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Comedy Road Recap: The Land of Old White Men…

This weekend was a whirlwind of comedy activity.  The final two days of Comedy Academy filming were Friday and Saturday and yielded some of the funniest and ballsiest stuff I have ever been a part of.  It will be posted to my YouTube channel on January 27th (still deciding whether to go with a Netflix’style dump of all 5 episodes at once or to release an episode a day from January 27th-January 31st), so subscribe to the channel now and spread the word if you dig my stuff.

But this week represented a bit of a throwback for me – I was actually performing comedy… on the road… for money!  I was opening at a restaurant, The Silo, in Greene, NY (about 200 miles north of NYC) for my buddy Tony Deyo on Saturday night. It was the kind of drive where you expect Scatman Crothers to be on the road with you headed to the Overlook Hotel.  Tony drives a Honda Civic, a solid, sturdy car for people under 6’0″ tall.  About two hours into the first drive I had to request an emergency stop because my left ass cheek was going numb from leaning slightly to that side with my knees up around my shoulders.

When we arrived at the venue we had plenty of time to eat the pre-show buffet, which was solid.  I managed to feel like I was eating healthy by convincing myself that four pieces of carrot cake constituted part of the Paleo diet.  The average age of the audience was Biblical and the average color was grayish-white, but I have had crowds like that before, so my mind was at east.  It was a two person show so after a brief intro by the restaurant owner I went up and did about 40 minutes, doing OK for my first gig of any significance (in length of time or importance) in a couple of months.  The only hiccup, which was mostly in my head, was the fact that one of my first bits is about me having a difficult encounter on a flight with a particularly large woman sitting next to me (let me put it this way – our average weight was equal to that of a guard and a tackle on an NFL team, and I was the light one).  Observing half the crowd to be of normal weight I saw laughs and felt good about the joke and then I just turned half way to see the table nearest the stage featured three woman who were easily 280+.  They were smiling and I poke fun at my own weight problems in the joke, but it still felt a little weird.  But then I made sure to look at their table at least 4 times during the rest of the joke, just to pretend like I was 100% unashamed of the joke (I was only actually 1-2% ashamed, but big chicks can smell even the slightest amount of fear, because it smells like chicken, and I did not want to let them know or feel how I really felt).

After the show I sold two CDs, mostly out of pity I think, but that is OK because pity dollars work in laundry machines as well (spoiler Sunday was my laundry day).  But the thing that startled me after the show was how many of these old white crusty, Jerry Sandusky looking dudes (just in stature in appearance and face) had massive, brick laying, bar fighting, phone book ripping hands.  One dude  I actually didn’t reach to shake his hand because I did not want to feel like a girl (my hands are by no means huge, but I can palm a basketball) and I could see from this guy’s hands that he might have lapped my hand in a hand shake.  All these dudes, short, tall, skinny, fat – as long as they were over 50 – had hands that could crush cantaloupes.  Tony and I just figured that places like Greene, NY must breed men of a certain heartiness, that like chopping trees down for firewood, strangling bears with their bare hands and fighting at bars just to keep warm at night and I guess those factors lead to the breeding or development of large hands.

We stopped at a McDonald’s on the way back and witnessed the weirdest fight of our lives as a man, who sort of reminded me of William H. Macy’s character in Fargo, demanding that he get an item that would not be available until  6am.  An employee from the next door quicki-mart stepped in and they went toe-to-toe in a punchless, folksy, aggressive conversation where each party threatened the other with calls to the police.  I tried to turn on my instagram app and film it, while screaming “WORLDSTAR,” but it didn’t work.

All in all, an exhausting, but fun trip and my wallet is now fat for at least the next 6 hours.

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Trying Times in Indianapolis

This past week I spent in Indianapolis to compete in Trial By Laughter, a comedy contest (yay) between thirty-two comics from around the country.  Here are the important details:

  • The winner was to receive $1,000 cash, an Amazon Kindle, a Flip camera, a 45 minute DVD shoot at Morty’s Comedy Joint – the host club for the competition and a CD recording deal
  • Runner up was to receive $500 cash, a Flip camera, a 30 minute DVD shoot at the club and a recording deal
  • 3rd and 4th place receive automatic entry into the Laughing Skull Festival in Atlanta in Spring 2011
  • 5th-32nd place leave with varying ranges of disappointment and bitterness towards comedy and with sets to air on local Comcast (Indiana/Midwest) this December.

Guess which group I fell in?  But I am getting ahead of myself.  Here is a full recap of the week.

Night 1 – Optimism in Many Forms

So the first night of the competition I did good work.  I was the second overall comedian of the competition and I felt very good about my set.  I ended up placing first in my group and moving on to the semi finals.

After the show I was going to go to Steak N Shake with fellow comedian Nick Dopuch of Chicago via St. Louis, except for one thing – Nick’s car broke down – specifically his alternator and battery were shot.  This combined with Nick not moving on to the next round (he went after me and lost the crowd with a Chicago Cub bit) and I was feeling bad for him.  Had both of those things happened to me I probably would have lit the car on fire, but Nick was remarkably pleasant.

