The Death of Stand Up Comedy Stand Up Comedy

The Death of Stand Up Comedy

I have not been blogging with nearly the same regularity as I have in the past.  There are several reasons for this (fewer funny road stories, over-saturation in the marketplace with blogs about everything, lack of motivation, etc.).  Now I have recommitted to writing a little more frequently, but one of the things I probably won’t be writing about nearly as much is the thing that has gotten me the most readers: the stand up comedy business.  It is because I believe that stand up comedy, as we knew it or like to think of it, is dying.  There is such an overwhelming perfect storm of factors that are contributing to destroying the prominence and art of stand up comedy that I no longer view it as a viable career option for myself, nor a community or industry for which I have much remaining passion.  Naturally I still get great pleasure from writing, working out material and then seeing it work in front of “regular people,” but that feeling is the lone positive swimming against a tsunami of negatives.  So let’s go through all the reasons why stand up is on life support:

1. Crushing The Middle Class of Comedy.  As I have written before (please read this one as well – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2304), just as the middle class of America is being left behind in an increasingly unequal society, feature work – the best way to become a competent and skilled comedian, is no longer a viable way of making a living.  For those of you that do not understand the industry lingo – the feature act is the comedian that goes between the emcee and the person you are there to see.  They receive about a half hour to get the audience drunk and really ready for a long set of comedy.  The fact is that feature work used to be a way to make a modest living if you were good enough (features in the 1980s were being paid as much or more in actual dollars, not adjusted, than features in 2012).  I had an old school booker tell me a couple of years ago that it would take ten years to become an excellent feature.  His timetable feels about right.  Of course for most people in the YouTube/Twitter/Tumblr world this is far too long a time table.  So now, more than ever it is difficult to make your focus and goal to be a great comedian, unless you are doing things other than comedy.  Then, if you are doing enough you will leapfrog the process and become a headliner, but not necessarily because your stand up chops are undeniable or even ready.  So instead of nurturing good comedians, good comedians must develop in spite of the lack of incentives and opportunities.

2. Everyone Wants To Be Heard.  The last year of stand up “scandals” have proven how self-absorbed the comedy community has become with its own news.   The competition to be the first to weigh in on any little blip on the comedy scene is pretty fierce.   Every comedian with six month’s or more of experience  has begun to weigh in on every issue that arises.  I have certainly done my share, but usually in the context of not liking the general trajectory of the comedy business, not for just a gut reaction response to an isolated incident.  Every one of these incidents gets play in the national media as the chatter builds up (the New York Times covered the Daniel Tosh incident close to a week after it had achieved viral status).  For me the Tosh incident should have been a non-issue.  Instead we collectively raised it to the level of a national conversation.  The short summary of this is that comedy is becoming a bunch of people cyber shouting and offering their input (regardless of writing talent or experience in comedy) and not spending time trying to be funny.  Not the best way for talent to develop, but of course the name of the game is to get noticed and worry about being funny later.  As an example – watch the inevitable next time some man makes a comment about gender and humor.  The uproar will be fast and furious from many people you have never heard of, while those who have made it or are on their way will be too busy writing new material and working to weigh in.

3. The Anti-Bullying Culture Joins Forces With Political Correctness.  Our society has become semi-obsessed with eradicating bullying.  I suppose in a post 9/11 world we need to get terror, wherever it lies, including 5th grade classrooms.  I would not want my kids to be bullied, but if a few taunts got my 12 year old to jump off a bridge I would also have to examine my own parenting and whether I had missed signs of severe depression, not just if kids teased him.  Perhaps if we gave 8 year olds fewer participation trophies and stopped making sure every kid at a birthday party, not just the birthday boy or girl, got a present, then maybe kids wouldn’t be so frail by the time they hit 15.  I am not saying there are not cases of individual torment that go into the Stephen King level of bullying, but why have we reached this alleged epidemic/crisis of bullying today?

Along those lines, comedy, once the bastion of free speech like no other art form, is now under attack.  Daniel Tosh makes a rape joke.  Tracy Morgan makes a homophobic joke in reference to his son.  Dane Cook talks about fu*king a woman with a chain saw.  I did not even bother to look at what George Lopez said on his special because I no longer cared what the protesters had to say.  I am a big believer that discrimination is still rampant in this country. As a half-black man who looks Egyptian or Italian, depending on the season, I hear far too many comments that make me sad and frustrated (because the Italian looking dude is probably down with racist stuff too, right?).  But have things gotten so good in America that now stand up comedy has to be sanitized?  People have lost sight of what kind of art form comedy was and now think they can place their agenda on it because they were offended.  It is an art form built, in part, on pushing boundaries and language.  More so, I was particularly disappointed with comedian/actor TJ Miller’s response to Dane Cook’s joke because it meant that not only were ignorant comedy fans treating stand up comedy like school plays, but comics themselves were adding their inside-the-business opinions, thus giving credence to the idea that comedy and speech on stage should be curtailed, or at least making a big show of their disapproval when it did not meet their ethical standards.  In no way does this mean that I approve or like any of the material in question.  But I do believe that outside of incidents like Michael Richards’ Kramer’s infamous N-bomb parade, which was not comedy in any way, anything said on stage is fair game.

So I will ignore these stories from now on.  They simply reflect a society that is growing out of touch with comedy (and thanks to social media – every perceived transgression can now have the effect of an atom bomb on-line) and a growing cadre of comedians who want aggression they disagree with taken out of comedy (e.g. there will be no uproar from the comedy community about jokes insulting faith and religion, but God forbid a joke on gender or race gets too edgy).

4. Not Everything is Stand Up Comedy, Nor Should It Be.  Bill Burr stirred another “comedy controversy” with his comments about alternative comedy earlier this year.  Here is what I think alternative comedy has done. On the plus side it has allowed everyone with any voice to be considered comedy. Some are very funny.  Most are not.  If I had my druthers I would take everyone with an instrument or a puppet operating as comedians and ban them from anything where stand up is performed (of course this is an aside, as no one considers these performers “alt.”).  But stand up has become very inclusive.  Too inclusive if you ask me, which you didn’t.  I would compare alternative comedy to Amazon’s publishing business.  They are making it easier for authors to self-publish, cut out the middle man and reach audiences they otherwise wouldn’t have.  However, the vetting process and the machinery of publishing still give a book a certain seal of approval, as if an official vetting has occurred and it is worth considering.  Now, as I already said, the clubs and the club system have failed as well, but that does not mean that every non sequitur spewing, act out champion needs to be considered the torch bearer for Pryor, Rock, Carlin, Giraldo just because there is a niche following for it in dank basements.  One of the things that made stand up comedy hard, even before the current difficulties, is that it was hard to do.  But it now feels like there is a moral relativism in comedy where nothing can be judged, everything can be funny and just as valid a form of stand up.  So what if you cannot write jokes as well or deliver as compelling a performance – just do something weird with a weird look or fashion sense and there is a place for you!   There have always been character based comedians or off-beat comedians, but with one Late Night Show basically dedicated to alternative comedy and a powerful presence on both coasts, they now have a platform bigger than their quantity of quality can bear.  Sure, you can say that people “don’t get it,” but maybe some of the comedians performing this stuff don’t get it either.

