We're #1! We're #1! We're #1!

The site for our show, Sacred Underwear, is now the #1 match for a Google search for "Sacred Underwear".

Check it out!

Oh yeah, and of lot of the rest of the links are scary.

Own It.

Last night was my usual gig, Monkey's In The Atrium at Joe Franklin's Comedy Club.

Another show, another chance to learn, another set of new insights.

Mr. Joe Franklin himself was there. I thought I recognized him when he came in with his business associates. But I wasn't sure and then forgot about him until after my set when the MC pointed him out. He stood, smiled and waved to the crowd. He seemed every bit the classy old show biz guy from the Milton Berle era.

Joe Franklin pretty much invented the TV talk show. And The Joe Franklin Show still holds the record for longest running TV show with a single host, 40 years. The Tonight Show has run longer, but not with the same host.

Many of the other comics waited and angled for their chance to meet Mr. Franklin after the show. I use to do that with politicians when I was in my early 20s. A lot of desperate young talent see someone famous and think, "he's famous, maybe he can make me famous." But for the most part, talent doesn't have opportunities to give talent. Producers have opportunities for talent. So I decided to leave the sweet old guy alone.

I hadn't done a show in two weeks. My own personal goal is to be on stage at least once a week. But with the premier of Sacred Underwear two weeks ago and the double-header weekend three weeks ago, I figured this break in my schedule was fine.

It's been 22 weeks since the last time I went more than a week without getting on stage. And since my first time on stage, I've only ever gone more than a week without performing 3 times.

I don't like going more than a week without performing. I find if I'm not moving forwards, I'm sliding backwards. When I've had breaks before, I've felt rusty on stage.

Now that didn't happen as much last night. But I did find I needed more mental prep than usual, because of the break. And I also found I was slightly nervous before going up, although I was fine once I got on stage.

Back in January, standing off stage before my first big show at Gotham Comedy, my coach Jim Mendrinos gave me one last little bit encouragement. He looked me in the eye and spoke softly, quietly, but with a certain intensity that made me remember the moment. He simply said,

"Own it."

Jim is such a class act. He is commanding on stage, with a comic presence so large it feels it could not only fill the stage. It feels it could fill the world. He possesses a considerable intellect. But never once have I seen him abuse it, a temptation smart people succumb to all to easily. Jim uses his insights to enlighten those around him, to lift them up, never to dominate or demean.

There is so much wisdom in the advice he gave me that it's taken me months to understand some of it.

When Jim told me to "own it." I thanked him and told him I would. And I smiled a little smile. "Own it," is such a straight guy expression. And that's all I thought of it at the time.

Last night I realized the deeper meaning of "Own it."

Upon returning to the club that has grown to feel like home for me, I thought, "I belong here. This my club and my show. I own it. That my stage. I own it. Those minutes are my time. I own it.

I seized the stage with new levels of confidence and a powerful sense of ownership.

And not a moment too soon.

Last night there were three hecklers sitting right in front, stage right. These drunk, obnoxious, rednecks were giving all the comics a hard time. I went up third. And I wasn't about to let those shit heads take my time and my show and my laughs from me. Those thing are mine. I own it.

Knowing the powder keg I was about to set off, I introduced myself as "your token fag comic for the night." They started in right off the bat. They interrupted, they called me "queer", they feigned revulsion, they talked non-stop during my set.

The audience was already against these guys. So they were with me. I know they wanted to see someone put them in their place. I was just the fag for the job.

Hecklers want to take my time, my stage, my laughs, my audience and my show from me.

So I destroyed them.

I talk about straight guys in my act. Usually I do it in the tone of a good-natured ribbing. Last night I changed the tone to pointed, sharp and condescending. I made the hecklers the specific, direct butts of my jokes. They were the dumb guys with no imagination. They were the fat guys with huge asses. They were the guys with repressed urges. When I mention guys who can't get any, I pointed to each of the three of them one at a time, without looking at them.

I turned my back to them and then talked about them to the rest of the crowd. I used body language and eye contact to create a mood of "you and me folks, you and me, us together against them."

The audience loved it.

At the end of my set, I made one of my usual jokes about giving blow jobs and one of them cringed and loudly said something like, "Oh, God, Yuck!" I saw my opportunity to go in for the kill.

