Here’s comedian Garri Madera’s latest slideshow from the Detroit comedy scene. I closed the contest last night while scores were tallied. Man, it was a super awesome show. I’ve only seen three of the comics before. Lots of unique voices and Ed Beuhner did a hell of a job hosting!
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More Misadventures: Holy Toledo and First Day in La La Land!
Last week I was Connxtions in Toledo. The time before this was awful because they hired a new manager who easily was the biggest pile of shit ever to run a club. Well, at least that I came across. He abused his power to bully people, ban them if they didn’t kiss his ass, and just be an unbearable tyrant. Just about the entire staff that had been there since I started comedy has left during his reign of terror. The good news is that he’s gone and has been replaced by Dave from the Lansing Connxtions. Dave, like everyone else at the Lansing club is super awesome and is there to be both professional, but also to have fun because it is, after all, a comedy club. The staff that’s there now had nothing but awesome things to say about him…well…the staff that was there when the last guy was there had nothing but nice things to say about him too, but they had that panic look in their eyes like someone in a kidnapping or terrorist video. “Everything is fine. I like it here. I do not miss you dirty imperialist pigs.” Dave is great, and the fact that he trained with Tina in Lansing makes me positive that he’s going to continue to do well.
There is a couple who have come out to see me every single Friday that I’ve performed in Toledo. They’re an older couple named George and Sharon and they’re absolutely wonderful. Sharon waits for me outside to greet me and let me know if there are any issues with George’s health. They sit front and center every time and are huge fans of the comedians they like. George is not shy to show when he’s not a fan of someone too! He’ll sit stone faced, arms crossed and glare at a comic. He and Jason Russell went at it one time during a show and it was one of the funniest things I ever saw. I love Jason Russell. He’s so laid back and positive. George was having none of it, so Jason directed everything at him in a very good natured way. George simply turned his chair around and faced the back of the room while Jason finished his set!
This past week I was with Felicia Gillespie. If I don’t know who I’m working with, I try to look at some of their clips. Most times, I look at one and say to myself, “I get it.” But with Felicia, I watched everything she had on Rooftop Comedy. She’s smart, clever and super funny! She’s got a very deadpan/aloof style that I find really fun to watch. Additionally, she was very nice off stage too. I feel like I’ve gotten to be a pretty good judge of character based on watching someone’s clips.
After the Toledo run, I slept two hours and headed to the airport to fly out to LA. I’m here now at my allegedly 4 star hotel that I won in a super low bid on Priceline. Turns out I’m not a 4 star hotel kind of guy. There’s mandatory valet parking for $20 a day, I can’t walk two feet with a $4 bottle of water without some bellhop asking if he can carry that too my room for me, and it takes forever to wait for the elevator because I’m on the 11th floor. I’m much more of a Holiday Inn Express or Baymont Inn kind of guy. I know for next time. Err on the side of familiarity!
If a movie took place in a comic book store, chances are it was filmed at Meltdown Comics.
Last night, even though I hadn’t slept for more than two hours and an occasional nod off on the plane when I immediately wake myself up from snoring, I forced myself to go to Meltdown Comics to do the Matt Mira’s Day Off Show. Matt Mira is one of the cohosts of the Nerdist Podcast, which I listen to regularly. They normally have a show on Wednesdays I believe, but Matt just started this Sunday show about a month ago. It was a blast! My only regret is that I didn’t get there earlier. At 5:00 they had a writer’s panel with people from Community, Parks and Rec and Wonderfalls. Wonderfalls?! Christine and I love Wonderfalls! We own it on DVD! I can’t believe I missed it. I missed it because I was hanging out in my hotel room…I have no excuse for missing it!