5. Comedy Central.  Imagine if there was a channel called Broadway Live.  And on it you could watch every play on Broadway on basic cable.  More people would get exposed to the theater and this would be great until the theater began to lose its cache.  Then it would be a disaster.  There would be a demand for content that Broadway Live would have to churn out which would dilute the quality of content as well as people’s perception of theater as something t partake in live as a cultural experience.  Watching Comedy Central these days feels the same way.  They had to change the name of “Comedy Central Presents” to “The Half Hour” a not-so subtle suggestion that the signature stand up show on the network had lost its cache and power.  Just as The Tonight Show is no longer a kingmaker for a comedian (the loss of Johnny Carson and the advent of Comedy Central probably played a role in that), Comedy Central Presents does not seem to have the power it once did.  Unlike the first several seasons where every comedian performing on them was either a phenom or a veteran with chops, now it feels very hit and miss.  The benefits of Comedy Central to comedians cannot be understated, but the pendulum feels like it may have swung into over-saturation and under-delivering in quality.  It is the same reason why CNN has to show Lindsay Lohan stories – because they have too much time and not enough news for the time.  This may sound like I have an ax to grind, but I don’t. This perspective was really informed by all the older comics I worked with on the road who noticed a real difference pre and post-Comedy Central.  Once again, as I stated in item #1, Comedy Central is a great platform for the rich to get richer, but the business for many comedians has also probably been hurt long term by Comedy Central’s existence.

6. Social Media.  I am including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook in this.  Now do not get confused. Social media is a great way for people to see your material and learn about you, if you are both lucky and savvy with the tools it provides.  But it has also cheapened comedy to be some sort of instantaneous short attention span exercise on par with a page a day calendar (remember those things?).  Now every comedian has to have some kind of Internet presence and there is both an embarrassment of riches and a rich number of embarrassments on social media pushing comedy content.  The market is so flooded that at the end of a work day people have probably gotten their fill of comedy.  And then people not only devalue the work of stand up comedians, but because of their proximity to them on social media can see themselves on the same level as some comedians.  When comedians lose both their cache and their perception of humor superiority over regular folk, it is not a good recipe for stand up.

7. Youth Over Talent.  In breaking news a sperm was picked for the Just For Laughs Festival because they wanted someone young and fresh with 5 minutes of material.  I remember being told early in the last decade, along with other friends who have achieved small amounts of success, that the key to making it in comedy was to write, perform, gain experience, find your voice and have something to say to people.  Now that some of my friends and I have wrapped up a decade in comedy and have developed voices and material, the comedy business has made a marked shift to youth being the paramount factor.  It seems comedians are being vetted like old Hollywood starlets – give me a face I can market (slightly different criteria for comedians than starlets), hopefully they have a little bit of something to work with and then we will get them on television, then they can headline clubs and hopefully along the way they develop an act.  And maybe this is a good business model (and of course I am not saying that there are not very talented young comics out there), but when the top criterion on many comedy booker/manager/festival producers list is “young,” can that really be in the best long term interests of stand up comedy?  Perhaps we have already reached the point of no return where stand up is now closer to def poetry slamming,

8. Celebrity Culture.  Comedy, like a lot of our culture, is now, more than ever, driven by fame. Here is a piece I wrote last year about Charlie Sheen’s comedy tour and I think it holds up today (https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2254).  I have placed a lot of blame on the inner workings and failures of people within comedy, but we are now living in a Real Housewives/Kardashian world of entertainment.  Celebrity is enough to warrant entertainment empires.  So although #1-#7  are hurtful, they probably are less damaging to stand up combined than the culture shift in general.  Everyone thinks they can be a celebrity because they can be.  So why would they even care about people with talent?  Stand Up comedy is becoming to entertainment was print is to journalism and what manufacturing is to the United States, a relic growing more irrelevant or at least less powerful every year.  Sure there are examples like Louis CK, but the New York Times is doing well, does that not mean that journalism is still in trouble?

As is clear from what I wrote, many of these factors are affecting other walks of life, but comedy is getting hit with most of our culture’s bad trends all at once in heavy doses.  So hopefully some of these things are cyclical, but sadly I think many of them are here to stay and will only get worse.

I’m off to watch Batman die now (allegedly?).  Maybe that will cheer me up.

Jeff Dunham Announces New Puppets For 2012! Blog

Jeff Dunham Announces New Puppets For 2012!

Great news for the millions of Jeff Dunham fans – he has announced a new roster of puppets to satisfy his followers who thirst for new and cutting edge material.  Known for turning all white crowds into def jam audiences with his hilarious puppets like “Crotchety Old Guy,” “Purple Dude,” “Mexican Pepper,” and everyone’s favorite “Terrorist Skeleton,” (admittedly I have seen Dunham’s work, but have not paid much attention to the names) Dunham has decided to create five new characters for his 2012 tour.  Based on the core of Dunham’s wild success, which is producing mild humor through blandly prejudiced or stereotypical puppets, his new characters will continue his brand.  He will offer fresh material through his new voices that can only be categorized as “Diet Mencia.”  So look out in 2012 for the Dunham Fab Five:

 

Santorum – Dressed in his traditional sweater vest, Santorum is everyone’s favorite woman hating puppet.  He has been getting big laughs by telling crowds that he only performs comedy for the purposes of conception and that no one should go to college (applause line).  And nothing gets the crowd laughing more than when he throws tiny stones at Dunham during arguments.