"I'd like you to think about that, sir. As you're drifting off to sleep tonight. I'd like you think about how much dick the gay comic has sucked." The crowd went crazy as he looked more and more uncomfortable and more and more revolved. I continued to twist the knife. "That my parting thought for you. That image is my gift to you, sir."

Like a gladiator from his arena, I walked off stage as the victor, with the crowd cheering and the bodies of the vanquished lying broken and bleeding in the dirt.

FINAL SCORE

Fag Comic: 3
Rednecks: 0

God I love comedy.

Piggy!

What's for dinner on Friday night? 9 out of 10 Jews recommend pork on the bone.

Yummy Flat-Panel Hi-Def Goodness

This is the home theater system Ilan and I built in the cabinet we had custom made.

Bridge Geek Paradise

I'm a gadget geek.
I play bridge.
The Duplimat is a Bridge Geek's Paradise.
It's a machine for presorting cards into predetermined bridge hands.
I have absolutely no use for a Duplimat. None.
But it's just so cool I want one.

Consumption vs. Creation

Last night I spent 9 hours helping my friend Ilan assemble the home theater system we designed together. I drilled. He hammered. I sawed. He cleaned. We lifted, plugged and crawled around on the floor for hours stringing cables (my favorite activity in the whole world.) When we were done we'd created an elegant, sophisticated system that makes a nice center piece to the living room of his new apartment.

We had a custom cabinet made at Gothic Cabinet. I love that place. Don't let their shabby-looking showrooms fool you. They do amazing work. You can walk in with a sketch on a napkin and they'll render a precise diagram and build a beautiful piece of well-crafted, solid-wood furniture and stain it to any color for less money than a lot of the fiberboard crap from Ikea.

When we were done, to christen Ilan's new system, we watched Butterfly Effect. This is a favorite movie of mine, and not just for the Ashton Kutcher prison sex scene.

It's about a boy with troubled childhood who later, in his early 20s, discovers he can change the past. He does so with the best intentions, hoping to fix the mistakes of his youth and improve his life and the lives of those he cares about.

But, as you'd expect, it all goes horribly wrong. Each change for the better also comes with side effects for the worse. And each subsequent attempt to fix these complications continues a downward spiral until he finally concludes he'd be better off dead.

I won't spoil the ending for you. But I will say that if you see it, be sure to watch the Director's Cut! The theatrical release has this crap Hollywood ending the studio made the creators put on it that totally ruins the message of the film. The Director's Cut has the ending the creators originally envisioned. It's a dark ending to a dark film, as it should be. (Why do Americans need everything to have a happy ending? How very sad and shallow.)

The message of the film with its original ending restored is ... be happy with who you are and your past including your mistakes, including the bad parts, especially the bad parts. Accept your past and know that your failures and tribulations are as responsible for your identity as your successes and happy times.

On my way home from Ilan's at 4:00 a.m., tired and sore from all the manual labor, I had a little smile on my face. Which brings me to the title of this post. I created something yesterday ... something functional ... something beautiful. I envisioned it, planned it, built it, executed it through to completion and enjoyed the fruits of my labor .

And I realized something. (I've been doing that a lot lately.)

Creating makes me happy.

Consuming has never made me happy.

Consuming may amuse me, entertain me, distract me, relax me or stimulate me. But no manner of consuming in life has ever brought me anything more than passing enjoyment.

Creating is the only thing that brings me any satisfaction and happiness in my life. So I'm fortunate to have so many opportunities to create: writing, performing, dreaming, designing, planning, building, love making, photographing, campaigning for change, building communities, learning or even just cooking.

So excuse me, please. I need to go create something.

Got Blog?

Uber babe, Paula Dixon, has launched her new blog.
It's already got me laughing.

The 40-Year Old Virgin

There is something missing from the current public discussion on the Catholic Church child molestation scandal. So I'm going to rant about it now.

Everyone out there who is hoping to never, ever again have sex in their entire lives, please raise your hands now.

Now let's see ... I don't see too many hands. But the question I have for the two people I see in the back who raised their hands is, "What are you fucking crazy?!?! What's wrong with you?!?!"