Matt Mira’s Day Off is cohosted by Matt and Paul Cibis. The two of them open and close the show together and then alternate when bringing up the 25-30 comedians who are doing three minutes each. They have great chemistry together and really kept the show rolling. For the most part, everyone was really respectful and professional and stuck to their time. I can only think of one person who maybe went over a minute, but that seemed like an honest mistake. The show was a blast! A lot of the people went up and did material based on Father’s Day. One guy did a performance piece that I thought was pretty brilliant where he was imagining himself in 20 years and the kind of father he’d be at his son’s little league baseball game. I did “Jokes That Don’t Work in the Midwest” and did my traditional Mike Bobbitt thing where I got sidetracked and started yelling about something random. In this case there was a sweet old lady who seems like she just stopped in with a couple other people. I don’t think they were there for someone specific. I think they just wanted to watch a show. A lot of the comedians commented about how they felt uncomfortable performing in front of her. So my distraction thing happened when I bent down to explain a joke to her and then realized that in the 1960s she was the age of all the comedians, so she’s probably experienced way more than they had. I don’t know. I did well. All the comedians were super nice. I passed out a couple stickers so people can keep in touch. They pointed me in the right direction for where I should try to get on with Friday. Apparently if I play my cards right I can hit two stages on Friday.
Mike and Matt!
I’m kind of shying away from the clubs this week because my feeling is that a club here is possibly the same as a club anywhere else. I really want to hit these alternative rooms and underground shows. Last night inspired me more than I think I would’ve been had I gone to the Comedy Store instead.
I wanted to go see Conan O’Brien today, but it turns out that’s not a thing you can decide you want to do at the last minute! It’s completely sold out for the rest of the month. Oops! I have a bunch of friends here I’m going to see, but you’ll have to wait until next week to find out how that goes. Do you think the front desk will think I’m weird if I go to the grocery store and bring back food for the week? I spent $15 on a medium sized water bottle, sugar free Red Bull and a king sized Payday yesterday. I can’t afford this. Here’s what’s on the room service menu for breakfast. Continental Breakfast: Juice, bread or muffin, coffee for $12.50. Actually…the rest of it isn’t too bad…the beverages though are insane. It’s $3 for juice. And you know that’s just a tiny one serving size juice. I can get a pot of coffee for $11.95. I’m going to the store, buying liquids and will bring it back here and put it on ice. I wonder how much the ice costs. It used to be a liquid. Jesus!
Phoo Action Pilot
When I’m in hotel rooms I tend to spend a lot of time on Youtube or Netflix. One of the first things I wrote about on this site was stumbling upon the pilot for the Jamie Hewlett created show “Phoo Action”. The BBC aired the pilot, but didn’t pick up the show. That’s unfortunate because what follows is a crazy mix of Tank Girl, Aquabats, Bruce Lee, Dance, and of course a sprinkling of the great Carl Weathers. Check it out!
Comedy Contests: Good or Bad?
I’ve been on the fence for a long time about comedy contests. One thing that’s never changed is the fact that I don’t like performing in contests at all. They stress me out and they pit me against my friends. I’ve always felt like comedy is supposed to be a fun thing, but contests always sucked the fun right out of it for me. My question is this. Is that the fault of the contest or my own?
Until just recently, like with most things, I blamed my contest anxiety on an outside source. In my brain I realized that contests are subjective and at the end of the day they really didn’t matter. And while I believe a lot of comedians already know that and they’re able to say that to their peers, it’s hard to get us to feel that. There’s a huge difference between knowing something and feeling something. I know there isn’t a monster behind me on the basement stairs, but I still feel the need to run up every time.
I’ve come to the realization that how I process stress and disappointment is all on me. Contests are not inherently evil. Currently a contest is running at Joey’s Comedy Club in Livonia. The payoff is pretty big. The winner gets to go to Los Angeles and hit some pretty impressive stages. The judging is done pretty fairly, although it’s impossible to completely judge something fairly when what’s being judged is entirely subjective.
Jeff Dunham had a television show because a lot of people find him genuinely funny. That doesn’t mean a television executive thought he was genuinely funny. That just means a television execute knew there was a market for thinly veiled racism hidden within a puppet show.