Bachmann – After complaints from various comedy lobbying groups about Dunham only having one female puppet, Dunham has added a another female to the lineup. She wins the crowd over by asking if any men want objects in their butt because “that’s how we do it in the Bachmann home.” She also mocks Dunham for his belief that science is responsible for the microphone producing sound, much to the delight of the crowd.

Herman Cain – Wearing a pimp hat, Herman Cain is the Dunham puppet that can’t stop chatting it up with all the ladies in Dunham’s audiences.  He always kills crowds with his Dunham-penned catchphrases of “I loves white womens,” and “I got 9 inches for 9 ladies starting at 9 tonight!”

Nuge – armed with a guitar that fires bullets, Nuge is Dunham’s highest energy puppet since “Purple Dude.”  When Dunham insists that President Obama is not a Muslim, Nuge proudly declares that he will “leave the stage in a laundry hamper” if Dunham doesn’t recant. When Dunham gives in it usually gets a standing ovation.

The Ghost of Trayvon Martin – giving Terrorist Skeleton a run for his money as Dunham’s new closer, this puppet comes dressed in his traditional hoodie, holding a pack of skittles and iced-tea, both of which he tosses to a lucky fan during the set.  The Trayvon puppet gets Dunham’s crowds howling with laughter with lines like “The New Black Panthers are going to get you,” and “The last time I killed this bad I was running from neighborhood watch!”

So get those tickets now – as they will undoubtedly sell out.

Top 10 Working Titles For My Feature Act Comedy Memoir Blog

Top 10 Working Titles For My Feature Act Comedy…

Everyone clamors for a book by star comedians who reflect on their rise to success. They usually sell well because they are funny and they give readers a latter-day Horatio Alger story: comedians always seem to start poor or at least unhappy and then rise to a position of fame and wealth and slightly less unhappiness.  But what about feature comedians – the stop on the way to headliner success for some, or the purgatory of comedy for many?  As a national feature act (meaning underpaid, underbooked and under the radar) I have thought about writing a book on the experience of travelling America and seeing the country through the lens of comedy’s middle class.  As I have written before, I think the feature act is an unexplored bellwether for (or at least a microcosm of) the disappearance of America’s middle class:

https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2304

So as I explore ideas for a memoir here are the ten titles I am considering (I am far too lazy to follow through on an entire book). Keep in mind these are based on my own experiences.  Some comedians may feel the same, some may not.  I applaud those of you that feel the same because you are right. And a message to my civilian readers – I know I can sound bitter – think of my posts (sometimes) as a darkly humorous look at how the comedy sausage is made:

1) 25% Off a $4 Order of Mozzarella Sticks – Nothing feels quite like a kick to the balls than the food discount, especially when the food item is dirt cheap to begin with (not to mention seeing the headliner eat that $7 hamburger free of charge – why don’t you blow your nose with $100 bills while you are at it!).  $1 off a $4 order is not so much about savings as it is about sending a message. The message? “You ain’t sh*t” (another possible title). That is why I now travel with homemade coupons for free back rubs.  If I have to pay for appetizers then the club is going to have to earn my money… the hard way (Rodney Dangerfield blog voice).

2) Trying Not To Get Hit By A Car While Walking On The Side Of A Highway – For every four day trip on the road, I spend about 5 hours on stage and 20 hours walking around towns where the lack of sidewalks help to explain the high levels of obesity.  I am 6’7″ and anywhere between 240 and 290 pounds, depending on how despondent I am over my “career,” but even at my fittest I have this fear that a murder will occur in any number of the towns I perform in and witnesses will say “we saw a real big unhappy sombitch just walking along the highway. And we ain’t never seen him before.” And my only alibi will be “Google Maps told me there was an IHOP two miles down the road.”  Either that or a car will simply hit me as I dart across a highway to get to a Starbucks with WiFi. Headline the next day: “Tall Stranger Killed Trying to Check Facebook. No One Had Any Idea Why He Was Here Or Who He Was.”

3) Why Do All These White People Find This Mediocre Black Comic Hilarious? – If anyone wants to know why large pockets of America think President Obama is a Muslim, just go to a comedy club across America.  This country, for all its progress and love of Denzel Washington, is still an incredibly segregated place, where people of color still possess an exotic aura for many white people.  And no job is easier in comedy, in my estimation, than to be a mediocre opener of color (the darker the better) in front of a white audience.  The white audience in America is often times self-selected (my native Bronx is by no means the only place that has experienced white flight) so no line ever does better (or is more repeated by black comics) than “I must be in the wrong club!”  The goobers in the audience are simultaneously thinking “That’s a funny joke!” and  “That’s true!!”  I was emceeing shows recently and a feature, who was black, told me after a show while we were chatting, “Every time I talk with white people from here after a show, they always want to tell me some ‘black sh*t,’ like some story about a black guy they met or a black person they hooked up with.  Maybe I just want to talk about some other sh*t!”  This is not even necessarily a mean thing (ignorance is not necessarily evil), but it does explain a high tolerance for bad comics of color in America (the gentleman I am speaking of was not in this category).  Now there are terrible comics of every race working out there, but the large parts of this segregated country that still think American black people only exist in prisons, rap videos and sporting arenas (because our president is Kenyan) are giving refuge to a lot of terrible comics of color.  I don’t know which came first, the sheltered/ignorant white crowd or the black comic with way too high a swagger-to-talent ratio, but both need to stop.

4) Why Do All These Black People Love This Asian/White Comic – The pendulum swings both ways and if there is something that annoys me it is when a member of a group gets respect from an audience comprised of a different group, simply having the guts to show up.  I have seen this in black rooms almost as often as I see it in white rooms. Now this is not to denigrate comics with real skill and talent who happen to be different. Rather it’s the ones who coast on their appearance as if that alone is a “voice” or “perspective” (often times these guys DON’T have a voice or perspective, which might make their job more difficult if they are not truly skilled). Of course #3 and #4 are just a prelude to my personal gripe…

5) Why Do White and Black People Judge My Biracial Ass For Making Humorous Commentary On Race – If you can tell from #3 and#4 this is personal.  I have the comedic misfortune of being opinionated and sharp on race in my material while looking like an Italian in the winter and an Egyptian in the Summer (my Dad is black and my mother is white). In other words, black rooms (not necessarily black people individually, but rather comedy clubs with a classic urban sensibility) require me to be more forceful in asserting my blackness before I am “allowed” to speak on it, while many whites don’t like being lectured to on race by some guy who looks mostly like them. In conclusion I hate you both.

