• Didn’t do a lot of comedy this week due to a bad bout with food poisoning from a delicious Korean Fusion place (it’s called Bari in case you were wondering; Anna E. Paone and I loved it) and a bad head cold (did not get the cold from delicious Korean Fusion food to the best of my knowledge) but I still got around and did as much as I could.
• Last Thursday, Tristan Smith and I had the very first Comic’s Table Presents at V Spot! The show went way better than we could have ever imagined. Our barkers Luke Gralia and Jack Finnegan brought in nearly 50 people(!), James Hamilton hosted the show and gave it that perfect, warm environment to carry us through the night (it’s been said before- book the guy) and all the comics were exceptional. There was not a bad set all evening. Having Mark Normand come in and do 10 minutes gave the show an air of legitimacy that made it feel like a big deal (you should really book this Mark Normand too- what a pro!). Also, Conrad Jones took amazing photos for us as well. This guy is a gem. Have him shoot your shows if you can! Anyway, the highlight from the show for me was when we gave away a CD I bought at Goodwill and no one in the crowd wanted it. The audience passed it around desperately trying to get rid of it. It was hilarious.
• One of the coolest things I did this week was film Michael Nguyen and Nataly Aukar’s half hours (as well as Brian Park's killer hosting set) at SubCulture (the temporary pop-up location for UCB East). It’s an incredible room; you should really make your way over there to see a show if you haven’t yet. Anyhow, back to the show itself. Both of their 30 min sets had great cultural commentary, character work and hard punchlines. I’m still in shock that Nataly wrote a bit of hers that got a massive applause break that day. She Mrs. Maisel’d it! These guys are both major talents and you should be booking these three as soon as possible.
• I was feeling horrible Friday night after having puked the entire night before but I still did a bringer show to try and get passed at a club. I did this same show in December at the same venue with many guests and their note for me was, “You often get laughs 12 seconds between jokes.” They wanted to see if I could get wall to wall laughs every 5-7 seconds. So...I just went faster. I had a fun six-minute set. However, the club has kind of left it open ended whether or not I’m passed. It is interesting to see just how many hoops one must jump through in order to get to the next level. Will continue to update this story as it evolves.
• Got a really nice email this week from ComedyWire promoting me to ComedyWire Pro! This was such a cool highlight for me. I’ve been writing jokes almost daily on their site since 2016 (I’ve written about 5000 topical jokes over two accounts) and I always wanted to advance to the next level. ComedyWire Pro is a really cool tool on their site that allows you to write copy for businesses as well as jokes competitively for pay. Even nicer, they had a Tonight Show Writer blog about a joke of mine too. Ya know, it’s nice to feel special every once in awhile and ComedyWire did that for me this week. You can read his blog here: https://medium.com/@Comedywire/former-head-writer-of-the-tonight-show-picks-his-joke-of-the-week-1f84b0cdf23f?fbclid=IwAR3dTXdeQy5WTg0xGgmSPQ2zjRZdSyD5mvomcgY0QjowsYexzGB4QpyFZ00.
• Got another big week coming up. Tonight I am at the Grisly Pear for the first time on a Kenny Warren show and I am pumped! Tomorrow is our second V Spot show with another fantastic lineup and this coming week I am guest hosting Jay Welch’s Karma mic at 6 PM on Sunday and Sam Zelitch’s Pete’s Candy Store mic on Tuesday at 7 PM. Come do jokes please!
Signing off for this week. See ya in 168 hours (that’s how many hours are in a week)
