Well that was neat

Winston's was slow as expected. I'm not sure whether to switch the contest back to Mondays, or if having the show is worth it at all. It is so hard to get repeat customers. We did have a table of randoms but other than that it was dead. There was maybe 10 or so people. Very slow. Plus parking is a pain dealing with the farmer's market. I think the show is fun, but as far as getting people in there, not sure what to do. I was told by a comic who runs another contest that we should try to get a sponsor. He tried and got Grey Goose to sponsor his contest without much effort. This isn't really my department. I'd have to ask Jesse to do this, but not sure if he's tried or would be able to get on at all. The show was sub par. Tough to judge without much of an audience, but I think it was as fun as can be. Our judge showed up 45 minutes late. He thought the show started at 8. Not only has the show been the same time for the year we've been doing it, but it's posted everywhere. Our winner from the previous contest ended up being eliminated.

Thursday I "headlined" the Madhouse show. I'm not really sure why I agreed to do this show, other than the possibility to do 20 plus minutes and make a few bucks. It was dead as expected and the crowd did not laugh. To their credit most of the comics on the show were awful and the show went long. By the time I went up the show had already been going for 2 hours. I decided I'd just talk with the crowd. I pretty much shit on the show and the comics. This went as well as it could go. I've never done that much crowd work, nearly 20 minutes. It's nice I can still do it, esp. stone cold sober. Once again I need to remind myself if I believe a show will be bad, it likely will be.

Friday at Winston's was dead. The one guy I hoped would bring people bailed on the show the day of, claiming sickness. Another comic that asked me to be on the show brought 0 people. Also the headliners both brought 0 people, and one had his birthday that day. Kinda sad, but I can't blame them I guess. Just sucks how great the show was the previous week to being so shitty this week. March was one of our better months as far as crowds, but I have a feeling April is going to be slow. One gay comic who I used to speak with when we were both starting has become such a pretentious asshole it's pathetic. I go back and forth on whether he just is uncomfortable in the environment or really does this he is better than people. He took a break from comedy soon after starting because he came out and needed to find himself or whatever. He emailed me a few times while he was on break asking about comedy, but now that he returned he carries himself like he's superior. He does run his own show that seems to be doing well, and sells out. People that perform out front of huge crowds don't understand how easy it is to get laughs. If you have 130 people there, you're likely to get at least 1/4 of them to laugh. And these lunatics get this false sense of funny. I think this has happened to him. As I walked on stage to shake his hand he asks me, "Did you light me early?" Really? Why would I do that, and if I did who gives a fuck. You never thank me for the time, show up 10 minutes before your set, and leave 5 minutes after. You bring nothing to the show. If I want to give you 3 minutes, it's my show and I have every right to do that. He complained when he co headlined when I told him he was getting 12 instead of 15 and then proceeded to eat shit for 12 straight minutes. If you're just going to show up, bring sub par jokes, you're going to get the time I give you. I didn't light him early, but I sure want to from now on.

Saturday was the Store. It was Rene'e first day there. He had the deer in the headlights look it seems most people have on their first day. It is between him and one other comic to be hired. I think it would be a great opportunity for him to get hired. I think he is a funny guy, his jokes just don't work as well on stage. I think he'll be able to gauge better and find himself. It was weird hearing people say he is not funny. He's a nice enough guy, and isn't running off stage acting like he killed.

Anyways the shows were pretty solid. Still haven't opened, I'm getting a little frustrated about that to be honest. But the shows went on without any major problem other than a drunk group during the second show. The first comic kind of encouraged them to talk so that set the show off on the wrong foot. The headliner had won last comic standing a few years ago, Ileza Shlesinger. She is cute, and has a lot of energy. Her jokes are elaborate stories and metaphors that can be tough to follow. She speaks real fast and walks around like a coke addict. She has a very female focused set, and talks a lot about tv stuff. I think she can be very unrelatable to older people, esp. men. We ended up having to kick out the drunk group. She actually requested that the second they got out of line they'd be kicked out. I was out of the room when they got kicked out, but I heard they were not pleased. I guess they were calmed down and got some free tickets so that made it ok I guess. I heard that 2 years ago when Ileza performed she had a bad experience with hecklers and actually flipped a table onto some customers. I had heard about this, and think that would have been awesome to see. She definately has an attitude, and an ego. She brought along her dog and one of the comics had to watch it the entire time, and I also heard the dog ran out of the green room and into traffic another time she was there. She is a pretty big name in the comedy world, but as far as he act it was meh. The feature was much better. He tells a lot of childhood stories and crowds eat that shit up. He actually got a few people to stand and applaud after his first set, and a guy stood and clapped for his second show. I've only seen that one other time, and it was not from a feature. Pretty impressive. I am shocked he has not blown up because he's clean and people love that type of material, plus he's a really nice guy. You'd figure that would propel him, but maybe he doesn't want to be huge and is content where he's at.