6) Please Let It Be a Hotel… Dammit It’s a Comedy Condo – I would lick a Las Vegas Holiday Inn comforter with more mental peace than I have when I get into a comedy condo bed.  “Hey, I like your choice to go with a white comforter in the comedy condo – really brightens the room!”  “Huh, that comforter is navy blue.” Cue Jim Carrey crying in the shower in Ace Ventura.

7) Jack and Jill and Other Things I Am Ashamed Of On The Road – I love going to the movies, but it can reach the point on the road where I am seeing a movie just to avoid staring at a wall or becoming Jack Nicholson in The Shining.  That is my official explanation for why I saw Bucky Larson last year.

8 ) Why Am I Getting Paid The Same As A Feature in 1985?  From several accounts I hear the actual dollar amount is less (especially when considering that travel was sometimes included during the comedy boom), but the fact is that in adjusted dollars features are making far less than their counterparts 20+ years ago.  Any other profession work that way?  Is a partner at a law firm in NYC going home to his family saying, “I just made partner!  How does $50,000 a year sound? What? That is how much our daughter’s private school costs?  OK, well, let me get back to my managerial position at Best Buy where I can make some real cash.”

9) Dear Booker, It’s Me J-L, Please Read My E-Mail – Being a comedian without management is sort of like being Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. You are just sending messages out into space with the faint hope of receiving a reply. (My June and July are open – call me!)

10) Yes, I can Explain That 4 Year Gap on My Resume… I Was In Jail.  This is the excuse I have come up with if employers start asking me about my tweets or YouTube videos. “No, that is not me – my accounts were hacked. I was actually in prison for those four years, but in no way, shape or form was I performing stand up comedy.”

 

J-L’s New Stand-Up Album “Too Big To Fail” is Available at www.JLCauvin.com for FREE until April 30th. His weekly podcast “Righteous P***k” is available for free on iTunes with a new episode every Tuesday.

How To Get Along With A Struggling Comedian Blog

How To Get Along With A Struggling Comedian

Hello everyone.  It has been eight weeks since I last posted and I have been itching to write.  My new site is finally up and I am very proud of it (www.JLCauvin.com). I have been touring cities at a relatively exhausting pace (by the end of the month it will be 11 cities and 10 states in under 40 days – consider it my Lenten wandering in the desert of comedy), reaping little financial benefit and even less comedy industry credit. To give you a glimpse of my current comedy pessimism, two nights ago I dropped a pitch perfect George Lopez impression on stage for the first time and all I could think was, “Well there is another thing I can do that will go to the grave with me.”

I usually spend a lot of time, when I do write about comedy, complaining or critiquing aspects of the business, whether it is bookers, managers, clubs, or monolithic groups of comedians.  But I realized it is not just them making comedy more difficult, it is regular people and everyday individual comedians who make this such an annoying journey at times, even if they don’t intend to.  So, inspired by the “Broken Windows” theory of crime prevention, which theorizes that swarming and fixing little problems will lower overall crime, I present the “Broken Compliments and Questions About Comedy” theory on making comedians, who are struggling in the increasingly weakening middle class of comedy, happier day-to-day.  Obviously these are my own personal theories, but I doubt I am the only one for whom these will resonate.  Some of these apply to fellow comedians and some apply to regular folk.  Enjoy:

1) Re-Tweet, don’t Favorite. And don’t email or direct message me that I am funny.  I am a reluctant abuser of social media.  If I did something else I would avoid it, but it is a part of entertainment so I try to immerse myself in it.  But the reward is very simple – if someone likes something, share it. That is how I can advance my reach and audience.  Treating my material like a black guy that a white girl secretly dated in college is helpful to no one.  I am sure there is some benefit to favoriting. I just don’t care.

2) Don’t ask me about how my comedy is going. And definitely don’t refer to it as “my comedy thing/skits/sketch/hobby.” If you think it is so trivial then don’t ask about it. But if you are actually curious then speak of it like it is a career or a job.  No one ever asked me how the “legal thing” was going when I was a practicing lawyer.

Want to see me smile about comedy? It's unlikely, but these guidelines give it a chance.

3) Don’t tell me about your friend who is hilarious unless they are a comedian. Otherwise you are insulting and degrading what I have sacrificed to be skilled at what I do. I was the funny asshole at the cafeteria table and have been since I was 10. But now I make strangers laugh and have done so with an economically crushing, relationship harming, career risking, trial and error process.  So your friend can go fu*k himself.

4) Don’t say you want to go to a show or to let you know when I am in town unless you mean it.  You owe me nothing.  I mean it. I am doing comedy whether you support it or not.  It is like a story I shared from a couple of years ago. A decently connected manager was very interested in working with me to find a way to publicize my Obama impression. We met several times over several months and then he told me that he decided not to commit to it.  The lesson – don’t say anything unless you’ve made the decision to act, not just because you think you might act.  That way expectations are not raised. Simple and thoughtful.  If I don’t know, then I can’t care.

5) If a joke goes up on Facebook, “Like” it – don’t piggyback on the joke. There are a few egregious offenders of this – the person that never acknowledges a good joke, but then just takes the 95% of thought that the writer created and then simply attempts to add to it. If you like a joke, like it. If you don’t ignore it. But if someone beat you to a concept, don’t try to pull yourself up by their bootstrap.

6) Try to make famous people work for it on social media. Comedians and civilians alike – try not to kiss too much ass, especially of funny people, unless they are actually being funny.  They do not care about you or how many times you suck their twitter di*k.

7) Don’t ask me why I don’t have an agent or a manager.  It is not by choice.  I don’t want to be a struggling freelance unknown, unappreciated comedian.  And to answer your follow up, yes, my career would be easier if I had people booking me for shows and auditions and gigs.  Why hadn’t I thought of that before?

8 ) If you do nothing do not ask me to follow you on Twitter. I will follow friends and fellow comedians that I like either personally (which pains me because sometimes I feel like I am giving positive reinforcement to a mediocre product) or professionally, but every so often a person from a show will ask for a “follow back.”  Why? Did you just travel 100o miles to entertain me with your writing and performance and I will receive more of that?  OR are you just someone who tweets random personal thoughts and opinions with way too many pronouns, which make even your mundane thoughts hard to process (“This book is great!” – what fu*king book?!!!).  But thank you for equating my career of making people laugh and trying to build a fan base that will purchase tickets to see me and raise my minuscule profile with your desire to brag to your friends about how many people checked our your twitpic of your salad at Panera Bread.

