Little Big Stuff

Friday September 12th, 2008 - Muskego, WI

I’ve said it before and it’s still true - little things please me but they also drive me nuts. Big things don’t really shake me either way but the small stuff does it big time. I know it shouldn’t be that way at least according to that book but I know myself and that’s just me.

Tonight I did a show in Muskego, WI with my friend Steve DeClark. He found a theatre that just opened in an industrial park type of area and they were looking to try new events. Steve has always been a hustler and an excellent sales person and he sold them on having a comedy show. I never would have found this place so I was glad he asked me to do it.

The people who own it are a married couple and the woman used to work in L.A. in the television industry apparently. Steve’s wife Gail did also and was successful but when the kids starting showing up they decided it would be better to raise them in the Midwest and I think that was probably an excellent decision. I couldn’t imagine raising kids out there.

I could sense the owners being a little tense before the show but they’d never seen either of us before and I can understand that. The theatre isn’t huge but it’s very comfortable for both audience and performers and there was a healthy size crowd even if much of it were friends and family and work mates of someone involved with the theatre. It was still full.

Steve went up and did a nice warm up set and I could tell they were into it. I knew what to do and how to do it and I was on for an hour and ten minutes and still had material left over. I worked very clean and loved the fact they were listening and not drunk and stupid.

These are the kinds of audiences I’d love to play for every night. I would like to do it in a larger venue but the vibe in there tonight was really good. They got it and after the show I was sitting behind a curtain toweling off and drinking a water as many of them filed out.

I could hear all of their unvarnished comments because they couldn’t see me. They were lined up and gushing to the owners with things like ‘He was REALLY funny!’ and ‘When is he coming back?’ and ‘I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard.’ It was fun to listen in but it also let me know that maybe I do have an audience for what I do after all.

These people were not comedy club patrons per se. They were just regular people living in a smaller town but they’re not hicks. Muskego has 21,000 people according to the sign. There are towns like this all over America and if I can get them to like me I’ll do alright.

These people sure liked it tonight. It wasn’t a huge audience but they were great and I’m very content with how everything went. It’s not a career maker and nobody who’ll be able to help me in Hollywood was there but even still I enjoyed it anyway. It was a total blast.

I stopped at a Salvation Army on the way and found an art design maker from the ’70s called Spirograph. I hadn’t seen one in years and I got it for a buck. I didn’t hear from the Craig Ferguson show today but I did find a Spirograph. To me that was just as exciting.