The Disk Of Hope

Monday December 31st, 2007 - Lake Geneva, WI

The ball drops. The year ends. The mind wanders. What’s in store in the new year? Who will I be working with a year from now? Where will I be living? When will I get my break? How am I going to turn a goofy idea I had in the shower into a moneymaking enterprise? I thought about all of that today as I continued sorting through all of the boxes in my room.

I am planning on making 2008 the absolute best year of my life to date. I am still young enough to enjoy life a little but old and wise enough to have a plan as to how to pull it off. I have already put myself in a pretty good position for this year and have already prepared more than I ever have for any year I have ever lived. I feel confident and am ready to do it.

The one thing I won’t suffer from is a lack of effort. I will put forth a complete and total pursuit of my dream this coming year and transform myself in many ways. Everyone has a dream and we all say we’re going to do it ‘someday’. Someday begins NOW. I’m doing it. That’s the thing that’s taken me so long to get to. I’m all out of excuses and it’s go time.

I did catch a break today while digging through my boxes. I found a backup disk for my computer that I had done back in June when I was having some problems with it. Seeing it in the box made my heart skip a beat and I snatched it out like a hungry black bear grabs a fish out of a stream. I held it like it was the Holy Grail and took it to my new computer for the ultimate test and BINGO. I didn’t lose everything after all! I recovered a lot of stuff.

It’s six months old and I didn’t get everything back but I did get the bulk of things like a list of bookers’ addresses and that alone saved me a major hassle. I also had many comedy ideas I thought I lost and also my compiled list of street jokes that took me a few years to put together. I also got most of my comedy class worksheets I thought were gone. Whew!

I was walking on air when I saw that I had gotten a minor reprieve from the universe. It still irks me that some hammerhead would yank my computer in the first place but that’s a moot point. It’s over and he did. Or she. Don’t want to be sexist. Women are qualified for the job of thief too. Or maybe it was a they. Some traveling gypsies needed a nice laptop.

Whomever was responsible for taking my personal property doesn’t matter. I wish a pox upon their entire bloodline no matter who it is. I hope the crack they bought with the cash they got for selling it makes the rest of their teeth rot out so they have to gum their supper in their trailer until ‘COPS’ comes on so they can watch their family tree rot even more. If I can’t have the pleasure of caving their skull in myself at least I can wish justice for them.

But now that’s enough of bellyaching about it. It’s over and I need to move on. Finding that backup disk gave me a glimmer of hope that at least I’m not TOTALLY screwed like I thought I was at first. This is a baby step to getting back to ground zero again. I will use whatever info I can use and start rebuilding my new files in my new computer and protect all of them so this will NEVER happen again. I learned a very important lesson from what happened and it still stings but now it’s a little less. Why do lessons have to be so painful?

This was a pretty painful year all around in many ways. My comedy mentor C. Cardell Willis passed away in February after a long illness. He was more of a father to me than my real father was but unfortunately that wouldn’t take much. I don’t want to insult Cardell by comparing him to the callous lout my father was so I’ll leave it there. I loved Cardell.

Then a week after Cardell died my real father did too. That’s still very odd to me. They were about as opposite as two people could be but both had a profound affect on my life. I got the call my father died and I felt nothing. No emotion at all. It was all just the hollow ending to a sad story and now it’s all over. We never had a relationship and we never will.

My good friend Tom Green also passed away this year. Tom and I got along great and it really broke my heart that he died so young. What a super fantastic entertainer he was and even more so a person. Tom helped everyone on a show be better and I loved working his Elvis shows through the years. I wish we could have kept the tradition going. It was fun.

It wasn’t all death and doom this year though. I did get to meet my hero George Clinton in person in May down in Houston. That was a wonderful experience I’ll never forget. We got to spend about an hour hanging out and we hit it off right away. It was a thrill to hang with someone I’d admired so much and then I heard his manager say how George thought I was funny and was looking forward to hanging out with ME. That’s as good as it gets!

I also got to hang out just this week with Tom Wilson who played Biff in the Back To The Future movies. That was also a highlight of the year and I loved it. I also got booked a lot and worked all over the country yet again. I had wonderful weeks in Calgary to start the year and was in San Francisco and Memphis and Houston and Colorado Springs and a double shot in Salt Lake City too. I also went to Pittsburgh and Toledo and even had a fun gig in Duluth. Plus there was all that work from Zanies in Chicago. That’s my home club.

I taught some comedy classes and met some wonderful people along the way. The fun of the comedy classes is watching the graduation shows and we had several of those this year to enjoy. I worked very hard teaching them and even though I had the money drained from me I still enjoyed the teaching part. I put all I have into the classes and it’s very satisfying.

Tonight’s show at the Grand Geneva Resort in Lake Geneva, WI was a piece of cake. It was only one show at 9:30 and we were done by 11:00. I got to work with Mark Shilobrit who I’ve known for going on 25 years. He started before I did back in Milwaukee and had also come up through the ranks with C. Cardell Willis as a mentor. We both appreciate it.

I have no idea what the future will bring. I’m surprised I have made it this far. I still have a lot of regrets and wish I could change some things that I just can’t change. I wish I had a time machine to go back and undo some things but I don’t. I have to play my dealt hand.

2008 is now here. The past is done warts and all. As long as I have breath in my lungs it gives me a chance to improve myself and that’s what I’m going to do. I will use my life to spread as much laughter and good will as I can in 2008 and beyond. You can bet Uranus.