Our whole country is shocked, horrified and asking the question "why are so many Priests perverts?"

Human sexuality is a wonderful thing. It is a core part of each of us. And the idea that anyone would want to or should voluntarily give up that part of themselves up for the entire rest their lives is weird. It is wrong. It is inhuman. It is unnatural.

Which brings me to my point, and I'm deadly serious about this....

Celibacy is Perverse.

So can it be any wonder that this perverse idea attracts perverts?

Dedicating your life to the service of others is a noble ideal. But why should that require celibacy? (And why do we have to have all the superstition and dogma?)

Step back and ask yourself, "what kind of person would want to give up their sexuality?"

Really. Think about that for a moment.

The answer seems clear to me. Only people who are ashamed of their sexuality would be attracted to the idea of celibacy. The Catholics say to them, if you give up your sexuality, we will give you status in the community. You will be respected and admired. Only people who are ashamed of their sexuality would find this transaction appealing. And perverts, people who fear being reviled by the community, would find this especially appealing.

So people who are ashamed their sexuality flock to the perverse idea of celibacy in droves. They sign up for celibacy by the thousands.

They come in three flavors.

1. Heterosexuals who desire adults, who are ashamed of their sexuality. (9 times out of 10, you can thank religion for that.)
2. Homosexuals who desire adults, who are ashamed of their sexuality. (99 times out of 100, you can thank religion and our intolerant society for that.)
3. And child molesters of all flavors ... who damn well ought to be ashamed of themselves ... and almost always are. So pederasts say, sure I'll trade the sexuality of which I'm ashamed, a desire for children, for a new sexuality for which I'll be admired, celibacy.

Trouble is ... it doesn't work. You can't change a pederast into a saint through a vow of chastity. A pervert in a dress is still a just a pervert. But now he's a pervert with status in the community, trust, authority and access to innocent children.

What the hell are people thinking?!?! How can this perverse idea have anything but catastrophic results?!?!

Most people seem to assume that someone who is celibate is less likely to molest children. Most people seem to assume that their children are safe with someone who is celibate.

I think children are in far more danger in the company of someone who claims to have disavowed sex than in the company of an honest adult who will proudly state how much he loves sex.

So there it is. The answer to the question. The reason why so many priests are child molesters is because the perverse idea of celibacy is powerfully attractive to perverts.

What's the solution?

I believe we would have a lot fewer perverts in the world, if religion didn't raise people to be ashamed of their bodies and their sexuality.

And I believe that the abolition of the perverse idea of celibacy as a revered status in society would greatly reduce the number of perverts who have access to innocent children.

We should not look at people who have proclaimed themselves celibate and say, "How noble." We should look at them and say, "What a fucking pervert! Keep the kids away from him!"

I'm A Player! ... And A Monkey!

Joe Franklin Comedy Club, Monkeys In The Atrium Stand-Up has added me to their list of regular players. How lovely!

I'm delighted to be in such talented company.

Check it out!

Dale Visits The Bronx

This week I decided to go to The Bronx for a couple hours.

Well ... "decided" may not be quite the right word.

I went to The Bronx, at 3:00 a.m., wearing a really, really gay shirt, which made me feel really out of place, really white and really ... well ... gay.

I do this about once a year, in the wee hours of the morning. These adventures are usually the result of alcohol combined with an iPod and Palm games. This deadly trio of distractors tends to cause me to not look at the train when it pulls into the station. Rather, I just blithely climb on board the first train that arrives and ride it for an hour or so until I notice out of the corner of my eye that the stations don't look familiar.

Usually what finally makes me realize I'm far, far, far from anywhere I want to be or should be is the color of the tiles on the walls. This triggers a sinking feeling as I calculate just how long it will take me to get my sorry ass home.

The adventure before this most recent one took me to Queens for about three hours in the middle of the night.

I'm going to have "Look at the fucking train, Dale!" tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.

I am such a space cadet.

Stupendous Superlatives!

Looking again at my blog about the premier, I see that I used forms of the word "incredible" five times. Egad! Am I really that unimaginative a writer?

(Don't answer that!)

"Mommy, what's a thesaurus?"

What's In A Name?

We're getting tons of positive feedback about the name for the show, Sacred Underwear.

