Practicing What I Preach

Friday August 31st, 2007 - Salt Lake City, UT

No sunshine for me today. Not on the outside anyway. On the inside it feels like Miami Beach. I spent the entire day working and didn’t leave my room until it was time to go to the club and do my shows. I got up at 5:15am and worked straight through until 7:30pm. The hotel maid knocked on my door at about 1pm and asked if I needed anything. I asked her for a clean towel and told her she didn’t have to make up my room. She was delighted.

It was one of those days when I needed to get caught up on a lot of different things and that’s what I did. I came out here to get work done and I hung out yesterday and enjoyed the scenery a little but today was a work day and I locked myself in my room like Howard Hughes. I didn’t go anywhere and didn’t want to. It felt too good to get my work finished.

Much of the day was just spent answering my huge stack of emails that keeps piling up. I try to get caught up and I do but then it gets way out of hand again and before I know it I am several hundred behind. It’s frustrating because I really do try to keep on top of it but it just gets away from me. Today I worked and worked until it is finally down to a number I can handle and before I leave I want to have it down to under 25. I have two addresses I use - one is exclusively for comedy business and the other is for everything else. I like it to be around even if I can help it and have no more than 10-15 emails on each address. I wish it was easy to keep it down that low but it surely isn’t. It’s a daily grind to maintain them.

I also took time to look over my contacts in all areas. Life is about contacts and I need a plan of attack if I want to change my future for the positive. All I really need is ONE to be successful in any area of my life and it could totally change everything for the better. ONE appearance on TV could get me started. ONE date with the right woman could lead to the family I always wanted. ONE business contact could change my whole income level too.

It’s a matter of knowing who my best contacts are and reconnecting with them all so my name can be on their radar when something comes up. I’m out of mind for a lot of people just because I’ve been doing other things. Today I looked through my contact list so I can start making a plan of who I need to hook up with and start networking again. I do have a nice list of people I’ve met through the years and now I need to go back and reconnect.

Between answering a mountain of emails and looking over my contacts I also worked on my act a little and also started organizing my classes too. There’s a new session coming up in a little over a week and I want as always to improve on the last ones and keep growing.

All this was very productive and I lost myself in it the entire day. My phone was off and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Yes it was work but it’s a labor of love and the time flew by. I am not even close to being finished and I don’t know if I’ll ever be but it was a big start.

This is what I picture success to be. I worked on several projects today and every one is FUN. I’m getting better at making plans rather than just flying into things blindly and part of the fun today was making plans for things that I have been wanting to do for YEARS.

Even though it was a super productive day I work at NIGHT. The reason I am here is to do shows at Wiseguys and the owner doesn’t care if I had a good day or not. He wants me to make his customers laugh so they’ll come back again and have somebody else do it.

I didn’t really get a chance to talk to the new owner much yesterday but today we had a few minutes in his office before the show. His name is Jack and he’s a very good guy from Wyoming of all places. He bought out Keith Stubbs but Keith still books the comedians. It took me by surprise that Keith sold it but he’s very busy with his radio job and also with a comedy club he runs in Ogden. He still has that one and sold this one to Jack. Smart move on his part and Jack seems to be doing a lot of things right. I can tell he’s an honest person and is trying to do all he can to make the club work. I hope he does, I want to come back.

This has always been a good practice place for me. The audiences here are not like any I have ever seen anywhere. If these people laugh at something it will destroy in other places. I like the challenge of that. They don’t drink much if at all so the drunk factor isn’t part of the mix and I absolutely LOVE that. I don’t think I’ve ever had one drunken heckler here.

Clean comedy is vital out here too. And it’s not just keeping swear words out either. It’s the subject matter and how it’s presented that determines whether it goes over or not. This place is very isolated and a large percentage of the audience has never been anyplace other than Utah for their entire lives. They are a bit naïve when it comes to pop culture reference points and I have to watch myself so I don’t go over their heads. They’re not stupid but to start pulling out obscure references is a good way to lose them quickly. It’s a challenge.

I enjoy challenges and I will always come back and play here as often as they’ll have me. It’s a place where I have to rely on my natural talent and instinct to get them to like me so I can take them into my world. They don’t respond to jokes here as much as the energy of a performer and that’s an intangible that I like to work on when I’m here. I did it tonight.

The shows weren’t packed tonight but they weren’t empty either. They skewed younger but there were some people my age here too. Both shows were hard work but it was good work. I vowed before both shows to NOT do my regular act but to vary and ad lib when it felt right and to sell ME rather than my jokes. I talked a lot about being a kid and did a lot more acting out of bits than I usually do and I slowed my pace down the whole evening. I know I can go up and slam an audience hard but this isn’t the kind of night to do that. It’s a night to expand and do some jazz type riffing and see if I can expand my persona or add a few tag lines to what I already have. I was totally in the moment and it was very solid.

I purposely opened with bits I usually put at the end and did bits at the end that I usually open with. I also left out my big closer because I know that works and wanted to practice using other material to close the show. I tried many things in each show and was happy for the chance to do so. I don’t think I have anywhere else where I can be as experimental as I can be here and still have the audiences like it as much as they do here. These people don’t know what it’s like to be anywhere else so they think I’m big stuff coming from Chicago. I don’t talk down to them and let them know I’m glad they’re here. And I am. This was fun.