Cuckoo For Koozies

Saturday September 22nd, 2007 - Houston, TX

I am on the wrong planet. I always thought that and this week confirmed it even more. I didn’t have a very good week of shows at all but since I’ve got so many other things going on it doesn’t bother me as much as it usually does. Looking back on my lowest depression ruts it’s frequently been after a week of shows entertaining a bunch of boozed up maniacs.

It totally blows my mind how alcohol controls the lives of such a large number of people all over the world. It’s not just America. The whole world is drunk most of the time. It has always been a mystery to me and still is. I have problems too but I don’t try to crawl into a bottle of hooch to escape from them. I always thought it was stupid and a loser’s way out and I do even more this week after watching the entire week’s worth of gassed up Texans stare at me every night. Some of them didn’t stare. They talked among themselves like the show wasn’t even going and it was rude and unpleasant and I wouldn’t be sad at all if they drank themselves into a coma and/or ran their pickup trucks head on into a full gas truck.

I would feel bad for the gas truck driver because he’s probably just out there hustling up a buck to feed his family so I’ll change it to an oak tree. No, an oak tree is life and isn’t at fault so how about a brick wall? Ok, that’ll work. Let’s hose the carcasses of some boozer losers off a brick wall and donate their organs to people who are trying to live a good life.

That might start to cheer me up if even just a little. Steve Allen said back in the ‘50s that sooner or later every entertainer gets sick and tired of entertaining drunks. I hear that loud and clear every time I have a few shows like this but I don’t see it ending any time soon. It is a major portion of society and I am just sick of it. It bores me and I think they’re idiots.

But what do I know? Not much. Anything that I seem to like isn’t mainstream and never was. I’m not a prude and I’m not an elitist but I’ve been called both. Far from it. I enjoy a mental challenge in entertainment but the majority of everything is aimed at the low end of the totem pole and it doesn’t interest me at all. Why can’t smart things be popular too?

Because the majority of the public is just plain STUPID. They don’t think for themselves or try to better themselves by hard work. They work just enough to get paid and then they go out on the weekends and guzzle up as much alcohol as they can and their whole beings revolve around making sure they get drunk so they can have a ‘good time‘. Count me out.

There is a portion of society that likes what I do. Not many of them were here this week and it gave me all I could handle to make it through my 45 minute set each time. The guys in front of me were very nice offstage but I don’t know if either one was a good match for my comedy style. That’s not a stab at them personally or even professionally but it’s true.

Eddie Van Halen and Tim McGraw have two different styles of music. They could be on the same bill and chances are part of the audience would like one and not the other. That’s how I felt this week. The guys were very nice but their styles of comedy weren’t a smooth match with mine. It’s luck of the draw and sometimes it doesn’t always wind up meshing.

I learned a hell of a lot about marketing from the middle act this week. He was probably one of THE best salesmen I’ve ever seen. He politely asked me at the start of the week if I minded if he sold anything after the shows. That’s actually proper protocol for him to do it because I’m the headliner and if I really wanted to I could stop him from selling anything.

It’s a respect thing. It takes years to develop into a headliner and technically they should be the only ones to sell merchandise after the show because they earned that right. Lately a lot of middle acts have had to sell stuff just to survive on the road. Gas prices and the fact that most clubs haven’t raised their pay scale in 20 years or more force the issue with this.

I know headliners who will squelch all other sales but I don’t think that’s fair and I don’t do it. I know I’ve lost sales from it but I was a middle act and I know how much a couple of bucks can make or break a week so I let it go. A few times it has bitten me in the shorts and this week was one of them. I sat and watched this guy clean up and it really irked me.

Again, this was nothing personal against him and we talked about it all week. I respect a guy for making a living but his shirts weren’t very well made at all and they had only three words on them, one of which was a swear word. People were LINED UP to buy them and gawked at me like I was dishing out cod liver oil enemas with a six inch used rusty needle.

I have a nice CD and it looks professional and I paid $3.50 each for them just so I could have a quality product that I was proud to charge $10 for at shows. This guy has a CD too but it’s in a white paper wrapper with nothing on it and he also sells beer ‘koozies’. I have seen those things before but I didn’t know they were called a ‘koozy’. I guess I’M dumb.

Well he’s the one laughing now. I watched him sell TONS of those things at $5 each. He kept going through boxes of them and there were so many people hovering around him for one that they blocked my sales because I was standing right next to him. I was amazed as I watched five dollar bills fly out of wallets and then he’d up sell them to a t-shirt at an extra $15. He had the people at a drunk and vulnerable point and he took full advantage of that.

He would embarrass them into buying as much as he had to sell and he was quite good. I learned by watching even though I feel very uncomfortable with high pressure sales in that style. He walked out of there with a wad of bills each night and I bet he made more money for the week in merchandise than I made performing - all by selling less than stellar stuff.

I can guarantee you that I will be looking into the koozy business very shortly. The thing is that I would NEVER pay $5 for that or even $15 for a t-shirt. That’s what most comics sell their shirts for and I have a hard time selling it on stage but I need to get over that and do it correctly or resign myself to the fact that I am losing thousands of dollars every year.

I thought being a professional comedian meant just being FUNNY. That‘s not all. I need to use my act to sell products after the show. That’s why movies and TV and even radio is in business. They sell products. I need to do the same. I am in show BUSINESS. I need to be a lot smarter and use my show to earn more business. I sure learned a lot this week.