Month: September 2012

Softball season is officially over – sad times.

If I didn’t mention it at all, I’ve been spending the weekends this summer playing on a Comedy Softball league, which in and of itself does sound like somewhat of a joke – but all jokes aside, we were actually a pretty good team!  Put together by the producers of the JokeBox Comedy Lounge (my good buddies Dee & Jimmy-Jams) and comprised of many current and former employees & performers of the Second City – and a few other comics here and there – ended up in 2nd place in the league!  I hadn’t played softball since my last summer in Ottawa and am always looking to play in the summer – so this was a fantastic opportunity to play and to meet (and drink) with some fantastic members of the community.

Here we are…

Team JokeBox 2012

Close…but no cigar, gang!

(I was totally looking at the camera in one of the blurry ones.)

You should have seen the size of the champions trophy!  Comedy Bar does not skimp out on its sports awards!  *Sigh…Oh well, there’s always next year, team!

***

On the not-so-sad side, another one of my pieces was published on Bite.ca today.  You can totally check it out by clicking the link below:

The Name Game (Bite.ca)

Two Years of fun. Pessimistic, passive aggressive fun.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Clown College Confessions!

There are two things I would have liked to have ready to post on this, the second anniversary of my little blog:

  • The First:  to have had enough money to finally convert it to its own domain name and;
  • The Second:  to have been able to post photos from Fresh Meat and talked about the upcoming Cream of Comedy show.

But as it turns out, I’m still broke and I didn’t make it onto Cream of Comedy…

SO…

…this adorable teddy bear will have to suffice, OK?   ALRIGHT?!?!?!  What’s wrong?  A cute teddy bear NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YA?  Well we’ll see about THAT!!!!

Somebody get me some chocolate cake.

_____

The author of Clown College Confessions is experiencing some technical (see: psychological) difficulties.  Please try again later.

I think I forgot to mention the total crazy excitement that happened last Sunday at work.  The Arcade freakin’ Fire (Win & Rejine anyway) came to see a show at the Second City.

I didn’t get to take a photo of/with them or anything because, I’m a total profesh at my job.  Obvi.

But the cast got one, so I’m gonna steal it and live vicariously through it.

No big deal, but I brought them to their seats and told Win to use the ladies washroom by accident.

Yup.

 

Fresh Meat is over friends. We can all breathe again! Inhale some of that delicious oxygen! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand breathe out. Nope, not working. Still on edge! Well, I guess it’s time to sign up for a new yoga class, Brie!

The Fresh Meat show was a huge success!  The theatre was full (not full-full – because I know what that looks and feels like – but, good full), the masses were laughing and the comics were knocking ’em dead.  All in all, what a wonderful show to have been a part of!

Props & hugs to the producer, Dee and to everyone else I saw running around working hard!  ( Photographer James & Emily backstage +DJ the host) for such a smooth running professional evening. Even content-wise, I was pleased to see a good number of smart, sophisticated humour –  (mixed in with a very healthy blend of the irreverent.)

It was also so great to see all the fun people I normally work alongside, smiling encouragingly as I told a very embarrassing story on stage and reaffirming me afterwards that I didn’t stink!

As silly as it sounds to say it though, I think my highlight of the night was the moment I walked out of the green room after my performance and thought: “PHEW!!  It’s DONE!  Now I can just sit back and actually ENJOY the show!”  I think DJ Demers, the host, summed it up pretty nicely when he commented on how a bunch of the comics were puking backstage because they were so nervous.  It was a nerve-wracking show.  And a healthy dose of competition is good, sure.  Fine.  But this isn’t athletics.  It’s not like we all go at once and then the fastest, or the furthest wins.  I do not envy the performers who had to sit through the entire show, seeing all the performers kill and think – “Oh jeez, I have to do better than him, and her, and them etc.”  Whereas I got to just rip mine off like a Band-Aid.

Most of the time, I like to go last or near-last at a stand-up show, but definitely not in competition, I learned.