I think contests serve a greater good within the comedy community. One local teacher slams contests universally if the contestants are required to bring people. Why? I honestly don’t get that. For example, with this Joey’s contest I’m reasonably sure each person probably has to bring a handful of audience members. I think that’s entirely fair especially considering how great the prize is. Stage time is readily available pretty much every night of the week in the Detroit scene. There are no bringer shows other than contests. To hit the bigger stages in places like New York, you have to shill tickets on the street and hope enough people come to see you so you can actually get on. The only hoop you have to jump through to get on stage at any of the clubs here, including the prestigious Comedy Castle, is you have to make a phone call and ask. Maybe because we have it so easy most of the time, some people overlook that when they’re asking to bring people in order to compete for fabulous prizes.
Yes, clubs don’t run contests out of the graciousness of their heart, they run contests because it’s good business. What’s wrong with wanting to run a good business? Comedy is a business and contests are part of that business. Summers are slow and you’ll notice every year when the weather gets warm, Joey’s starts the season with a contest. They also follow that contest with a month or so of specialty shows as part of their mini festival where every local comic is welcome to pitch a show to the club.
Comedy contests pit friends against each other, but only if those friends let that happen. Remember that a contest is just a silly type a show and don’t worry about who wins…even if it’s you who wins. No contest is truly fair because there is not one definitive formula to determine what is funny and what isn’t. Don’t let a contest crush your ego or kill your drive. They simply don’t matter in the big picture.
If you don’t like contests, don’t enter them. That’s the nice thing about them. No one is going to hold a gun to your head and force you to enter. Oh, and if someone does, then don’t even worry about winning. Just remind yourself that you were performing under a great deal of stress what with that gun to your head and everything.
I think the greatest thing contests do is they teach us to be funny quick and work under pressure. They’re also useful in keeping our short game tight. I have to do an eight minute set next week. If I were the kind of guy who liked to do contests, I’d probably feel more confident right now.
I’ve won contests, I’ve lost contests. It doesn’t change who I am. At the end of the day, I know I’m funny for what I do and for my audience. Will I be funny to everyone? No. Nor would I want to be. To be accessible to everyone is to be bland and middle of the road. As more unique as my voice has gotten I feel like there’s less of a chance for me to win contests and that’s okay. I’m not running out to enter any either. When it’s all said and done, a contest doesn’t change who I am. I do.
Rock Star of Illustration: Matt Busch!
Matt Busch is cool. Yeah, lots of people are cool, what makes Matt so special? I believe that Matt, along with comedians like Patton Oswalt and filmmakers like Kevin Smith brought a certain amount of awesomeness to nerd culture. They brought nerdiness out of the basement and into the sunlight.
If you’ve been to any comic book convention, you’ve probably seen Matt Busch. There’s usually a horde of fans around him because he’s personable, charismatic and has time for everyone.
At his heart, this is the coolest thing about Matt Busch, he owns his inner nerd. On the outside, he’s a cowboy hat wearing tattooed rock star, but on the inside, he’s still that five year old kid seeing Star Wars for the first time in 1977 anxiously waiting for the action figures to come out.
I Interview my Mom!
For my birthday I thought it would be fun to interview the person who brought me into this world – my mom! Sometimes I feel ripped off because other comedians seem to use comedy to cope with parent issues. I don’t have any. My parents were perfect. My dad worked had to provide his family not only with everything we needed, but pretty much everything we wanted too. I found my interest in sci-fi and fantasy through my dad and as a kid I was seeing Star Wars opening weekend and going to hobby shops/comic book stores. It’s in directly through my dad, that my friendship with Gwar began.
My incredibly perfect parents.
My mom is a super mom. She’s the mom that all of my friends were jealous of. When she had me and my brother, she quit work to raise us full time. During the years that my brother and I were in the same Middle Schools and High Schools, she volunteered at the school clinic and was known to be the cool mom who let kids come in and lay down for an hour if they had a headache…or a test they didn’t study for.
Her way of raising me and my brother, who by the way is also pretty spectacular in himself even though he and I are just about polar opposites, was not only to love us unconditionally, but to also trust us until we gave her a reason not to. I’m glad to say that my brother and I both turned out fine. Neither of us do drugs, whore around or light homeless people on fire. Sure, we got into the mischief that young boys tend to get into and I’d be a fool to think my mom didn’t know, but we both always made sure that we never got into so much trouble that it would disappoint our parents or make them stop trusting us.