Ahhhhh, feels good to be back.

Sets and The Cities Blog

Sets and The Cities

It has been a whirlwind of emotions over the last few days based on the shows I have had.  Surprisingly the emotions were both bad and good, which differs from my normal emotional responses to comedy of bad and worse.  I will start with the bad news, since that is how it happened chronologically.

Saturday night I was co-headlining a show at the Triad Theater in the west 70s of Manhattan.  Comedy crowds come in different bunches.  Sometimes you get hardened comedy fans.  Those are great crowds – they want good comedy and understand the medium and are not easily offended.  Then you have tourist-type crowds that generally want to hear the most basic comedy and are easily offended.  But then there is a third, wild-card crowd, that one can see in Manhattan, which is a crowd consisting of other comics’ friends.  Now if those friends are comedy savvy people then they tend to embrace all types of comedy.  In other cases, they are groups of people who are prepared to laugh at their friend, because their friend is mostly their only exposure to stand up comedy and everyone else to them ranges from unamusing (because you are not their friend) to shockingly inappropriate (because they think stand up comedy is what CBS comedies do).  Well guess which one I got Saturday night?

My initial material dealt with interracial porn and how we could never be a racism-free society as long as there were people in America that believe whites and blacks having sex together represents a taboo in keeping with some of the other more anatomically shameful porn genres.  I got nothing (obviously this concept was presented in more joke form and not as a graduate thesis).  The few laughs I got were from a few comics and a few people, but the mention of race and sex, even in a sanitized way, seemed to elicit a “We didn’t know a comedian was going to discuss race and sex! Well I never!”  So in what is becoming an increasingly annoying flaw in my stand up I took the uptight comedy stupidity of the majority of the crowd and looked at them with disdain the rest of the show.  I made sure to be harsher and more care free with my material, which actually won me about 12 of the 45 people in the crowd.  However, the remaining 33 seemed to genuinely hate me.  Which actually felt good.  They were only ruining one evening with their response: mine.  But I was ruining 33 evenings with my routine.

Confirming the depth of the hatred some members of the crowd had for me was a story told to me by the date of a friend of mine in attendance.  After the show, she was in the bathroom and heard a woman say, “I liked the show, but I wanted to stab that last guy in the face.”

In case you are wondering, I was the “last guy.”

But redemption was only a few days away.  I had a private show for Comcast at Helium Comedy Club in Philadelphia last night.  I kept my set clean (not one curse in 45 minutes is the longest I have spoken, let alone performed, curse free since I  was 12 years old), I riffed about 20 minutes of political material that went over well and as of today no one has made an official complaint to my knowledge.  So it was good to wash away the bad taste of Saturday with a strong showing last night.  But the cherry on top was sharing a train ride home from Philadelphia with Samantha Jones a/k/a Kim Cattrall.

I am very well versed in Sex and the City.  An odd admission perhaps, but the same way Malcolm X was knowledgeable of the Bible, I felt it necessary to understand the white devil in my own fashion.  But let me tell you, my seething disdain for the culture that Sex and the City spawned (or at least greatly augmented) all but melted away when I saw Kim Cattrall.  I actually did not think it was her because she looked much younger than what I assumed her age was (dead).  But she had not one, but two personal assistants (gay man and hipster looking chick) with her so that settled it for me.  In all honesty it is pretty intimidating when you see a woman from television that you never found THAT attractive relatively to other women on television, but then you see them in person and it opens your eyes.  I felt the same way when I was in the same green room with Teri Polo (Greg Focker’s wife in Meet The Parents) several years ago.  All I could think was “If Greg Focker’s wife looks this good in person, then Macy Gray must be a fu*king knockout!”

Kim and I rode in the same car (we agreed that I could be on a first name basis with her), so hopefully everyone else in that train car realized the star power they were surrounded by.  And just in case I thought that Sex and the City was a horrible show for a generation of young women it was refreshing to see one of the show’s stars travelling the same way as the miserable King of Greyhound Comedy.  Hello gorgeous.

The Zero Barrier of Comedy Blog

The Zero Barrier of Comedy

So I am approaching 9 years in the comedy “game.”  Since a new year is a great time for reflection I reflected on my relatively empty calendar, my even emptier bank account and my fully empty soul and realized that I am approaching the zero barrier of careers.  The term zero barrier, if I am remembering the term correctly, is from the film Armageddon (which failed to use Armageddon It by Def Leppard which is one of the great soundtrack omissions of all time) and it refers to the last possible moment they could blow up the asteroid to ensure it avoided Earth before it was too late.

Well, I am not sure if I am at the zero barrier of my comedy career, but I am close.  Now I will always be fairly employable – a Georgetown Law Degree will always qualify me for bagging groceries, cleaning toilets and substitute art teaching, but those will just be jobs.  The possibility of a career is slipping away though.  I have been at comedy for almost 9 years and doing it as my full time job for 3 years.  It feels like I have been released into the wild to be free and pure instinct, but now mental health and financial health seem to be calling me back to the controlled zoo of a day job as well as career ambition that doesn’t depend on the reactions of strangers.

But that has not stopped me from pumping out a ton of new content in 2012.  My weekly podcast has launched, just filmed two new comedy short films, I am in the process of putting together my weekly movie review show and of course my new CD Too Big To Fail will be out in February (along with the honor of having my voice doing the intro on Patrice O’Neal’s posthumous CD).  I also just got picked for a NACA showcase where I can potentially (but of course not guaranteed to) make a decent chunk of change doing college gigs.  The point of this is not to brag.  This is all the shit I am doing to keep even!  Just to keep people interested (because bookings have been slow, which are the comedy business’ way of helping you maintain a sharecropper’s status – go to a club, make a couple hundred bucks profit if you are lucky as a feature, get some Twitter followers, some Facebook friends, some YouTube fans, and then don’t get called back to the club for 2 or more years so that half of your fans are dead and the other half has moved on to supporting their local def poetry scene).

So thanks to the people who read this blog, watch my videos, listen to my podcast through early problems and generally put up with my shit.  I say this in part out of gratitude, but mostly because this is probably the year I go full on crazy, like become the 2006 Ron Artest of stand up or the Montecore of stand up and I will need at least a few of you at a sentencing to speak to the pressures of comedy and the joy I brought to you when you read this blog and realized – wait, maybe life is not so bleak because I certainly don’t feel as bitter and riled up as this meteor falling to the Earth.  Happy New Year!!!

