Testing Positive

Wednesday July 30th, 2008 - Rosemont, IL/Lake Villa, IL

Looks like today is the day I get my first test of staying in my positive groove. I heard of three comedy clubs that went under and the end doesn’t look to be in sight any time soon. I have talked with several fellow comedians in the past day or so and everyone is feeling a MAJOR pinch of late. Summers are usually slow anyway but clubs closing doesn’t help.

The ones that closed are the Funny Bone in South Bend, IN, a club in Fairview Heights, IL which used to be a Funny Bone but was renamed and I don’t know what the new name was and also a place called Nitwits in Sioux City, IA. Those were all clubs I would’ve put on my radar to start reconnecting with and at one time or another I’ve worked at all three.

This is not good news for comedians and comedy in general. Last month it was the club in Cedar Rapids, IA called Penguins that closed because of the flood that wiped out all of the town. Several other places have been having really small crowds and nobody knows if and when they’ll close either. This has been a hellacious summer for a lot of comedians.

As luck would have it I was taking some time off anyway and it couldn’t have come at a better time but now I need to start delving back into the mud again and try to get my piece of the action in an ever shrinking club market. This is a numbers game and those numbers are getting smaller as far as available dates to go around for a large number of comedians.

This is a perfect example of supply and demand. There are a limited number of clubs to work and all of them have 50-52 weeks a year to fill with usually three act shows. There’s an opener/emcee slot which is usually filled by a local. Then it’s the ‘feature’ or ‘middle’ act who usually does 25-30 minutes. Most places have enough local or regional people to cover that spot quite easily every week. Then there’s a ‘headliner’ or ’closer’ which I am.

That’s the hardest position to fill because of many reasons. It’s usually a 45-60 minute set and that alone is not easy. Doing FIVE minutes of comedy successfully is extremely difficult but try to follow two usually mediocre to horrible acts who are trying to gun for your position and then have to entertain a group of drunken strangers who got in for free.

It’s a daunting task and surely not for the squeamish or thin skinned. I have spent years getting ready to be an effective closer and I’ve absolutely accomplished my objective of doing exactly that. In the right situation there aren’t too many headliners working in clubs that can blow me out of the water but that ‘right situation’ is getting to be harder to find.

Nightmarish hecklers like my misadventure in Topeka are getting to be the norm rather than the exception. Inexperienced opening acts who I have no idea how are able to get the club to book them are also getting more common than ever. Anarchy is in full effect now.

Comedy has had a very weak quality control system over the years and inferior acts get bookings when they shouldn’t. Many times funny has NOTHING to do with why a comic gets a booking and I’ve been the recipient of it myself. It all boils down to human nature.

If a booker likes a comic the comic will get booked. He or she only really has to be at a level of ‘funny enough’. Did the crowd leave? No? Ok, I guess it was funny enough. Is it fair? Who’s to say what fair is or isn’t? Everyone THINKS they’re funny but there is a lot of gray area and nobody can really prove or disprove it in either direction. This is our life.

We have to try and convince enough people to hire us for one of those limited spots. It’s taken me a lifetime to polish my craft and I am a strong headliner. Most places I’m hired hire me back. Most. I’ve had some trouble in the south as many northern comics have but not like in Birmingham, AL. They HATED me there and I wasn’t too fond of them either.

I couldn’t by a ticket to that place at this point so I don’t even try. It’s a very nice room physically but they pack it with toothless Skoal chewing inbreds who think dressing up is a matching pair of Dale Earnhardt jackets. Whatever they like it sure isn’t my comedy.

That’s another club I won’t work and that’s how the numbers work. Every comic has to find 50-52 places a year that has a reason to book each of us. And as I said the reason has nothing to do with being funny. It might help at some point but it sure isn’t a requirement.

This is just how it is. People may be surprised to hear it or disagree with me but I know of which I speak. There are clubs that love me because I’m a nice guy off stage - or so the opinion is there. I really do try to be professional onstage and off but not everyone sees it that way. There are also a few places that wouldn’t have me back if I was the new Leno.

The places that will have me back by FAR outweigh those that won’t but now the issue is that there are less places to work period. I hadn’t worked the Funny Bones or Nitwits in a while but I wouldn’t have minded going back to any of them at some point. Now I can’t even if I wanted to and that’s three more weeks out of 52 that I will have to fill next year.

I am still in a good space mentally and am thinking clearly about all this. All comedians and most all Americans in general are feeling a pinch right now. I saw where Bennigan’s restaurants all went out of business overnight and left a bunch of people out in the cold. I hate hearing stories like that and I’m sure there are a lot of people who are in a big panic.

Not me. I have been struggling my whole life. I know how to batten down the hatches at times like this and live like a bigger cockroach than I already am. This doesn’t faze me so much as warn that harder times are coming for everybody. I need to regroup and THINK for a change. Life has been tough before and human nature never changes. I can beat this.

One thing I would really like to beat is the flesh of Mr. Embezzlement. I appeared on an episode of Mike Preston’s Psychobabble TV show tonight and heard he is taking many of my ideas and using them against me on the website he started recently. Yes it rankles me.

What I’d like to do is take an ax handle and fracture his skull. Then he’d have a reason to treat me like dirt. But what I NEED to do is do what I do and do it better because quite frankly I am better. This is a big test. I need to focus on what I want - not that wank pole.