Three For The Money

Tuesday August 19th, 2008 - Springfield, MO

I need money. Period. The best and quickest way I know of to accomplish that legally is to accept comedy gigs so that’s what I did. There was a last minute fallout for three nights beginning tonight in Springfield, MO. Tomorrow night is in Dallas, TX and Thursday is a return trip to good old Ft. Smith, AR which was absolutely torture last time I was there.

Never say never. I really didn’t think I’d ever go back to Ft. Smith again but the fates all huddled up and apparently they want me back. It was so miserable last time they all must want to make it up to me. I’m expecting a pair of horny twins with huge knockers to stalk me back to my hotel room after the show but then again I expect that all nights. No luck.

The booker called and offered me this three night run and I said yes. End of story. I am hoping to clear enough of a profit to pay my rent next month and if there aren’t any nasty unforeseen expenses I should be able to do exactly that. The drives will be long but I said I’d do it and I will without complaining. I’m just thankful I got the call when I needed it.

I was off this week and planned on revamping my whole life plan but I can still get a lot done by using my car as a mobile office. I have a cassette player and now a CD adapter to go with it so that makes it very flexible. I can start listening to my huge pile of audio stuff I’ve been neglecting for so long and I actually put a few in on the way down here today.

I also have divided up my projects into a top ten and have ten legal tablets each with the heading of the project and I’m going through them all and making notes until I run out of ideas and then I’m moving to the next one. I made some nice progress on that today also.

I’ve been having some hot shows lately even in shaky circumstances and that’s the best time to put some time into that to start improving even more. I made notes and have about 200 lines, ideas and concepts I want to start polishing and I went over those for an hour as I drove and it felt great to start that in motion too. My long day in the car was well spent.

It was 572 miles by the time I pulled into the hotel an hour and a half before the show. I don’t like to cut it that close but today I did and I accepted it. No panic. If I never get back to Springfield, MO I can still have a happy life. No offense to the town but that’s all it is.

There are a lot of towns a lot closer to where I live that I can get booked in the future to pay my bills but for this particular time this is the town that has the bucket of money on a stage. I had to drive 572 miles to pick it up and since I’m here I get to go up on that stage. That doesn’t mean I don’t try to give the people my best show but this is for the money.

This is a total stripper mentality and I admit it. This isn’t a career builder and nobody is going to see me here that can help me do anything I want to do except if those twins show up. Even then I’ll probably have to sit and pretend I’m interested in their stories of getting pit row passes at the last NASCAR race that came to town. I’ll worry about that when it’s happening but until then I will be thankful I could pick up these gigs and pay some bills.

The show tonight was at The Electric Cowboy. That’s the chain of clubs I worked back in December when I had my last hell run through these parts. It’s the same booker and he managed to put deals together with quite a few of these places. I did three of them the last run and one of them was Ft. Smith. They’re very nicely set up even if the crowds hate me.

It’s a country themed dance club and that’s never been my audience anyway. I’m not at all surprised I don’t go over very well in a situation like that but I am surprised they try to do comedy shows at all. The places are all huge and trying to focus on comedy is difficult for the audience and damn near impossible for the comedian. They’re loud and talkative.

I expected it going in so I wasn’t surprised when I got there and saw the identical setup I saw in Arkansas in December. They made a makeshift stage near the dance floor and put some tables near it. When I got there the DJ who ran the show was talking to the opening act and explaining the situation. They were both laid back and friendly and I appreciate it.

Most times if there will be a problem it manifests itself right away. Nobody was playing pampered superstar or diva and I surely don’t so I could tell in thirty seconds we’d all get along fine. There was also a bonus comic who did ten minutes to open the show for us.

He called himself ‘Old Man Willie’ and he didn’t tell me his age now but he did say he started comedy when he was 67 years old. He must have been about 72 or 73 at the very least but he went up and told the best of Henny Youngman and the rest of the old timers.

Apparently guys have been giving him all kinds of hassles because he thanked me about six times for being ‘kind and gracious to let me go up’. I could tell it made his whole day when I told him he was funny and he was. He got some laughs and who cares if he did the best of the Borscht Belt? Most of those guys are dead and I doubt if this crowd knew it.

The opener Lee Adams is a self described ‘country boy from Louisiana’ even though he wears a suit on stage. He is a nice guy but he talks about being country and smoking dope and this audience was a bunch of countrified dope smokers and they loved him the whole time he was up there. I don’t have a problem with that but they sure weren’t ready for me.

I took it slow and before I went on I told myself I wasn’t going to let this one deteriorate into another Topeka situation no matter what. I was going to do my time if I had to give a lesson in CPR or the subtleties of Three Stooges episodes with Shemp vs. Curly. Or both.

I could tell in the first minute I was in for a long night. Again. They just didn’t get it for the most part although a few of them did and those were the ones I worked to. There was a loud table of rude stupid rubes and rather than attack them I just talked over them so the audience could choose between listening to them yammer on or listen to me. It was a tie.

Anyone who wants to be a comedian needs to be in a situation like I was in tonight. It’s not for the squeamish on any level. I dare ANYONE to stand on a tiny makeshift stage to tell jokes to intoxicated locals in cowboy hats. Oh, and stay up there for 55 minutes too.