The 2011 J-L Cauvin Reader Blog

The 2011 J-L Cauvin Reader

With 2011 coming to a close I thought I would give fans, friends and new readers a Best of  2011 of my blogs.  I have divided them into 5 categories and the following blogs represent both my favorites and the ones that got by far the most web traffic.  The five categories are:

  1. The Comedy Business
  2. Road Gig Stories
  3. Politics
  4. Movies
  5. Sports

If you are a fan of the blog I’d appreciate you passing this along (or you can always pass along your favorite individual posts from within this blog) through Twitter and Facebook.  This is really a collection of mys best stuff so sending it to people could turn them into fans. Thanks again for reading.  2012 will be a big and new year for my on-line content and I hope you will:

  • become a fan of “Righteous Prick” on Facebook and
  • follow @RPrickPodcast on Twitter
  • Every Monday starting in January I will post my movie reviews to www.YouTube.com/JLMovieLife (subscribe today even though the page is not finished), and
  • look for my new podcast every Tuesday starting January 3rd on iTunes (Righteous Prick) and
  • and please continue to come to this blog on Wednesday and Fridays for new posts.

A picture of me reading makes sense since this post is caled the J-L Reader.THE COMEDY BUSINESS

  1. How To Fail In Comedy While Really Trying – A Breakdown of the Breakdown of the Traditional Path to Comedy Success (with an epic battle with “Bob Hellener” – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2304
  2. In Re Bob Hellener – Comedy hack and all around douche Dan Nainan is revealed to be the coward behind Bob Hellener – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2596
  3. Charlie Sheen – The Comedy America Deserves – A Breakdown of Charlie Sheen’s 2011 “Comedy Tour” – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2254
  4. Comedy One Hit Wonder – A self-depricating take on my career after 8 years – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2771
  5. A Tribute To Patrice O’Neal – A Eulogy For One of My Favorite Comedians – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=3099

ROAD GIGS

  1. The Best & Worst Fan Mail From Des Moines, Iowa – A Series of Fan/Love Letters From A Homophobic Self-Proclaimed Blow Job Queen (watch the video)- https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2210
  2. The Hills Have Eyes Wide Shut – A Swinger Party Overshadows My Show in Allentown, PA – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2165
  3. Cleveland Extremities – The Loss of Lebron James Apparently Caused An Unusually Large Number of Men in Cleveland to Masturbate in Public – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2665
  4. 30 Hour Train Ride From New Orleans to NYC – Of All The Train Rides I’ve Taken For Comedy, This Was The Most Epic – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2867

POLITICS & ECONOMICS

  1. Economics For Dummies – 9 months Before Occupy Wall Street I wrote this – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2178
  2. 3 Non Partisan Things America Should Do – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2742
  3. Occupy Wall Street – A Follow Up to #1 in light of the Occupy Wall Street Movement – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2987

MOVIES

  1. Review of Super 8 – I Expose JJ Abrams As Hollywood’s Bernie Madoff – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2537
  2. Someone Must Stop Adam Sandler – Title Speaks For Itself – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2710
  3. Return of the Planet of The Apes – My Favorite Movie of the Year (and a funny write up) – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2752

SPORTS

  1. The End Of The Diet Jordan Era – My Summary of Kobe Bryant’s Era as Diet Michael Jordan – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2412
Minnesota Recap – Cold Weather, Warm Reception Blog

Minnesota Recap – Cold Weather, Warm Reception

My headlining stint was a rousing success at Joke Joint in Lilydale, MN (a few miles from St Paul – one of the twin cities, so Lilydale is like the chick that St Paul has sex with when Lilydale thinks it is actually having sex with Indianapolis).  Of course on this blog, the phrase “rousing success” is a relative term.  It means I had three really excellent shows, one decent one and one that was eh.

Joke Joint is a comedy condo club, meaning that you live in an apartment that the club owns or rents, versus a hotel.  But unlike most condos, the Joke Joint one was pretty damn cozy.  It features a full kitchen stocked with snacks (and tons of bottles of 5 Hour Energy – in case the headliner is a raging douchebag), a television and DVD player and two bedrooms – one for me and one for soon-to-be dead hookers.

Being a big walker and non-owner of a car I like when accommodations are near eating and shopping areas.  Well, the condo was a mere 1.7 miles from a Walmart/Panera Bread/etc. and considering that I once walked 4.1 miles each way in a suburb of Denver to see a movie each day, this was no problem.  Except that was Denver in springtime.  This was Minnesota in Winter (think Game of Thrones and how terrified those dues are of Winter).  Each walk would start with me having a penis and by the time I arrived at Panera Bread I was using the women’s bathroom and removing a finger dead from frost.

I managed to see one movie while in Minnesota.  The feature – a woman named Wendy – was given the unenviable task of chauffeuring me to and from the shows each night agreed to bring me along to the movie she was seeing with the two teenage daughters of a friend.  Of course this felt like some sort of set up.  I thought I was getting Silvio Berlusconi’d.  But something far more offensive was to happen. We went to see Hugo.

I was lukewarm on Hugo.  On the plus side it was directed by Mr. Eyebrows Martin Scorsese and has been receiving rave reviews.  On the downside I had no real fu*king interest in it.  But the critical mass was so good that I decided I wanted to see it.  Whoops.  Here in as concise a fashion as possible is my summary of Hugo:

  • Well acted
  • Boring
  • Really boring
  • Fell asleep boring (literally)
  • Nice looking movie
  • Takes place in Paris, every actor (both English and American so it was intentional) using British accents
  • Long
  • Too long
  • Never cared very much about the characters
  • Every revelation of past events that have led our characters to be the way they are fails to deliver as much significance – it is as if JJ Abrams decided to direct a boring family movie (and critics – please stop calling this a family film – no kid, let alone a kid from the ADD 21st century will enjoy this or have the patience for your ode to cinema)

But the point of this whole trip was not to see movies or experience shrinkage on an unprecedented level – it was to do comedy, or as I described it to the crowd to run a Ponzi scheme on myself.  And the crowds were really good.  The Thursday crowd and the two early Friday/Saturday crowds were great.  Enthusiastic, smart and great laughers.  The late show Friday was tough and featured a lot of Usain Bolts (this is what I call a person who sprints out of the showroom, for fear that even looking at me may force them to acknowledge my existence or buy a CD).  The Saturday late show was tough, but still a net positive.  Here is one of my favorite newer bits I dropped on the crowds:

So I managed to sell a few CDs, got a lot of laughs, avoided junk food at the airports (Midway one of the underrated airports in America – can’t beat Potbelly for airport food!), did not get arrested, did not die in a plane crash and immediately sent every penny I made to the credit card, phone and cable companies!  Comedy!  Thank you to the fellow comics, staff and audiences at Joke Joint.