It was great to see the members of the community, once again assembled to celebrate and encourage those starting out in the business.  It’s great to hear that that’s what Tim Sims was about – because it’s not an easy thing to get into and to continually rationalize and justify as your debts pile higher, but your gigs get better… slowly.  Slowly.  And you work well into the night – performing, writing, re-writing, rehearsing, hounding down colleagues to coordinate stuff, producing, etc.  It’s not easy.  But is it worth it?

Three minutes, we got on Monday.

Three minutes to myself on the Second City main stage.

You’re damn right it was worth it!

I’m a little behind in my blog-posting.  Probably because I started a new job, the whole waking up at 6:30am, driving an hour and a half to get to work by 8:30am in Richmond Hill, then driving BACK for an hour after work, not getting home til like 5:30-6pm, then going out & doing comedy or otherwise is shall we say, a little time consuming.

The JokeBox Comedy Lounge is a weekly comedy variety show put on by the wonderful Deanna Palazzo and James Dalzell.  (For more information about Jokebox, see my previous post: Say Goodbye to Your Case of the Mondays)  This past Monday, CODPIECE, my new sketch troupe, made its official debut. We were one member short, but all in all, I think it went over very well.  We received compliments on some of our sketches, and though the four of us are very busy employees of the Second City FOH staff,  I think we’ve got lots of potential.

This is what potential looks like.

CODPIECE isn’t booked for another show until November, but in the meantime, we’ll be working on bringing you what you want most:  more creepy Chapters employees and Snuits.

In the meantime, please Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

It’s been a crazy week. (+ a few days.)

I volunteered for the Canadian Comedy Awards again this year, which was great!  (With the exception of the biggest joke of the night: $13 + tip glass of wine.)  I worked in the box office throughout the end of last week to sell tickets for shows put on by nominees in the various categories.

(If you’re curious, you can see the results of the CCAs right HERE.)

Then, I worked backstage for the actual Awards ceremony, where I had the pleasure of un-blazer-ing Alan Thicke of TV fame, holding stuff for Gavin Crawford, also of TV fame – and basically running about rounding up presenters for the rest of the evening.

The after-party was a lot of fun as well – every year I know a few more people at the CCAs & feel more welcomed as part of the community.

Which leads me to Fresh Meat.  I am so nervous about Fresh Meat.  I’m freaking out over Fresh Meat.  People are telling me to relax and that I’ll do fine, but I am freaking out over Fresh Meat.

(If you’re like: “WTF is Fresh Meat?” Click HERE)

I’ve been working so much this summer in the evenings, and whenever I’m NOT working, I was trying to find jobs, or trying to network, or updating a resume, or writing, or doing ANYTHING to improve my financial situation (which was, until very recently, at risk of requiring me to move back to Welland…) that I haven’t been able to go out and perform as much as I would like.

In fact, tonight, at Comedy @51, I performed the set I wanted to do for next week’s Fresh Meat and it sortof flopped.  I’ve run over in my mind a bunch of reasons why it didn’t go well, and I’m glad I still have a few more nights this week to rehearse it, but only at the beginning of the week, because guess what – Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun evenings, I’ll be cleaning tables and pushing drinks at work (ie. NOT rehearsing.)

IIIIIIIIIIIII’m SCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARED!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

There is some hope though, at least financially.  Last Wednesday night, I was surfing craigslist looking for work (as one does when one becomes desperate) and I applied for a few.  Thursday morning, whilst at Canadian Tire getting an oil change, I got a phone call asking if I was free to come in for an interview for a job as an Office Manager in Richmond Hill.  I went to the interview and, despite my profuse nervous sweating, I got the job and started the next day, Friday.   It’s a 9-5 temp job (with the *fingers crossed* possibility of extension – depending on what the boss says when he gets back from vacation,) which would allow for free evenings to go out and practice the work I so desperately want to do.

Ugh.  I’m a great big ball of stress right now, folks.  But this is the life of an artist, so I’m told.