my friend John Moyer. Everyone was cool with it except for one lady from the board of trusties. Private shows are tricky like that, but the booker should have cleared the switch with the company before booking us. Oh well what can ya do.

On a brighter note I got to see Kevin Nealon from SNL and Weeds. He announced that he doesn't really smoke Weed and all the pot heads in the crowd moaned. He said he was getting old and if he smoked weed he would probably get real tired and hungry and how that's a dangerous combo. You could fall asleep with food in your mouth, and that could be really bad cause it could spoil by the time he wakes up, and when he wakes up his first instinct would be to chew the food and swallow it resulting in food poisoning.

I'm working on booking my next WiseGuys headlining gig. Right now it's scheduled for January 7th and 8th. It may move up to November though depending on a cancellation. Either way I need to write some fresh jokes.

New Jokes

Over the Fall break I performed at an open mic and then at the Trolley Square WiseGuys with comedian Karen Rontowski. She is one of the best female comedians I have worked with. You should definitely check her out.

I worked on a couple new jokes this week. My wife helped me with the wording so I have to give her some credit... "One day, my home town had so many childbirths that the water tower broke."
Pause for applause... thank you. Thanks you for reading my newest one liner. I hope it has brought you great joy and will give you something to talk about at thanksgiving dinner. I'm still trying to find out if the joke hits home more in Utah because of all the big families or if it would work anywhere. Well the only way to find out is to test it on the road. Luckily this Saturday I get to travel to Boise to perform for a private gig. We'll see how it works there. 

Also a little side note for Boise, if you are ever there go eat Breakfast at a place called Goldy's it is awesome!  

New Venue "The Complex"

This Tuesday 15 or so local comedians showed up to the first open mic at a new live music and performing arts venue in downtown Salt Lake City, "The Complex". The room set up for comedy nights fits an intimate sized crowd of 200, but the cool thing about this venue is that it has 4 different sized rooms. The same people who book Saltair and The Avalon are booking bands and DJ's for The Complex. There are many artists out there who will draw different sized crowds and you don't want to put 200 people into a room designed for 1200. The largest room at The Complex seats 2500.

The comedy shows are set up for Tuesdays and Thursdays right now. Tuesdays are open mic and you can look up Ben Fuller on Facebook to sign up if you are interested. Or if you want to see a variety of working comedians you can go on Thursdays, shows start at 7:30 and go tell whenever the show ends.

I'm working on a new joke that I tried at open mic this week, "I want to create a reality TV show called 'Kingdoms at War' where groups of people are given Kingdoms to Take over. And here comes the punchline...ready, as the producer I would keep the 'Royalties' HA! get it?"

Anyways puns are the lowest form of comedy they say, but when you can't think of a fart joke, a good pun works great with drunk crowds. Here's a new sports joke for all you soccer fans out there...if you love soccer you'll love my comedy cause I have one really good punchline every 45 minutes.

Learn From Watching Others

This week I didn't perform anywhere. Instead I went out to see 26 year veteran comedian Andy Kindler. He was a judge this year on Last Comic Standing. Me and the other local comedians ended up chatting a bit with him between shows. He told us how he grew up in Queens and moved out to LA over 20 years ago, and that he moved out there for a reason other than comedy. He said that was good because a lot of comedians move out to LA with a time frame of success, and if they don't reach it by that time they give up.

At the other club in West Valley the big names were Shawn and Marlen Waynes. It was fun to hear Andy tell us of the time he poked fun at the Waynes brothers on Madd TV, something to the extent that the Waynes' brother's were propagating a negative stereotype for African Americans. He said that it was like if his people had created a sit com called Jewie about a stereotypical Jewish boy who carried out "Jewie" shenanigans all day. He then acted out a bit of the sketch for us then told us that the Waynes' brothers refused to perform on Madd TV after that sketch.

