The last three days I've been sad and exhausted when I got home from work. Too many projects with too many problems, but somehow it's worked for me. I've written better and more this week than I have in quite some time. Two flash stories that are among my best finished. One Monday and the other Tuesday. I reworked Spam Killer to a place where I'm enjoying it again. Even Myunee Bushceck's Beef Runners is back under way. The grand productive days.
Brain Fart! I tried out 4 new minutes of material and it went not so well. Got a few laughs, but I also got a lot of blank stares. It wasn't till at home after listening to the set that I realized what went wrong. You may remember last month I made a big deal about figuring out how tell if my bits will be successful. Well in my rush to meet my goal of writing new material, I forgot about this. So when I put the new material up against my criteria for a successful bit, it all fails miserably. Had I remembered to do this before my set, I would have done other material. Some of the new stuff is worth saving, but most is not. I'm still learning.
I am the only person keeping me from being a success. I blew it. It wasn't my material. It wasn't my talent. It was my lack of having fun that made me have a really bad set. I completely psyched myself out. I went into the little room with all the wrong ideas in my head. I let the contest aspect get to me and I was concerned about being competitive. That is always the death of me. Then I let myself think, Is this the kind of material they are looking for? So I spent the whole set looking for affirmation rather than connection. I gave up my power of being in the spotlight.
On the bright side. This is the first time I've ever done this type of standup audition. Having been through it, next time I will be fully prepared to have fun.
Governer Arnold!? We live in sad strange and stupid times.
Good crowd. Good set. I sandwiched some new material into safe bookends of material. It was a bit weak. After I first wrote the new bit I trimmed away about a third of it. When I did the bit though, all the stuff I cut came out anyway. I think the shorter version will work better.
Under slightly different circumstances this could have been a great show. There was nothing MAJOR wrong, it was a pile of little stuff that I'm not sure can be controlled. I'd like to try this place again in a while.
Holden Caufield was a whiny little prick who should have been beaten to death by the lacrosse team. I have always thought this. So many people tell me how they identify with Holden. They say that's how they felt growing up. I never saw anything of myself in him. I have never identified closely with any childhood character. My thoughts and actions being so alien to anything I've found before. Till now. I am reading Herman Hesse's DEMIAN. Wow! The whole light and dark worlds, never finding a permenant place in either. The disconnection from society. The outsideness. The living life in one's own mind. It's all there. My departures were never as severe as Sinclair's or Demian's, but they were in the same directions. The fear that Demian despised keeping me from committing either way.
I'll calm down now.
Odd show. I had a couple beers before the show. That would normally hurt my set, but since I didn't go up till 10th the buzz had mostly worn off. The stress for tonight was that some people from work were coming. I'm not comfortable seeing coworkers outside of work. The reasons for this is long and complicated, but I must say that I think I'm getting over them. I appreciate these people coming to see me.
Oh yeah; I had a good set. Having the co-workers in the audience didn't inhibit me. Fun stuff.
This is fun. I'm rewriting an old bit I haven't done since the Iowa days. It never really worked, but I've gotten much better at writing bits so I've been able to rework it into a funny bit.
This is so cool. I got a flyer for the show at Waves that I'm part of this Sunday, and there is my picture and name both prominently featured. Usually my name is buried in a long list of comedians. It makes you feel good to have a little reinforcement.
It's the end of the month and I'm assessing the success of my comedy goals for October. One was to get a good tape of myself doing a longer set. That didn't happen. I have a pretty good 12 minute set on video, but it was done to an audience of two so my delivery was quite different than it would have been for a larger audience. The second goal was to build up my material. I've had a good 20 minutes for a while, and a fair 30 minutes. I've put together a very good 20 and the 30 has gone from fair to good. The inclusion of two longer bits that I'm polishing up will enhance both and may even give me a fair 40 minutes.
So the taping goal gets carried over to November. The existing November goal of pushing for more pro bookings will slide into December. December's goal is to wrap up the current stage of my career. January starts what I'm calling The Year of Cain. No I'm not going to kill my brother. I stole that from a book I read recently.