And he was rewarded – two women who had watched the show drove by and asked us if we needed help (isn’t it usually the other way around? – what a great feminist moment).  They ended up driving us to the dealership so Nick could leave the car there for morning repairs and then were Nick’s guest to Steak N Shake as a thank you (sure this could be the opening for a porno film, but one was married and one had a boyfriend so Nick was going to have to be content with a hamburger and milkshake).  Here is the most important part of our conversation, which, once again, took place at Steak N Shake, where we were waited on by Andrew,

who looked like a teenage Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords, for the first of 4 consecutive nights:

Woman 1 – So you guys just travel around doing comedy?

Nick and J-L – Yeah

Woman 2 – So it must be crazy – is it just money and partying on the road?

Nick and J-L – Yeah, that is why you had to give a jump to my broken down Honda.  And why we are sitting in Steak N shake eating ice cream with platonic groupies – because it is fu*king crazy!

So after night 1 I was feeling optimistic of my chances in the competition and was more impressed with the resiliency of Nick.

Days 2-4 – Movies, The Rock & Al Pacino

The next two days were basically me and Nick driving from strip mall to strip mall doing impressions of The Rock, Al Pacino.  We also went to see Paranormal Activity 2 (underrated) and Due Date (overhyped).  Basically it was just a higher IQ version of Dumb and Dumber for 48 hours.  We also watched the other competitors each night, and passed judgment on most of them.

I kept telling Nick that he had me laughing way more in real life than when he was on stage.  It was like looking at my opposite.  I have been told to be nicer on stage, whereas I think Nick may make too much of an effort to be nice on stage.  That’s comedy – trying to be yourself, while making it work for other people.

Night 4 – The Death of Optimism

So every competition for me has a pattern – I have a kick ass first round,  and a very good set in the round preceding the finals that is derailed by some sort of bad timing.  A brief history:

2008 Boston Comedy Festival – Sandwiched between Bostonians Joe List and Myq Kaplan I get squashed – less crowd interactive than List and then dismissed by one of Kaplan’s patented callback quips to my set.

2009 Boston Comedy Festival – I went last in a field of 8 in the semi finals.  I had an excellent set.  Unfortunately, the audience had sort of tuned out because Dave McDonough had just obliterated them (he went on to win the whole thing).  It was like he felt like a closer and then “hey wait, don’t leave – we know you loved that last guy, but we have one more as*hole who wants to stop you from going home – J-L Cauvin!”

2010 New York Comedy Contest – only 2 rounds and I finished 2nd of 70+ comedians.  1st place won $2500.  2nd place won $0

2010 Trial By Laughter – I am seeded 2nd, but behind the #1 seed Tom Simmons, who beat me in San Francisco last year and went on to win the whole thing.  As a 17 or 57 year veteran of comedy Simmons is a very tough matchup and going last (the benefit of being the higher seed) would make it nearly impossible.  But after the set I had in the first round I am not sure why I drew the toughest matchup in the second round, but the karma-like tradition of “fu*king J-L in the semi finals/second round” is apparently set in stone at this point.

Tom and I had engaged in some spirited texting during the week.  Where he assured me that everyone was fighting for second place and made Mom-related comments and plagiarised Eminem to trash talk while I asked him if he would use any notes from his days workshopping with Elaine Boozler.  So Thursday night we were the lad off matchup with NYC’s Lance Weiss leading off followed by me, closed out by Tom Simmons.

The competition is being filmed for local Comcast airing so all sets needed to be TV clean.  Lance Weiss, 40 seconds into his joke said: “oops I fu*ked up that joke, and now I have cursed… I will be selling my DVDs after the show” – a very funny moment, but made it more obvious that it would be a showdown between the Tom and I.

I went up and had a perfect set (10 minutes this round and comedians were not allowed to repeat jokes from any preceding rounds).   I could not be angry with myself.  What I could be angry with is that the crowd was now sufficiently warmed up for Tom Simmons to finish the show.  Which he did.  I left his set 3 minutes in because every minute that went by I could hear my chances of winning diminishing with every Midwestern guffaw.  Towards the end of his set I heard a loud burst of applause and I came back into the showroom, assuming it was him getting off stage.  Nope.  Applause break.  At that moment, for the 58th time in 7 1/2 years I declared my comedy career over.  All the frustration of the highs and lows just came to an all new head.

Tom Simmons went on to finish second to Kansas City’s Mike Baldwin so thanks for doing my job for me Baldwin.  Of course I was not there because I had flown out the morning of the Finals.  Special thanks to comedian Tony Deyo, who was also a much better sport than me about losing in a very tough semi finals match (to Mike Baldwin), who gave me an early morning ride to the airport.  I guess one of the good things about the week was to see and meet comedians who were able to roll with punches a lot better than me and look to the bigger picture.

Unfortunately now is not the time for lessons because I am headed to Boston for… you guessed it – the first round of the 2010 Boston Comedy Festival.  God help us all.