April Smarts

Tuesday April 1st, 2008 - Lake Villa, IL

I never liked April Fool’s Day. It’s probably the little brother in me. I’m not for a day of ‘fun’ where it’s ok for every idiot who has seen a Three Stooges movie to go hog wild for a day and try to wreak havoc on innocent people. Nothing good usually comes from that.

It’s like the wacky morning radio shows who do the prank call gimmick. I never found that funny either. ‘Hey, you’re husband has testicular cancer…’ and then they wait for the shocked reaction before revealing it’s just a prank. Ha ha ha. My ribs. Please make it stop.

If someone had fun today with lameoid stunts like that then good for them. I had a more satisfying day. Marc Schultz called and wanted to do lunch but this time it had a purpose. We normally go just to hang out but today I had to sign a contract for a show in the area a couple of weeks from now. It’s a Thursday night and the pay is pretty good. I’ll take it.

Things are starting to trickle in with Marc. He puts me on his list of possible acts people can choose from and I’m starting to get chosen. I’ve paid my dues and that’s how it works to be considered for stuff like this. I’m not on the list of many bookers but Marc is one of my biggest supporters. He knows I’ll do the job for him and not be a pain to deal with.

There are a couple of other gigs I’m up for that pay even better and those are later in the year. I don’t have them in stone yet but I’m in the final consideration and the odds are not astronomical. If I don’t get them it means the event has decided to not go with a comedian so it’s not like I’m up against other performers. IF they use a comedian I’ll be their man.

These are the kinds of gigs I need to start doing more. They pay in one night what I’d be making for a week in most clubs and they’re in the Chicago area so travel isn’t an issue. It doesn’t hurt at all that I’m on WLS either. For once all these things are finally paying off.

After lunch I skipped my normal lap through the thrift store in Waukegan. I love seeing all the new junk but today I was really focusing on my time management situation. That is not something that’s going to make me rich any time soon so I decided to skip it this time.

Instead I went home and made a list of the top 50 people I’m going to put in place to get me started with my Uranus Factory Outlet business. That was no easy task. I chose people who I thought were the best and most creative minds at their various strengths. Some had creative skills, others had money skills and still others were supportive of the concept.

I will hopefully use a lot more than 50 people to get this up and running but I wanted to choose a startup group with whom I will be communicating and working with in the next little while to get this all rolling. That made a lot better use of my time than finding junk.

I also took an hour and worked on my movie script idea. I need to get that done and it’s been bothering me to the core that I’ve let it sit there yet again. Getting it out of mothballs felt great and I couldn’t be happier that I put two very important projects back in motion.