Listening in…

I spend a good amount of time writing, (or tryin’ to write anyways…) It’s never enough for my own satisfaction, but a lot (I tell myself and like to think…) I try to write everyday. It’s never all “good.” (OK 2 magic days in 20+ years I had everything I wrote down turn into a usable joke but only 2… and I didn’t say they were great jokes… I just used them…) I liken most usual days to a singer warming up, (as I might’ve said previously) when it’s bad writing, it’s like that singer clearing their throat… ain’t pretty (well, ain’t funny) but you got to do it to get the pipes warmed up enough hit the right notes. When I have to, I get out the unfunny stuff, and one problem is, some of that writing I don’t know that it’s unfunny until audiences tell me so…

However, sometimes the idea’s still there, but not the right or funny idea, not the right or funny direction, or the right or funny presentation… (One of those!!) So I seek to find perspective, share with a few other comics I chat with, ask myself with “a day or three” rest of the thought in question in-between, and I have even had large success with a chat to the audience (during or after) who sometimes point out the thought I meant to have, or the righter-thought (i.e. funnier-thought) than the one that came out on stage…

In an elevator, or at dinner, mostly after a show, more often than a few times, in the conversation following the attempt at laughs, some folks have passed on a thought, and it happens even when they relay a joke idea back to me in the way they understood it, that it sometimes comes across clearer than the way I originally thought I was saying it. And when that happens I certainly try to THEN make it easier for the audience to GET than the way I originally presented it… My suggestion to anyone, in comedy or not, even if you’re in the “thinking up and then presenting thoughts” business… is if one isn’t sure if they’re getting their idea across… First, ask those that you trust who might know where you hope to be going with the thought, Second, ask yourself when you have taken a break and keep workin’ until the thought sounds more “right…” and third, anyone’s perspective that might not be in the business is still valuable because if it doesn’t sound right, at least you can cross it off the “well that doesn’t sound right” LIST…

They say laughter is the best medicine… sometimes you have to tool with the prescription to get the right dose… I suggest using the doctor analogy, to ask a second opinion, and above all listen to the reaction…

The best part is if it doesn’t work, you can always laugh at yourself…

Good luck and keep laughing…

The Gaps

Another Monday comin’ in the short month, and good for the people that work “regular” jobs, this Monday is a day off for most. As a comic I sometimes lose track of holidays, as my work schedule doesn’t include as many. My vacation days and weekends are the days I don’t have a show (or gig) or travel. Todays one like that… travel on the way to a show.

I survived the 25^th anniversary of bein’ paid to make people laugh (and dropping other forms of work to feed myself) and it’s now into the second quarter century of (hopefully) making a living of humor. With the things I’ve thought and the things I say… which aren’t ALWAYS the things I’d thought I’d say… That audience/performance filter is maybe the last stage of writing… You have it in your brain a certain way and then you have to say it so it makes sense to THEM.

I’ve worked with a couple friends who reminded me of a good comedy thought. At first I wanted laughs, ANY laughs… from what I was saying that I thought were jokes… Then it was more laughs from more jokes, (a real confidence builder…) and finally it was GOOD laughs… which comes from GOOD JOKES. The ones where they laugh ‘cause you’re communicating what you want at the LEVEL you want. So jokes, laughs, good jokes, good laughs... Then it’s tags... as I may have mentioned in another blog and "Tags" are like extended thoughts on the first joke/premise that make them laugh harder or better or more. (Some folks. act out their punch-lines much to the same effect…)

But one thing I forgot in Comedy and in LIFE… You want good silences, or as some pals recently pointed out, gaps. By “Gaps” I mean those powerful moments when everyone is waiting for the next thing to happen and you’re the one in charge of both the quiet and the soon to be not quiet. The tension when people are “with” you, along for YOUR ride, and it's a moment in a show that is wonderful to have in your control.

Life sometimes needs that quiet in between the action too, and I forgot how powerful it is to notice that. Sometimes unlike the stage, we're not in charge of the "action" in our lives, but if we can notice the quiet, it's sometimes just as powerful. I hope in your life and in your laughs this week, month, year, or for the next 25 you get to enjoy your gaps in the noise.

Laugh with you soon.

Abundance

I was introduced to a thought a couple of years ago… from someone I’d call a philosopher, Dr. Wayne Dyer. In one of his books I read about the thought of opening your life to the concept of “abundance…” I don’t have the chapter in front of me, and I'll try not misquote or mis-apply the thought, but what I understood is the idea of opening your “awareness” to the abundance of the world…

For example: I used to not pick up pennies if they were tails, “bad luck” I'd say and the woman I was dating, (now my wife) asked, "how is gettin’ a penny bad luck?" Well, when someone points out that you’re silly in such a logical way, if you’re smart enough, you change your thinking… And that penny was my first abundance… Since that week, where I read, and I stopped coming up with reasons to NOT pick up money… I have found over $300.00 on the ground, on the street, sometimes when passing through a casino, and not just in the USA, but in several foreign countries, etc. etc.

One time I was telling my sister about the thought, and we walked out and on the street was a $10 bill, and we laughed and for a minute I think she thought I had actually PLANTED it there during out lunch to make a point... but she knows I'm too cheap to take that kinda chance with $10!!!

