Up All Night

Friday October 17th, 2008 - Milwaukee, WI/Lake Villa, IL

Wow, I pulled an ‘all nighter’ for the first time in a long time. I drove back from the gig in LaCrosse and needed to finish my paperwork for the comedy seminar I’m scheduled to teach in Cincinnati tomorrow. I have really been working hard on making it a good one.

Every new session of classes I teach or even a one day seminar like this one I go over an order of what I want to include and see if I can add anything to what I’ve done in the past. I always compile articles or write my own or just try to make the whole thing flow better.

After 15 years of teaching I can pretty much stand up there and talk about comedy until everyone including me is sick of it but that’s not what will make these classes great. I am well aware that the classes themselves are ‘the show’ and I need to entertain the people as I teach them about comedy. It’s both education and entertainment. It’s ‘edu-tainment’.

Part of that includes giving them a package of paperwork to take home with them. I am very picky to put the worksheets and exercises in the right order so the whole day can be laid out in order and there are no glitches on my end as a teacher. It improves all the time.

I have put together the best package I’ve ever had and when I got home I wanted to get them all assembled and packed and ready to go because I was scheduled to go up and be a guest on ‘The D List’ on ESPN Radio 540 in Milwaukee at 9am. I got back around 2:30.

I went right to work and thought I might get done by 4am so I could at least get a couple of good sleep hours in but I wanted to put the package together how I wanted it and it was a lot longer than I expected. When I finished I looked at the clock and it was 7:05. Oops.

Too late for even a nap so I showered up and got back in the car and stopped at the Red School House for breakfast. I haven’t seen my waitress honey in a while and not sure that she even works there anymore. I wouldn’t have had time to flirt as I was cutting it close.

I made it to the studio in Milwaukee right after 9am. I really like hanging out with Drew and Dan and it’s a very natural flow. I fit in very well with them and the staff treats me as if I were a regular. They don’t look at me as a guest even though I’m only there randomly.

Drew asked me to be a bigger part of the show and maybe do a ’Sixty Second Soapbox’ bit like I used to do on the Loop in Chicago. I know sports very well and especially sports in Milwaukee so that would be a natural fit. I would come up once a week and let it rip.

Of all the bashing I do of radio (and it’s all deserved) there are a few bastions of sanity and talent and I’m trying to find all of them and be a part of it. ESPN Radio is definitely a shining star with not only the D List but also my good friend Steve “The Homer” True.

I had a blast on the show and by the time I got home other stuff piled up and now I’m as tired as I’ve been in a long time. Time to rest up for my one day excursion to Cincinnati.