"I have a show today."

I had a bunch of shows in a row. So I was busy and didn't blog. Then the weight of the blog I was thinking about writing became so large I didn't blog. I started a big entry ... then ran out of gas.

I now give up. Not writing about the past is now also causing me to not write about the present.

I'm letting that stuff I was gonna write about slip away and intend to just start fresh with current events.

For what it's worth, here's the incomplete entry about only one show....

"I HAVE A SHOW TODAY."

"I have a show today," is often my first waking thought on show days. The frustrations and challenges of show business cannot diminish the joy of thinking, "today I get to do the one thing in the universe I most want to do, and most enjoy doing." On show days I awake like a kid on Christmas.

So ... I have a backlog of shows to write about.

RAINBOW MOUNTAIN

This was a great gig. My traveling companion and I were treated like royalty all weekend. The staff looked after us, our meals were paid for, and signs for my show were EVERYWHERE! It was kind of surreal hanging out in a bar with 6 photos of me plastered all over the walls.

The cutest part of the weekend was when the shy restaurant bartender came up to me in the bar later in the evening and said, "I wasn't sure if I should say anything earlier, but I recognized you from your pictures."

I said, "Oh, that's great."

And he said, "You're my first celebrity."

To which I wanted to bust out laughing and say, "I'm not a celebrity. I'm just some dork with a web site." But, ya know what? My face was on every flat surface in that place. And I realized ... that weekend, in that place, I was the celebrity. So I politely thanked him with a little smile on my face.

So by the time I took the stage on Sunday night, I felt like I owned the place. I was "the celebrity."

The crowd was engaged, attentive and willing to play along. I occasionally had to draw them out, and they didn't like a couple of my more aggressive/graphic bits, which is interesting given it was a gay crowd. But they were really into my story telling, which I used to break up the pace occasionally and was a lot of fun.

The management had asked me to do a 45-60 minute show. I had been furiously working out new material leading up to the show, to try to get it up to an hour. It wasn't until I was about 45 minutes in that I looked down at my set list and realized that I had over an hour of material. I took a quick inventory. The crowd was with me, the guest services director wasn't giving me any "wrap it up signals," so I pressed on and ended up doing 1 hour 8 minutes. It was awesome.