As far as the performance, I saw the late show on Saturday night, and I don't think that a lot of the audience knew what to expect from Andy Kindler. His style of comedy is heavy on the self deprecation, and more from the school of Mel Brooks. I enjoyed it, but many of the late show crowd did not. I found out later that the rest of the crowds that weekend were much better, but it was good to see how he interacted with an audience that didn't seem to connect as well as you would expect. He seemed to have a good time making fun of the young girls in the front row who kept texting throughout the show. They walked out eventually, as did the rednecks in the back of the room who didn't seem to get his brand of comedy. You would think people would do a little research on who the headliner was before going out to a comedy show. There were a few die hard fans though, just not enough to carry the energy of a great show. But sometimes the low energy shows bring out the true grit of  a comedian and can show more of the human side of his craft.

Master of Ceremonies

One of the hardest jobs as a comedian is the master of ceremonies or MC for short. It is the MC's job to warm up the crowd for the rest of the comedians on the show. This weekend I was the MC at two different venues. Friday and Saturday I worked the downtown comedy club wiseguys, then Sunday night I worked at A Bar Named Sue. It was their very first night trying out comedy and it showed. The sound system was being tweaked as I was trying to warm up the crowd. It's already hard enough to break the ice with a new crowd so when you compound that with them not being able to hear, it's a going to be a long 15 minutes, but by the time the headliner got up the kinks were worked out and the crowd was able to get into the show.

At the other club the shows were a lot of fun. I was able to see a difference in my energy level fluctuate between shows. When you have a really good crowd it can spark a lot of energy. I definitely feed off the energy of the crowd and visa-verse.  

I think the bar venue will get better. It's also a free show which lowers the expectations of the crowd a bit. Which can be a good thing or a bad thing. It's good to have more venues open up though, they just take a lot of work to get off the ground.

Short Films and Marketing

Many of the local comedians like to get together to make short films. This is the era of viral videos. If you can build a following online you are at a huge advantage over other comedians. Many bookers expect the comedians to market themselves and get butts in seats. Advertising on TV and radio isn't cheap enough to justify running an ad campaign for a $10 a ticket comedian.  Here is a link to a short we made this week, please feel free to help make it go viral.  Birding Short.

Utah is a very tricky market to sell to. There are those who want to watch super clean comedy, and those who don't. It's hard to please both sides. If people don't know who the comedian is that is headlining they don't know what to expect. That is why the clubs in Utah have tried to establish a reputation for clean comedy, so people can know what to expect. That means that the more gritty comedy has taken it's place in various bars. One new venue is opening up that will market to a more broad audience. It's called the Complex. It's located just west of the Gateway mall.

Another newer venue for comedy is A Bar Named Sue. Next Sunday night I will be hosting the show. Blake Bard and Dustin Brock are the Headlining and Feature acts. I'll report back on how that show works out.

Wedding Gig and AA Show.

So my first comedy show at a wedding went over a lot better than I feared. I had never done comedy at a wedding before, so all I had to go off of was other comedians horror stories. I made sure to keep it as squeaky clean as possible. Luckily I was only on the clock for 20 minutes. I kept starring at the grandparents. I figured, as long as they were laughing I was good.

Last weekend was another first. I did a ten minute set for an Alcoholics Anonymous party, to help raise money for their chapter. Needless to say they were all sober, so it definitely felt different from a night club or bar gig. It was a fun show. There were 8 or so comedians on the show, so I'm glad I went up early before the crowd lost their energy. Both crowds They liked my jokes about my wife not talking to me for eight hours after I told her to shut up. That seems like a good wide premise.

As for upcoming gigs, I may have a bar gig lined up for later in the month, and I usually go to open mic nights on Wednesdays. Those are always a special treat.

Short Introduction

Have you ever wondered what it's like having an up and coming stand up comedy career, telling jokes in front of tens of people? Well look no further. In this blog you will have a personal view of my progress as a stand up comedian.

I have one scheduled gig as of right now. It is a private wedding party at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. I honestly fear for my life. I plan to open my set by telling a joke about plural marriage. I will check back in after the gig to let you all know how it went.

If you would like to see a clip of my comedy here's a link.  Comedy Clip