So, when I interviewed Nate Fridson, who also comes from a very solid family, I touched on wondering where we get our motivation to do comedy. I firmly do believe there is something a little unhealthy about wanting to make a group of strangers like us night after night. For me, I think it’s because I miss that feeling of being the most important person in the world that my mom gave me as a kid. I’m like a junky searching for that high that he on the first go around. I’m hoping having an audience love me enough will make me feel like that unconditional love I had from my mom as a kid.
I’ve always been lucky. I come from a supportive family. Even to this day, I schedule myself in Holly, near where my brother Brian lives with his family, so my brother can come out and see me for his birthday. My wife Christine is super supportive and works hard in order for me to pursue my dreams. As I sit here on the morning of my birthday transcribing this interview, I realize that I’ve always had it pretty lucky and that’s the best birthday present there is.
My mom and I sat down over a game of Scrabble and I interviewed her not only to have a chance to talk about me a little bit, but also to distract her so that I could win a few games because usually she destroys me! Read the rest of this entry
5 Hour Energy Drink
In case you missed it, here’s the commercial I recently did for 5 Hour Energy Drink.
While standing in the hardware store in costume waiting for the lights and camera to be set for the next shot, a customer asked me where something was. I had no idea what the thing was that he was asking for and I told him so. He looked at me like I was the worst employee ever. I explained that I was in the commercial. He continued to look at my with disbelief. It wasn’t until he walked away that I realized he must have thought that the store was showcasing their worst employee in a television commercial. I wanted to run after him and tell him that I wasn’t really an employee and that I’m really a comedian, but instead I pulled out my notebook and started writing a bit about it.
The crew for this thing was pretty fantastic and detail focused. The colors in each shot were important. No labels of real life things are showing. The angle I held the “hero” bottle and opened it at the :24 second mark had to be perfect. It was a pretty fascinating experience.
And for the record, I’ve used 5 Hour Energy Drink and it’s good….particularly the Pomegranate.
Oh yeah…and to nerd out even further, I love it that my first shot is a subtle version of the famous Chief Brody Jaws shot!
Book Review: Tina Fey’s “Bossypants”
Tina Fey writes like a person I’d love to sit down and talk with. She’s silly. She’s self aware. She’s lyrical. She’s amazing.
Bossypants chronicles Fey’s life in show business from her humble beginnings as the night box office manager at a youth theatre to being the creator and star of “30 Rock”. It’s not only a great look at show business and following your dream, but it’s a great look at show business and following your dreams through the eyes of a woman.
I guess how a few weeks ago when I pondered the notion of white privilege, I overlooked until my friend Germaine pointed it out, that there’s also a great deal of male privilege in the world. While I don’t necessarily think of Tina Fey as the funny lady who created a great television show, she and most of entertainment apparently does. I don’t agree with all of the ideas she presents in the book, but then again as a dude, I probably have little evidence to support my disagreement.
There are a lot of great chapters for navigated not just show business, but life. The chapter titled I Don’t Care If You Like It was particularly valuable to me. She used Seasame Street logic to explain how to get ahead in career by going “over, under or through obstacles”. Bossypants has a whole slew of life lessons in between the jokes. Like the show she’s created, the comedy comes at you in pretty quick succession. Fey’s a strong writer of sketch, television and now you can add books to that list.
Whether it be talking about the preparation that goes into shooting magazine covers, breast feeding, or her concerns with portraying Sarah Palin, Fey writes with unabashed candidness that’s so completely endearing.* The book is thoughtful, but never afraid to embrace potty humor like in the way she describes babies. “They’re more than just adorable little creatures on whom you can blame your farts.”
One of my favorite written comedy devices is the use of footnotes. Douglas Adams was a master at them when he wrote the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Here, Tina Fey uses them just as effectively and hilariously.** I strongly recommend reading this book to everyone. It doesn’t matter if your a fan of Fey’s work or not, it’s just a really well written book about getting ahead in business, juggling responsibilities and rising above adversity.
