Comedy School

Friday March 7th, 2008 - Vernon Hills, IL

Today was a one day intensive comedy training session. Even after all these years I’m at a place where I can still improve all aspects of my comedy and I hope that never changes.

Part of the fun of it all is to keep getting better and today I really put my time in. Since I had my computer stolen in December I’ve been trying to piece together notes and ideas so I could recover at least a part of my act outline I was in the process of making at the time.

It’s still frustrating because there is a lot of stuff I’ll never get back but there’s nothing I can do about that now. I went through all my old notes and notebooks and whatever else I could find that had to do with my material and put together a skeleton outline of what I’m going to work on for the rest of the year. I spent the whole day on it and it was hard work.

I typed it all out and it was 125 pages of bullet points and lines I’d thought of and ideas for future bits and I was excited to start rebuilding after my total loss. I’d been putting off this whole project because I was disappointed and angry about losing what I did but today I let that part go and focused on what I could salvage and moved on from there. Not easy.

But what IS easy? Nothing worthwhile. This will keep me plenty busy and it will be my constant job for the rest of my life. I know I can do a solid 45 minute show and in fact it’s been more than once that I’ve done two completely different 45 minute shows in the same night. That’s not the point. The point is to rebuild and restructure it from the ground up.

There can ALWAYS be improvement. Always. I have polished a nice show over a long time but resting on that will make it get stale. It’s humming pretty good now and if I kept doing what I’m doing I’d still get hired and make a living and nobody would question it.

That’s not good enough in my book and I have way higher standards for myself then an outsider would. Bookers and other comics are starting to look at me as a solid act and I’m very grateful for that but in my eyes I have way far to go. I had that fact driven home hard at Zanies in Vernon Hills tonight when I went to watch my old friend Carl LaBove work.

Carl is one of the best live performers of any kind I’ve ever seen. I’ve written about him before and I can’t say enough good things about him both as a person and a comedian. He was Sam Kinison’s best friend for years and after Sam died the discovery was made that a daughter Carl thought was his turned out to be fathered by Sam. Now THERE’S a story.

I met Carl when I first started out back in the early 80s. He performed at a placed called The Comedy Cellar in Madison, WI that was owned by Sam’s brother Bill. Carl was one of the first comedians I got to watch for a week and I learned a lot by doing it. He’s great.

All these years later I still learned by watching him work. There aren’t a lot of people in comedy I’d pay to see but he’s one of them. I didn’t have to so I took advantage of it and drove to Zanies in time to catch both shows. I sat there like I was back in Madison again.

Both shows had me doubled over in laughter and that’s VERY difficult to do to another comedian. We’ve seen it all and even if we like another performer we’ll sit there and stare blank faced at an entire show even if we’re enjoying it thoroughly. Not so with Carl. He’s a master performer and a comic’s comic and we were all in the back laughing like hyenas.

I tried to figure out what makes him so great. I’ve watched him perform for probably 25 years and his act is always changing. HE’S funny but I can’t put my finger on it as to why I am so taken by his performance. It’s nothing at all like mine and we talk about that a lot.

We talked about it tonight between shows. He’s a fan of mine too and he said that I can make him laugh out loud. Wow. Hearing that made my whole month. He said that he just goes up there with a loose structure and lets the moment take over. He has some ideas of what he’s going to do but he lets the situation dictate where it will go and it always does.

I’m a lot like that too and maybe that’s why we understand each other but our styles are totally different. Carl took acting lessons for three years out of high school and he makes his bits come alive from that. He is very animated on stage and acts out his jokes to make them even funnier. He’s very fluid up there and has an extreme likeability and gentleness.

He can use all the big swear words but it doesn’t seem dirty coming out of him. It seems real. He can do a poop joke if he wants and it’s not disgusting or juvenile when he does it whereas it would be for most other comedians. He can get away with almost anything and it’s amazing to watch. Nobody ever knows exactly what he’s going to do including Carl.

I studied his every move on stage for the first show and he was magnificent. I thought it was a great show and laughed as hard as a human being can laugh but when he came off I could tell he wasn’t happy with it at all. ‘They were a little stiff’ he said. I could relate.

I can be the exact same way. Many times I won’t like a crowd’s energy even though it’s only me that isn’t enjoying it. Everyone loved Carl’s show except Carl. That’s the part of being a performer that has to be experienced to understand. I understand his feeling fully.

The second show was equally spontaneous but also fantastic. He did about 95% totally different material and again just went with the moment. I’m sure part of that was because I was there and he knew I love to watch him work. He let it all go and I loved everything.

Why isn’t Carl LaBove a big star? I can’t figure it out. He’s been on the Tonight Show several times and Howard Stern and all that but the average schmuck on the street would have no clue as who Carl LaBove is. The truth is he’s one of the best live comics EVER. I’m proud to call him my friend and I was in awe of his pure talent all evening tonight.

I learned a lot and was thoroughly entertained at the same time. I am also glad I started the process of making my own show better and laying out the skeleton outline I’d put off for so long. I printed it all out and put it in a binder and will keep upgrading and adding to it whenever I can. This was a full day of comedy training and I loved every minute of it.