Thirty Days in the Air

On October 6th, which was technically the last day of the All You Can Jet special on Jet Blue, I pulled my first hosting gig at Capitol City Comedy Club in Austin, Texas.

Venue: See for yourself.  http:\\www.capcitycomedy.com

Host: Me.

Headliner and feature act, in order: Daniel Kinno and Kerri Lendo.  Daniel’s been on Bob and Tom, Carson Daly,  and the Just For Laughs festival.  Kerri’s an Austin comic who’s toured with Maria Bamford and was a finalist in our  Funniest Person in Austin contest.

The show was kind of small and was in the lounge, as opposed to the big showroom.  But it went great.

Today, as I was running Daniel around on some errands he asked, if I’ve been doing this for five years, why is this the first time I’ve hosted at Cap City?  The answer is that I wasn’t ready…and everybody knew it but me.  Could I have done it long before now and put on a decent show?  Yes.  And if I had pressed the club management I’m sure it could have happened a couple of years ago at least.  But I didn’t press.  Because I believed that waiting and patience were the way to get what you want.  Turns out they’re not.

You have to take what you want.  You have to stop defining your life in terms of working your way from the straw house, to the wood house, to the brick house.  You have to change the story, be the wolf, kick the fucking door down and feast on suckling pig.

I’m ready.  It was a good show.  The second night KP Anderson, the head writer for The Soup, did a guest spot.  Afterwards he told me I had funny stuff and to keep at it.

It happened when the time was right…but the time was right because I finally decided that it was mine to take.

So, I want to talk about the show at the Laugh Factory for just a second. Here’s the order:

Host: Allan Stephan, comedy “legend” and producer extraordinaire.  Material: Played “what’s your job” bingo with the audience until he found something he could work with, which I guess technically crowd work.  Told two jokes that I remember, and I remember them because I’ve heard them before on TV and I’ve never seen him in my life.  ”can’t look tough drinking out of a straw” and “When I was in school all I had was a pencil and the kid next to me and I think if he would have applied himself, I could have been somebody”.  Gave the impression that hosting was not what he would prefer to be doing at that particular moment.

1st feature: Erik Griffin.  Pretty funny actually.  If I make fun of the differences between the way white people and black people have sex, it’s racial material.  If I make Barrack and Michelle Obama the Black couple in question, then it’s political.  I’m so topical.

2nd feature: Buddy Lewis.  I did not laugh one single time during his set but I am admittedly a tough crowd.   Material:  My wife’s trying to make me fat, I’m old now, and the doctor stuck her finger up my butt this year.

Headliner: Ian Bagg.  I stomped, wheezed, spit my drink, and guffawed  during his set.  More than half was crowd work and it was clear that he had a deep well of material he could jump on if the laughs started to peter out at any point.

Half way through the show I was thinking to myself, “seriously?  These guys are all working on TV?  What the fuck am I waiting for?”  When Ian took the stage I remembered.  I’m waiting until I can to *that* to a crowd.

I woke up this morning, the third time, with a 75lb pit-mix named Jimmy breathing on my toes.  I was grateful; his breath was far warmer than my feet.  He was snuggled up to my legs under the covers.  For a long time I lay there and missed Maddy.  I missed her until I decided it was time to get off my ass and get moving…..

The first time I woke up was to say goodbye to Turbo.

Turbo rides bikes.  Today is the beginning of a pretty big ride.  It’s called Ride To Recovery; an event dedicated to raising funds for and awareness about taking care of the folks  who’ve been hurt, physically and mentally, in the service of our country.  I may not agree with the reasons why we put our folks in harm’s way but they still went.  Their duty was executed.  Ours is to see that they’re looked after now that they’re home.   Read about it.  If you feel like I do, click this link. Fill in the name of Dan Horndasch.  He’s going to be on the road for the next five days.  It would be a nice surprise if he got online in LA on Friday to discover that his efforts were a little more appreciated than when he started.

I…uh…am kind of dealing with some unexpected news.  So instead of blabbing…here’s a look at my afternoon walking around Long Beach.

Ok.  So here’s what happened.

I planned on spending this weekend in Portland, OR and  then starting my trip down the West Coast.

Only as I was checking in, I looked at my tickets and saw Portland, ME.

Long story short, I opted to hop off the Jet Blue express and fly an American direct flight back to Austin to regroup.

Did I opt out of the opportunity for some adventure?  Yes.  Did I also make a decision to take a short travel break and make sure my bills are paid?  Also yes.

