Comedy Firsts

Today's podcast is my 150th episode. I'm doing a quick look back on some of the episodes and encouraging you to listen to them. I'm also reminding you of a second podcast I'm co-hosting with comedian Frank King titled Over Fifty and F'ing Funny - interviews with working, non-famous comedians.

This episode on "Burning Lunch" is a quick story on something that happened many moons ago and still kind of mystifies those of us involved today. It happened over a year while I was doing 40 comedy shows for one group. We asked ourselves, What makes a good lunch, and why would you not like a sandwich for lunch? As we kick off the new year, give some thought as to what things from 2020 you can burn and feel good about it.

Sure comedians remember things like their first time on stage or the first time they worked with a big star. But sometimes the firsts in comedy are things that are even bigger than those. In my podcast this week, I talk about 3 comedy firsts that I vividly remember that impacted me and kept me excited about my new career. And they aren't firsts that you usually think about when going into comedy. Take a listen.

Yes comedians get asked weird questions. Probably because people aren't used to meeting comedians, so they just blurt out stupid questions, but also I think that people hat since we talk about ourselves on stage, people think we're okay with answering pretty much any questions off stage. But that is not really true. Here's a few of the weird questions I've been asked.

Golfing and cops usually don't mix, unless you lived in my neighborhood. The place I called home when I first move to LA was pretty dicey, and full of cops. This week I'm telling a quick story about my run in with the law when all I wanted to do was golf.

All you've got to do to get famous is get on one of those shows like Last Comic Standing, and do really well - right? Well maybe or maybe not. Here's a short story about my auditions for these kinds of shows. Yeah, this episode went over 5 minutes. . . and I could have stretched this to 2 episodes, but I didn't. Enjoy this peak into comedy competitions.

Not spending the holidays with your family because you don't want to kill them with a virus is one thing, but missing family get-togethers because you're working on the road as a comedian is totally different. In this episode, I talk about a couple of depressing, memorable times where I missed holidays with my family in order to do comedy.

This is a really short episode today but this story has just stuck with me. A lot of bar gigs were hard for me, and this one just kinda summed up all of those bar gigs. When you go through stuff like this, and still do stand-up comedy, you know that you really want to do stand up comedy.

Prop comics are entertainers who use props; anyone from stand-up comedians to magicians, hypnotists and the like can be considered prop comics if they include humor in their act along with something visual. There are good and bad things about being a prop comic, and I've worked with a few in good and bad situations. Here's a couple quick stories.

Performing comedy in front of zoom may be one of the hardest things to do. But as a comedian and keynote speaker it's something I HAVE to do now. So I've come up with 5 quick tips that have helped me do comedy on zoom SUCCESSFULLY. Hopefully these will help you regardless of if you're doing comedy or just giving a quick presentation.