Minnesota Journal Part I – Bet on Half-Black at Black Bear Casino Blog

Minnesota Journal Part I – Bet on Half-Black at…

A fun week (I hope) started yesterday as I flew from New York to Minneapolis via Chicago.  I am headlining the Joke Joint just outside of Minneapolis tonight through Saturday, but to sweeten the pot the booker for Joke Joint also booked me to headline the Black Bear Casino, a small, but nice casino located a mere 11,000 miles from Minneapolis.  The Black Bear show turned out to be a very pleasant surprise, but I am getting ahead of myself.

The Travel

I flew Southwest from LaGuardia to Midway to Minneapolis.  I always used to assume O’Hare was the better of the Chicago airports.  I just assumed Midway was a place where prisoners were transported and rats and abandoned animals fought for the  pleasure of waiting passengers.  Turns out Midway is nice.  First off, unlike O’Hare, I’ve never experienced awful delays at Midway and more importantly they have a Potbelly sandwich shop, which allows me to eat a large healthy turkey sandwich that I know tastes good, instead of my usual airport diet of $13 dollar half pound bags of peanut M & Ms and shame.

The flight from Midway to Minneapolis was uneventful.  But the earlier flight to Midway from NYC was much creepier, both because of my occasional urine spritzing when we travelled over a storm system and because of the people behind me.

Sitting behind me was a skinny, fairly attractive woman (she had a clear look of cu*tiness which made me instinctively downgrade her) in the window seat and a scruff looking guy about 12 years her senior sitting in the middle seat.  And for about 20 minutes before take off he just kept whispering words to her like “pussy,” “fu*k” and “bitch.” If she had been engaging him back I would have been less worried, but she just kept looking out the window.  Because I do not need any more reasons to feel nervous on a plane I just assumed he was a crazy person, probably not a terrorist, but possibly some sexual pervert who would make our flight awkward and possibly force it to be diverted.  But just be before I was about to push a call button she finally responded!

And for the next 45 minutes they spent cursing at each other (I think she may have fu*ked someone else, or she was a cu*t and he was angry and possibly crazy, probably because he had reached that point where a guy realizes he is with a hot chick, but he hates the fact that she is an awful person and resents her and himself for being in a vicious circle of cu*titude).  Then the lady tapped out of the argument by… wearing a sweater over her face for 30 minutes.  The guy then lifted it up and whispered something to her and then put a sweater or jacket over his head.  But he grew bored of this and left his seat and went several rows back for the last hour of the flight (possible ad campaign for Southwest’s open seating policy!).

When we finally arrived in Minneapolis I had a bit of a wait for my ride, so I ate a yogurt and blueberry parfait (I will not allow airports to destroy my fitness dammit) and the Marty showed up.  He is a young comic from Minneapolis who agreed to drive me the 19 hours back and forth to the Black Bear Casino in exchange for a guest spot and a room for the night at the casino.  Now that is dedication.

The ride was really only about two and a half hours, but what shocked me was that until we were about a mile from the casino I had not seen a single sign for the casino.  With that kind of reach I fully expected the casino to have at least 30 people in it (or however many immediate neighbors the casino has in the empty darkness that is Carlton, MN).  Turns out I was right.

The Show

So Marty and I walked into the casino and I could see that we had just increased the audience total by 20%.  We checked into our rooms, which were nice and luckily equipped with Nintendo 64 controllers, in case I found a time machine and want to invite 14 year old me to play some games.  After dropping my bags off I checked out the casino.  It is basically slot machines, a black jack table and the room for comedy/music.

When I walked in there were 4 people sitting (room seats probably 100-120) and 8 people at the bar with their backs to the stage watching hockey – I am in Canada basically.

As the show progressed more crowd came in which was nice, but I was still not sure of the crowd.  Especially when the following exchange occurred:

Emcee – “… Maybe Herman Cain should just wave the white flag”

Angry bar heckler: “As long as it is a black flag”

Emcee (slightly later) – “Herman Cain was found with a another woman!”

Angry bar heckler: “And her name was Ginger White – how ironic is that?”

Yes it is ironic if miscegenation laws are still on the books in Carlton, MN.  Otherwise it is not ironic UNLESS you are coming from a non-ironic stance of racism.  And the “black flag” comment was just dumb.

The it was time for me to go.

And the set actually turned out great.  Other than the guy who answered his ringing phone (if you are a man and you have a cell phone and it rings you are not a real man – vibrate or silence – save the rings and ring tones for women and Puerto Ricans on NYC buses) 8 feet from the stage. But I felt awesome during this show, with every minute surprising me.  I riffed about 30% of my set and all the material that I prepared worked.  I really felt like I had accomplished a victory.  Granted it was a moral victory.  And granted moral victories are usually the result of an actual loss, but I still felt good.  Sure I handed out only 5 cards and sold zero CDs, but the moral victory of not sucking (and even having a good set) in the middle of nowhere in front of a bunch of people that think Obama was born on Mars felt pretty good.  Sure I had to split my meal ticket with Marty (I won’t big time a guy who drove two and a half hours and pull the diva move of “This $14 meal card is for closers only!”), but it still felt good eating a prepackaged grilled chicken salad after a job well done.

The show taught me a valuable lesson – I was in a room of mostly conservative, some racist, white people in the middle of nowhere, but these people had what some liberal crowds and some conservative crowds don’t have – the ability to let go for the sake of a comedy show.  I insulted various members of the crowd and their town repeatedly in between bits.  Now they may not have known that Hawaii is a state, but they knew that when you come to a comedy show you come to laugh and have a good time.  So even though they may be beating their wives or committing hate crimes today, I am glad that they were a good audience last night.

Joke Joint tonight – spread the word to people.  Check back tomorrow for the movie of the week (if I can find a movie theater) and Monday for the full Minnesota recap.