So, for the sake of justifying my decision in my own mind, let’s do a little accounting.  Here, from my own desk in Austin, are some of my favorite moments from the trip so far:

- Getting to listen in on headset during Come Fly Away, the Frank Sinatra review on Broadway (NY, NY)

- Comedy open mic in Times Square (NY, NY)

- Broadway audition (NY, NY)

- Watching my best friend shed genuine tears as he talked about why he’s pushing so hard, not just to get into IATSE Local 1, but to get vested in the retirement program early…Because he loves Jen and he’ll sleep better knowing she’ll be looked after. (NY, NY)

- Visiting the Cloisters museum, where Tim Gunn goes to get inspiration and clear his head. (NY, NY)

- Karaoke at an Irish pub with a real, live Broadway singer as a ringer in our group. (NY, NY)

- Meeting a total stranger who managed to give me hope and perspective on some of the hardest parts of my life.  (NY, NY)

- Home cooked meals in the city of takeout. (NY, NY)

- Seeing an all-girl Freak Show and riding the oldest all-wood roller-coaster in America on the last day of the season at Coney Island (Brooklyn, NY)

- Going up to Insectavora, MC and fire-eater of the freak show and saying casually, “Hey, I think you know my friend Erik.” resulting in a couple of dropped jaws. (Brooklyn, NY)

- Cropdusting the entire Gem Room exhibit in the Museum of Natural History. Ah, the simple pleasures in life… (NY, NY)

- Deliberately getting lost in Manhattan and walking the long way around from 34th and 8th to the Resevoir bar at 11th and 5th. (NY, NY)

- Understanding what the fuck I just typed.

- Recording wackiness at the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum annex. (Washington, DC)

Verner von Braun’s grandson at The Air and Space Museum

- Open mic at the Topaz Hotel bar where I almost got someone to laugh a table over. (Washington, DC)

- Taking time to appreciate being naked and not on anybody’s schedule. (Pikesville, MD)

- Barging in on the set of Motorweek on their 30th anniversary. (Owings Mills, MD)

- Baking cookies with the Green family. (Owings Mills, MD)

- Forza Motorsport 2 played as a driver/navigator team with Joe Green.  Followed by taking his RX-8 down some of Motorweek’s favorite test roads, at speed.  Can you believe he let me drive? (Owings Mills, MD)

- watching kids eat crabs. (Owings Mills, MD)

- Remembering the things I loved about the way I was raised in a noisy, hectic, 4-kid household.  Seeing two people parent as partners with discipline, flexibility, and rivers and rivers of love for their kids. (Owings Mills, MD)

- Getting the chance to turn an ex-in-law into a friend. (Washington, DC)

- Tramping across most of lower Manhattan with my entire kit and not looking remotely out of place.(NY, NY)

- Booked showcase at the Hog Pit with Dan Kilpatrick, Paul Oddo,  and about a dozen other comics.  I went up dead last, got laughs out of what was left of a tired crowd and then got to run into Trey Galyon and Mike Creed, other Austin comics. (NY, NY)

- Two open mics in one night in Boston and Cambridge.  Held my own…didn’t slaughter, but definitely made an impression. (Boston, MA)

- Discovering that, in a pinch, Logan Airport is not a terribly uncomfortable place to spend the night. (Boston, MA)

- Found hilarity at street vendor. (NY, NY)

- METS GAME! (Queens, NY)

- Hours of free time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, much of which was spent writing, admiring Japanese armor, and discovering a statue that appears to be masturbating. (NY, NY)

- Seeing Billy Elliot on Broadway from the lighting booth.(NY, NY)

- Crying when Billy reads the letter from his Mom and missing my Dad awfully.(NY, NY)

- Discovering that I like waiting on the ground MUCH more than I like waiting in the air. (Somewhere over Detroit).

- Getting to see a yet another dear friend who helped me through a tough time.  Seeing on her face that she’s in the right relationship now, with the right person, at the right time.  Finding that hopeful.(Chicago, IL)

- Gaining new appreciation for The Blues Brothers movie as said friend’s apt. is RIGHT ON the El tracks. After only an hour one’s conversation naturally starts to break every 7 minutes to wait for the train to pass.(Chicago, IL)

- Giggling at the “Bong Rest Area ahead” sign. (Northern Illinois somewhere).

- Re-discovering a dormant friendship as if not a single day had passed.(Cudahy, WI).

- Getting my ass handed to me in old-school Unreal Tournament by tag-teaming brothers, neither of whom was alive when Unreal shipped. (Cudahy, WI)

- Katerina.  (South Milwaukee, WI)

- Baking cookies with the Wagner family.(Cudahy, WI)

- Meeting one of Bill Cosby’s grandkids at an unplanned open-mic excursion (where I kicked ass and took names) (Milwaukee, WI)

- Teaching Rob’s kids the sword fighting routine that I learned in stunt class, deliberately to irritate their mother.(Cudahy, WI)

- American Science and Surplus (Milwaukee, WI)

- Getting lost in Chicago.

- Discovering in the middle of the Science and Industry Museum, as I was entering my age into an interactive exhibit, that I am officially “Holy Crap!” years old. (Chicago, IL).

- Constantly being humbled and amazed at the generosity of my friends and of total strangers. (Everywhere, all the time)

- Having the toughest decisions of my life spelled out for me by example over and over again and feeling that I have made the right choices. (Every minute of the trip)

- Letting things go badly awry and having enough fun that it seems like that’s what we should have been doing in the first place (countless examples).

- Meeting a ton of funny people. (Every stop)