* Of course I’m just assuming that because I’m taking Fey at her word. Maybe she’s like a WWE Superstar’s book where later we find out that she wasn’t a well adjusted famous person at all, but a pain pill popping adrenaline junky with a great ghost writer. Fey and Poehler would make a great tag team. Ooh, they could have a match against Wiig and Rudolph!
** I’m not nearly as good at it, but then again this is a first (only) draft and I’m not sweating it.
Michigan’s Funniest Comedian – Mike Green
Mike Green is the funniest friend I have. And I feel so fortunate that I am able to call him my friend. Mike Green on stage is simply amazing. Mike Green off stage is just as amazing, but in an incredibly dark sort of way. Taking a road trip with Mike Green is like watching a marathon of the British Office. He shares these incredibly dark and personal stories that wind up ending in a laugh. That laugh serves as such a relief too! Sometimes he’ll tag the story with a side note that brings you right back down again. He’s engaging. He’s kind. He’s thoughtful. Between Mike Green and Bill Bushart, I consider myself lucky to have had these two guys who have been around a lot longer than I have to help guide me along the way both professionally and personally. I hope you like this interview I did with the great Mike Green.
One of my inspirations for wanting to create my website is yours. I remember when I was starting off in comedy, I went to your site and there were things to do there, like the quiz on how to be a comic.
I like my website. It’s become more of a hobby. Even if it’s just to make it look decent, I like to work on it at least once a week.
How do you manage your time?
I’m horrible at it. That’s my shortcoming in stand up, my ability to manage my career, have a family and do all that. This taught me to be organized and I just muddle through.
You’re easily my funniest friend, but do you think it’s that inability to be organized and manage things is the reason you’re not also my most famous friend?
I know exactly what you’re saying. I love Steve Iott and John Bowman. I think Heywood Banks is brilliant. When you see these guys and how hilarious they are, you have to wonder how come everyone doesn’t know how good they are? Why aren’t they super famous?
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Comedy Condos
The Cuyahoga Falls Condo.
My all time favorite condo experience was staying in Mishiwaka at the condo with Costaki Economopoulos and Tony Deyo while we played the old Funny Bone there. It was a great week. There was some sort of big football thing on and Costaki insisted on introducing me to the game via gambling. While that may seem like a sucker bet, since I know absolutely nothing about the game, he was really clear in explaining point spreads and odds and I actually won our little wager. It was something like a five dollar bet. I’m not a gambler. In fact, even though I go to Vegas every year, I always break even because I never gamble at all. I just never got bit by that bug.
What was fun about that week was, if my memory serves me correctly, that was the first time the three of us had ever met and we’re all still fairly close friends to this day. In comedy, close friend often means that we all have each other’s phone numbers and sometimes call one another for gigs or when we’re in the same town! Costaki brought me on the road with him last year for a mini-tour, which was a blast and Tony and I have had lunch while he’s been in Detroit. The funny thing about that week was that we all discovered that we were all super nerds about very different things. At the time, Tony was still doing something for high school marching bands and was laying out intricate formations and things like that. Costaki is a huge online poker nerd and would have multiple games going on at once. I, of course, was playing my PSP. My big regret from that week was that I was staying with Costaki one of the sharpest joke writers, a regular contributor to the Bob & Tim Show and I felt a strange need to beat the game Jeanne D’Arc. Granted, it was a great game!
Nate Fridson: My Nemesis?
Nate Fridson is a guy who I’ve always been both amazed by and a bit jealous of on stage. It seems like right from the beginning, her had a clear and distinct voice and point of view. If the notion of cliques in the comedy world of outcasts is possible, it seemed like Nate was the head of the clique of the cool kids being Nate, Matt McClowery and Adam Sokol.
