Dobie Maxwell's 'Dented Can' Diary: Overnight Frustration

Wednesday September 25^th, 2013 – Fox Lake, IL

   Less than 24 hours ago, I was feeling pretty good about myself for putting time in working on a part of my job that has traditionally been my least favorite. I sucked it up, plowed through, and at the end of the day I thought I had myself some tangible results. Overnight, most of it is no more.

   This is why I get so unbelievably frustrated with the business end of comedy, and it never ends. The names change, but the situations stay the same. Everything is a hair triggered house of cards, and it doesn’t take more than a tiny ripple to make everything come crashing down. It’s a bitch.

   Of the five days I thought I booked solid yesterday, two of the them (a weekend) were stricken from my calendar when someone from the booking agency called and said someone else working in the office gave it to another comedian and didn’t cross it off the list of open dates. So I’m out.

   I don’t know who the other comedian is, but it really doesn’t matter. He or she is farther up the food chain than me, and that’s how it is. There’s no warning, no substitute backup gig, and worst of all no pay. It happens all too often, and booking agents can do it because they know we are all looking for work and don’t want to burn any bridges these days. I have to shut my yap and eat it.

   There never seems to be a two way street with these kinds of situations. If I happened to find a higher paying booking for the same date and backed out, chances are the agency would be angry and vengeful go the point where they may not ever use me again. I have seen it happen before.

   Another one of the dates was a fill in I thought I’d picked up, but it turned out there was a mix up with the actual date. The comedian who asked me to fill in told me one date, and it wasn’t the actual date of the gig. It was an honest mistake, but I am not available to do the date that’s open.

   That booking agent had no choice but to look for someone else and now I’m out that money as well. I already had it spent, but now it’s not coming. I am already booked on the date in question, but it would have been a sweet little bonus to pick up the extra cash in the same week. Not now.

   Then, one of the other dates that pays via direct deposit into my checking account sent an email and said I have to reconfirm my banking info with routing numbers and all that, and I had to take time to go to the bank and get someone to fill everything in and fax it to the gig. They faxed it to the wrong number, and the person in charge didn’t get it so I had to do everything all over today.

   The people at the bank were nice about it, but it was a hassle to wait in line and have to have it all done over again. It took about two hours out of my day after everything was done, and there’s still no guarantee I did it right. The person at the gig told me I’d hear back when it was received.

   Stuff like this drives me up the wall, across the ceiling and back down the other wall across the room. No matter how hard I try to psyche myself up, things like this happen and it kicks me right in my self esteem and makes me feel like I’m small potatoes. This isn’t what I was born to do.

   I was born to be on a standup comedy stage or behind a radio microphone entertaining a large audience. Making booking calls and faxing bank account numbers was never what I aspired to.