Yeah, I’d say I’m lucky but not just for this… Sure I keep my eyes open, I now CONSCIOUSLY think that I’m gonna find change and/or money… this is/was just a new way of being AWARE. A new thought that I practice thinking...

More than just that, I needed something to do with my new found Abundance… how can I give back… with this new "LUCK"??? And I found a way, to share it...

I found this organization call Kiva.org where they allow people who have (or FIND) a little extra… to give micro-loans to various parts of the world… It’s call a micro-loan, 'cause they can be made in amounts of $25 given individually but pooled with other micro-loans. You don’t get interest on the loan, and I think you can get updates, but I just like giving. Here's how it works for me, when I find some money, I put it in a jar and when it gets to about $10+ I count it out, put it in the bank, double it from my own earnings and make a loan… In about a year you most often get paid back and can take the money out and keep it, or re-loan it… which is what I have done... My $300+ find, (added to as I have) has made over 200 loans in the past few years, and it’s one of my favorite feelings. I’ve kept it pretty quiet ‘cause I didn’t want the idea of the loan to be anything about me, but I just crossed 25 years in comedy, and it’s not a bad thing to introduce others to new ways they can help people. I've introduced friends (Shout out to Katsy’s first loan) and family to it, have even asked some to give to Kiva instead of a present... Anyhow, I'm gonna now put it out when I make a loan on Facebook and hopefully if anyone finds abundance in their bank account, or on the street, they too can do something good with it.

Giving, and now sharing the information… maybe that’s the real ABUNDANCE I’ve been allowed to FIND.

25 years ago… lucky then, lucky now…

I’ve wanted to be a comedian before I knew there was such a word. Second grade, Mrs. Norberg’s class, I did a report or story about what I wanted to be when I grew up… and even then, for my future, I wanted to make people laugh… Around that time, someone gave me a joke book and in it, there were MANY things I didn’t understand, and when I asked the older people around me, and some wiser school-mates “what does this joke mean?” they laughed! Some tried to explain why… and so I found there was a power in the words, and a mystery to them that I couldn’t wait to solve, to figure out… It’s still FUN figuring out what makes people laugh… (well, SOME people…)

I wanted to be a comic “professionally” like the people I listened to that lived in my folks record cabinet, Shelley Berman and Bob Newhart, and on the TV like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope, and later with the great minds and material of Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin…

I’ve been so lucky, I moved to San Francisco after a few tries of doin’ comedy in College, and hung out with some of the funniest people I’ve ever known… (one of the funniest named Jim I met in college!) and most of them I still know… a solid part of a larger supportive group that was far more willing to laugh than ever to criticize, people who were generous with suggestions and theory and who also shared rather than hoarded work… What a beautiful community to have tasted my first attempts to do comedy as a “wanna be” pro… I’m friends with most of them even now… both those that stayed in this crazy Show-biz thing, and those that found more “sane” (some might say ‘legitimate’) work. I’d go crippled typing out their names here, but those of you who remember those ‘artist’ days, and were part of them… Well, THANK YOU…

25 years ago today, February 1, 1987… John Cantu, club owner of the iconic Holy City Zoo in San Francisco gave me 10% of the “door” to be part of a show. And at $2 a head, I made $12.20 and the next morning I quit the job I had at the time… A job I didn’t hate, I just loved the idea of COMEDY so much more!

25 years from now, I hope I’m still bein’ funny, and still unraveling the mysteries of what makes strangers and some friends, and even me laugh…

Here’s to another 25 years, and bein’ so lucky…

Still a New Year

Wow, another Monday zipping up to be noticed… another blog that is pulling at my guilt strings…

I’m pretty sure I may not be so fond of this getting older/time flying faster thing as I see it first hand. I always heard it from great uncles and such but living it… Yikes… wasn’t it just January First…??!??

I’m home, which is great, but I sure am not getting the things done I had planned to do when I was planning to BE home, which is not so great. Pay bills, catch up on reading, write some comedy, write ‘thank-you’ notes, fix the den/office/guest room to be a den/office/guestroom. Organize garage and put the cool stuff I’ve forgotten about into the den/office/guestroom.

Oh well, bills are paid, (and AT&T was caught taking $2/month they shouldn’t be… winner!!!) I heard an entire book on ‘tape’ (well… CD… I’m behind but not that behind…) helped create and celebrate a surprise birthday (adults really can move quickly and in unison when they like somebody…) baby sat, (I know… I have friends with BABIES!!!) Caught up on how I did in Fantasy Football, (Broke even?) and what else? Cleaned out the closet, as somehow I’m no longer a 32x32 no matter how much I asked Santa and sometimes God for my perceived waist to be my actual waist… Ahhh that’s right, I did find out how ‘face time’ technology works, and found time to go through my big bucket o’ change and add a few “precious” coins to my penny collection… and turned the rest o’ the bucket into I-tunes… test drove a few cars since my was wrecked a while ago… and by the time that was done… I found a few more bills that some how escaped being paid…

OK so it’s simple pleasures when home, pet the dog, grind the coffee, kiss the wife, (not in that order ‘cause she likes coffee as much as I do) and try a little stand-up where allowed, on paper or on stage… the plan is to relax… recharge so you can charge out again… I have another week home, so let’s see if I can get around to some aspect of that den/office/guestroom… it’d be a nice place to pay bills…