Recently it came to light that Nate is gearing up to head to New York to continue his growth in comedy. It was important for me to have my Marc Maron-esque interview with Nate before he left. For a long time, and more so in the past couple of years, I’ve felt like there was some sort of bad blood between the two of us. I don’t know where that stemmed from. I felt like he didn’t respect what I did on stage and maybe didn’t respect me as a person at all. I mentioned a few times to him that I really wanted to catch up before he moved. Well, we finally got the chance while standing in the alley behind Club Bart, the club where we first met.
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More Misadventures – Funny Stop and Going Green
I was in Cuyahoga Falls this past week performing at the Funny Stop. This was a blast for many reasons. The biggest one is that all week I got to hang out with my buddies Dave Merheje and Jeff Ford. The three of us started around the same time in Detroit. Dave since moved to Toronto, so I only see him once every year or so. Although, he and I were the two final comedians to work at Chaplin’s!
I stayed in the comedy condo with my buddies and it was just crazy. It’s a two bedroom condo, so Jeff and Dave ended up sleeping in the same room…actually the same bed. Okay, I come from a small family and am just not used to that. Dave apparently does that all the time and it was no big deal. Jeff is just the easiest going guy in the world, so who knows how he really felt about his sleeping arrangement. I will say, by the second night, Jeff apparently built a barrier of blankets and pillows to separate himself from Dave. I guess all the talk about “finger blasting” during the day maybe freaked him out at night!
The Lonely Island: Turtleneck & Chain Review
From We’re Back! the opening track, to the No Homo Outro, Turtleneck & Chain is both an amazing hip hop album and an amazing satire of hip hop albums. Pulling off either one is a tall order on its own; that Lonely Island manages to do both is proof that they’re not just a great comedy group, they’re a great hip hop group too.
Quick Question…Do you have any ghost stories?
Ooh! It’s Friday the 13th! This week I asked my comedian friends: Have you ever experienced anything paranormal in your comedy adventures?
Quick plug to my friend comedian Mike Brody. He is the “Official Comedian of Beyond Reality Events”. In fact, if Deadpan takes off and we get to do a second season, it’ll involve hopefully either Mike Brody or a character based largely on Mike Brody. Maybe we’ll call him Brody Michaels. Hm.
To kick things off, here’s my spooky story. I was at the notoriously haunted and historic Holly Hotel doing a Christmas party a few years back. Normally the comedy shows are in the basement, but this private party was on the top floor, which is supposed to be where the “stuff” happens. I was delighted and making jokes about the ghost, when a large painting fell off the wall and freaked everyone out. So I changed topics and went back to my normal nerdery. It made me jump though!
Jeff Dwoskin: I once was doing a show at Holly and it started out great and then everyone stopped laughing. To this day I swear it was because of a super-natural intervention of some sort. I swear this stuff usually kills!
Andy Pitz: I’ve never experienced paranormal activity at a show or in lodging. I have been creeped out by several club owners though.
I feel like I worked with Tony Deyo shortly after this great story happened to him. It’s one of my favorite comedian stories: I was performing at a college in Albion, MI. They had me staying on campus at a 150 year old place called Belmont Manor. First of all, any place with “manor” in the name is haunted. I joked about staying in their haunted Scooby Doo mansion at the show. Afterwards, the opener asked me if he could come over and check out the place b/c he had been into studying the paranormal for about 10 years. When I had checked in at the mansion, I thought other people were staying there too, but when we got there after the show, no other cars were in the parking lot. I realized I was going to be alone that night in the creepy mansion. We walked around the place, and he told me that his fingers were getting a little numb in one room, which probably meant that someone had died of a heart attack in there. As we wandered upstairs via the giant spiral staircase, he told me that that’s where I might see a ghost in the middle of the night. At this point, I was still under the impression that I might actually spend the night. All the doors upstairs were locked except for mine, so as I was walking back downstairs with him, he noticed a door that went to the basement. He couldn’t find a light switch, so he went down with just his penlight on a keychain. I did not follow. He came back and told me that a lot of people had died down there… and that they were killed. That’s when I told him that he was staying with me for 5 minutes while I packed up my stuff and left. I never knew if there was a ghost there for sure, but I wasn’t about to find out.
Off the Mike 