Tweaking The Act

Thursday January 17th, 2008 - Frankfort, IL/Lake Villa, IL

Fun day today. I got some work done in the morning and then went to have lunch with Marc Schultz. We went to the Old Country Buffet which we sometimes do on our lunch excursions. What a great freak show. The collection of nuts in that particular place keeps us entertained through our meal. It’s always better to get a show with the admission price.

After lunch I headed to my post office box in Chicago to pick up mail and drop off my laundry at the dry cleaners next door. There is a very nice Asian family that owns it and I take my shirts there even though it’s a little more expensive than I could get them done in Lake Villa. They’re just great people and I see how hard they work and I support them.

I then went to pick up Jerry Agar at WLS and we headed down to Frankfort, IL to meet up with my friend Max who was driving up from Springfield to meet Jerry. Max is a long time radio guy as is Jerry and they’d never met each other. I try to make connections with people when I can and this one was easy. Both had heard me talk about the other one and they are both in the same business. All I had to do was sit and let them talk to each other.

Max took the day off from his morning show in Springfield and Jerry came along to see the venue in case we want to do shows there in the future sponsored by the station. It’s an out of the way place for both of us because we both live north. Frankfort is WAY south of Chicago and not easy to get to. It’s 102 miles one way from my place. Milwaukee is 45.

The shows there are booked by Ken Sevara who is on our ‘Jerry’s Kidders’ panel. It’s at a place called ‘CD & Me’ which is also a client of WLS so it works all the way around. It was a good opportunity for Jerry to get on stage and say hi to some listeners and the other member of the panel Tim Slagle also showed up and did some time. It was a fun time and a practice run for future shows hopefully. It was low pressure and the audience loved us.

Max stayed for the show and met the other guys and it was a fun time all around. This is not a career builder but for a Thursday night in January to make a few bucks hanging with friends wasn’t a bad thing. The weather was freezing and it kept the attendance down. We had about 60 people but those who came out were there to laugh and they all paid a cover.

I used this show to work on my act. I knew I wouldn’t get fired and these people had no idea what to expect so I tried a lot of new things tonight. I also totally mixed up my order to force myself to tie things together. I did my big closer in the middle and I never do that but tonight I did so I could see what can follow it. This is the kind of situation to do that.

I have nothing to prove here. Ken is going to have me back and the people were having a good time anyway so it offered me a chance to experiment a little. I got some big laughs even though the order was a lot choppier than usual but nobody else knew that. I was able to sell the bits I knew would work and I ad libbed some good lines too. Everyone laughed when they were supposed to and even though I knew I wasn’t at full strength nobody else did. Future audiences will get a better show because I was able to start building it tonight.