Tuesday July 31st, 2012 – Fox Lake, IL
I used to be shy about talking about it, but not anymore. I want to both be and be perceived as a world class entertainer. I want to be great, or at least the best I can be with the ability I have been given. In many ways I’ve overachieved, but in others I’ve fallen painfully short. I need to reboot.
Doing what I’ve been doing hasn’t gotten me where I wanted to go, so a change is needed. But where, and how much? If I knew that I’d have done it years ago. This is where experience comes in. I’ve been around the block enough times to know where I’m weak and where I have strength.
My main strengths are twofold in my estimation. I’ve always been able to come up with unique ideas in most situations and I’ve had the guts (or stupidity) to take action. In high school I had an old Chevy station wagon I decorated to look like the Batmobile. I painted it jet black myself with a brush and added bright yellow bats on the doors and flames on the hood. I drove it with pride.
Most people thought I was a total nut job, since I did it about a dozen years after the TV show went off the air and about ten years before the movie with Jack Nicholson playing the Joker was released. I had the bat franchise to myself, and there wasn’t a lot of competition for the throne.
Some people laughed at me, and others thought it was hilarious. I didn’t care about those who didn’t like it, I had fun. If I had to be stuck with a Chevy station wagon I was going to have fun with it. I made lemonade out of lemons, and I’d do it again. It got attention, and I even parlayed it into a picture of me standing by it in the Milwaukee Journal. If nothing else, it was different.
I’ve always been willing to try things, and more than once it has blown up in my face and left me standing there stewing like Wile E. Coyote after he missed catching the Road Runner for the five thousandth time. I’m never thrilled about failure, but it would be worse if I didn’t try at all.
That’s where I feel I am now. I’m on the edge of something big time, and if I don’t take a risk and try for it I’ll be miserable the rest of this life and the next. Yes, I’ve been having fun with all I’ve been doing lately and that’s great – but there’s more and I know it. I feel a need to chase it.
It’s not like I don’t have the ability. I’m not bragging, but I can hold my own with anybody on a comedy stage. It’s not an issue of being able to do it - it’s an issue of getting myself in position to be able to do it. That’s been my major weakness. I’ve been an extremely poor showbiz player. Not only that, I’ve chosen to stay away from the hubs of entertainment like New York and L.A.
With the internet changing show business and the entire world, I have to readjust myself to the new way business is transacted. It’s a completely new playing field, and everyone has to learn an entirely new way of playing the game. It’s like the forward pass being introduced to pro football.
In the back of my mind, I still wholeheartedly believe The King Of Uranus has the potential to get me to that next level. Unlike my home made Batmobile, the time is exactly right for this and I am not afraid to roll those cosmic dice one more time. In a clouded future, I clearly see Uranus.
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