Syracuse Recap: 6 Shows, 5 Botched Intros, 4 Good Crowds, 3 People Buying CDs, 2 Movies Seen & 1 Henry Winkler Blog

Syracuse Recap: 6 Shows, 5 Botched Intros, 4 Good…

The title of this post is basically the Cliff Notes of what you need to know. But for further detail here goes something:

I arrived in Syracuse on Thursday after a relaxing, and by J-L travel standards quick, 5 ½ hour train ride at 3:50 pm and was greeted by the welcoming weather that calls central New York home:

Thursday’s show would turn out to have the smallest crowd of the six shows this weekend, but they were not half bad.  And the show was also notable because it was the only time my intro was said correctly in all six shows.  I will give you the correct into and then the not so correct ones I got:

  • This guy has been seen on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and performs at clubs around the country – J-L Cauvin (correct)
  • This guy, he was on The Late Late… which one is it The Later Night Late Show?  J-L Cauvin
  • You may have seen this guy on The Late Late Show his name is… what the hell is his name? (picks up my card) J-L… Cauvin
  • Give it up for D.L Cauvin
  • You have seen this guy… he just did a guest spot on Leno… J-L Cauvin

I messed up one intro as an emcee in my life at the Cleveland Improv.  I was mortified and would have been OK if the headliner told me to fu*k off and asked me to be bounced from the lineup.  That said, I of course never messed up the intro the rest of the week.  But Wise Guys this weekend had three different emcees for the four nights. And none of them had a perfect record. I don’t really care except when your intro is messed up (especially on purpose as one emcee did twice because I think he thought it was funny) it just diminishes the modicum of energy and respect the crowd may have for the entertainer.   It’s like instead of having the dignity of a stripper, he was demoting me to Hooters waitress.

Friday I went to the Mall and joined Bally’s for three days.  I always enjoy my interactions with gym personnel in different towns.  I usually say “I am a comedian in town for the weekend and was hoping to use the gym for a few days,” and they always respond, “Oh really, what’s your name?” And usually I say, “You have never heard of me.”  See, as a feature you do all the travelling of a headliner at a fraction of the pay and much more pride swallowing.  By the end of a typical day on the road it becomes a battle of how many people will I have to tell I am a non-famous comedian that does not play pro sports while enduring looks of disappointment in people’s faces like I threw the 1918 World Series versus how much to I still want to live.

So working out in Syracuse I realized that the same way small town girls seem to have taken to tattoos and oral sex as their singular identity in a post-industrial America (I am guilty of looking at well-inked women the way many white women look at black dudes – Sure I find you attractive and want to have sex with you, but I will probably never introduce you to my parents), men seemed to have embraced the MMA model for life.  Everyone in the gym looked like they were working out to be extras in a sequel to Warrior.  It would be nice if America could start employing people and creating things so that our only inspirations are not from reality television  America is quickly becoming a land where men and women either look like they belong on Jersey Shore or The Biggest Loser.

Anyway, like I said only four of the six shows at Wise Guys went as well as I wanted (which based on Twitter account reading will now be known to all comedians performing in Syracuse as “pulling a Jason Good”).  The early show Friday and
the late show Saturday had all the fun of a Tea Party rally watching Obama fu*k their white daughters.  But the other shows were great, especially Sunday’s crowd, which provided me the rare opportunity to leave a city on a high note.  Normally I leave gigs the way Shooter McGavin was forced to run at the end of Happy Gilmore.

Not only that, but I sold five CDs Sunday night, which brought my total for the weekend up to five.  Thank you to three people that bought those five CDs (two went for one copy of each of my CDs) – your money has already gone to purchase breakfast for a starving comedian.

As far as non-comedy entertainment I saw Puss In Boots and In Time, which were both great ideas for movies towatch on TBS on a rainy Sunday afternoon on the day a year where the only sports on television are cheerleading competitions.  And also a note to Regal Cinemas of Syracuse: You are a town with a Mall. How dare you charge $10 per ticket or $8 for a matinee.  You are a $6 movie ticket town!  At least Indianapolis had the decency to know that their matinees should only cost $5.

I also had a lot of fun hanging out with headliner Jaime Lissow, whose name I had heard many times, but never actually met.  We even managed to kill at Denny’s late Friday night.   We went in after a late night of shows and drinking.  I was immediately drawn to a stuffed toy plane in the claw machine (the impossible ones that take people’s money without mercy) because I am immature and Jaime said “I am going to get that plane for you,” which is slightly more impressive than calling a home run if you can pull it off.  I turned my back and walked toward the table and following behind me, to the awe of two customers up front, was Jaime with a the toy, which looked sort of like what an airplane would look like in a Pixar film.  So, to the delight of a few waitresses and patrons I re-enacted 9/11 as a Pixar movie using the stuffed toy as one of the hijacked planes.  Might not have been my finest moment from a decency standpoint, but was one of my best improvised
moments of comedy for sure.

Then there was the Henry Winkler sighting, which was probably the most surreal experience I have had in a while.  If you don’t know who Henry Winkler is you are stupid, but I will let you know anyway – he played the Fonze on Happy Days and most notably to me, played the Bluth Family attorney on Arrested Development.  I was at the Syracuse Amtrak station on Saturday waiting for my girlfriend to arrive.  Once she did we got on line to exchange our Monday return tickets for an earlier train.  And then running through the door of the empty train station is Henry Winkler.  I just stared at him and elbowed my girlfriend to look.  It was not that I was star struck as much as it was, “What the fu*k is Henry Winkler doing in Syracuse looking frantic at the train station.  He seemed to be in a hurry to get on the train that was about to leave.  He was with who I believe was his assistant or a colleague, but he was incredibly polite.  He was not technically cutting us, but he seemed concerned that we not think he was a dick so he apologized and then thanked me and my girlfriend, giving her a gentle tap on the shoulder, which I was OK with (I believe that is the first in a long line of steps that ends with asking a large black man to fu*k your wife while you watch during a mid-life crisis) as he ran off to the train.  And then the station was empty and quiet again.  The only person more in awe than us was the train clerk, who looked sort of like the nerdy guy from Party Down.  He had to be a big fan of Arrested Development (and probably comic books and Dungeons and Dragons also) and it was nice to have shared the moment with a mutual fan.

 

I am sure Henry Winkler was on the train going, “That was crazy!  We just cut The Rock and he was so nice about it!”  Thanks to the Wise Guys staff, the staff of the Maplewood Inn and the 5-15 fans I made this weekend.  Now off to San Antonio.