Letterman Audition

Monday November 5th, 2007 - Lake Villa, IL

My plate is full and getting fuller. It’s a good thing in some ways but I am stretching my time and attention span a little thin for my liking. I feel like no matter what I do everything else is getting neglected and that’s frustrating. I’m at my capacity now and I can feel it. If I take on anything else right now I’ll lock up and nothing will get done. I need to cut back.

The one thing that’s suffering is my act. I haven’t spent any time trying to make it grow and that’s not good. I’ve got a ton of new ideas to work into the mix but I have not gotten to them because I’m focusing on my business idea and comedy classes and working on my movie script and I’ve made progress on all those things but now my act is starting to rust.

I’ve been doing comedy long enough to be able to pull something off every night and the audience and bookers don’t know but I do and I don’t like it. Like anything else it takes a concentrated effort every day to keep improving and I’ve been letting some weeds grow in my comedy garden. The way to stop it is to immediately spend some time working on it. If I give it some focus for the next few weeks I’ll get back in a groove but at what expense?

Just because I said in my head I’m no longer a comedian first but an entrepreneur doing comedy doesn’t mean I should stop working on my act. The crowds don’t know that and I don’t want to ever go up there and give them anything but my very best show. Is that ego? Maybe it is but I wouldn’t want to get a performer’s scraps so I don‘t want to give mine.

Time management is my biggest hurdle right now. I have to decide what’s important and what I can live without. Actually I am glad I don’t have a family in some ways because I’d really be in a pickle trying to squeeze it into my schedule. I’m already overloaded as it is. I would hate to have a house full of kids and a wife who resent me for always being gone.

I’ve got some time in the next few weeks to get caught up on a lot of things. I will finish up my current class in early December and that will be done for a while. I love teaching for many reasons but that’s probably the thing that will end up getting cut. I’m just too busy. I would like to put an online course together and keep it going somehow but that could be a big outlay of time and money to get that going. I’ll have to see how the business idea goes because that’s in all likelihood what I’ll mostly be working on for the majority of 2008.

And if I needed another thing to worry about I just found out I’m getting an audition for the David Letterman show this coming Sunday night. The guy who books the show is also a comedian and is coming to Zanies to look at Chicago’s best acts. I was asked to be there and that’s a total honor. I’ll get to meet him face to face and do a six minute set for him.

Even though there’s a writer’s strike it’s still a great opportunity. I am a strong club act but TV is a different animal. I’ve prepared myself for a lifetime to go up and showcase for a guy like this but it’s easy to over think the situation and second guess myself to death. If I just go up and do what I do I’ll be fine. I can’t make him like me so that’s stupid to even attempt. What I can do is my very best six minute set and then he’ll decide if he likes it.