• "We came to your show because we saw the name and thought the subject matter sounded intriguing."
  
• "50% of getting into festivals is having a good title. With that name, you'll have no trouble."
  
• And quite often, simply, "Love the name."

Overheard in an East Village Gay Bar

"I saw Cher in concert and she was great, but she was completely over the top. Madonna in concert was so much better because she was over the top, but she was tastefully over the top."

Dale and Kelli Have a Big, Gay Baby

Kelli and I wheeled our play out into public for the first time last week. The premier of Sacred Underwear: Nuns and Mormons Revealed! was a smashing success!

The staff at Cafe Ole were all incredibly kind and supportive. They fed us and let us completely rearrange the furniture to suit our purposes. (Leave it to a gay man to start redecorating immediately on arrival.)

Q-Nite usually hosts musicians and occasionally stand-up comedy. So our show was a little something different for the space. Dennis, the Q-Nite producer, started the evening with an incredibly generous and flattering introduction telling the crowd they were in for something "unusual" and "special". What a great way to start!

We had a full house, about 30 people. They were engaged, attentive and respectful. The laughed and they cried. They were every performer's dream audience.

The show felt great. The words just flowed. I did several scenes, the important stuff, completely off notes, which really helped me create and feel the connection to the audience.

I took them to funny places, happy places, sad places, tragic places, back to funny places and finally to a meaningful and thoughtful place at the end. Knowing I can evoke all those desired emotions is incredible.

The time did not just fly by. The pace felt right. I was able to enjoy what I was doing, while I was doing it, and be conscious of the emotions that I not only wanted them to feel, but felt myself. In fact, that's when I thought it worked the best. As each emotion of each story came to me on stage, I transmitted those feelings to the audience.

Like I said, it felt great.

About half way through, I remembered to step back in my mind, to be aware of the space, the people, how I'd arrived there and what it all meant to me. Having a whole hour on stage allowed me to feel relaxed and yet focused.

Kelli and I got a bunch of props and costumes. They were simple but effective. The wig was a great visual running joke, because we used if for every one of the female characters.

Because of all the stuff we bought, we took a big financial loss on the night. But we now own most of what we need to make the show work. So it was a good investment. The only major thing we're missing are nun's habits. I wore my bathrobe instead. I thought it actually worked as a funny, second-grade-school-play sort of visual gag.

Thanks to our technical rehearsal in my apartment three days prior, the show went very smoothly. I didn't quite realize just how important and useful the mundane parts of that rehearsal turned out to be until afterwards. Blocking to a play is just about as vital as electricity. You take it for granted, but absolutely nothing happens without it.

Act One, Kelli's story, ran about 40 minutes. Act Two, my story, ran just over an hour. So with the intermission, the whole thing came in at just over 2 hours. Kelli and I agree that it needs to be cut down a bit.

Now I don't think the length was a big problem. I could see they were getting a tad tired by the end, but not severely. And I think that when we put it in a theater with comfortable seats instead of a coffee house with hard wood seats, length will be less of an issue. I don't think I need to make more than 10 or 15 minutes of cuts, at the most.

Now that I've gotten the words out there once, I find the idea of cutting parts to which I was previously holding tightly, to be much easier. The shift in attitude is so significant that I'm a smidge surprised. Already I'm finding myself thinking, "yeah, those were some nice words, but I can let them go, and those, and those." The staged reading is such an incredibly useful creative tool, I don't know how any writer could ever finish a script without it. I certainly don't think I could.

I'm pleased and relieved the video turned out to be usable. The audio has some glitches, but it's certainly watchable. And I can clean it up a bit in editing. We're not going to publish it. (Sorry.) But it will be a useful creative tool for editing and a useful business tool for showcasing the project.

After some editing, and perhaps another staged reading, the next step will be pitching producers and theater festivals like Fresh Fruit and The Fringe Festival. And who knows ... why not the Edinburgh Festival?

We bought a domain for the show: www.sacredunderwear.com

My empire on the web continues to grow! Muwahahahaha!

The site is nothing special, yet. Mostly it's just a place holder. But even just what's there is so much more than so many small shows have. Both the artistic and business sides of this project are coming into focus nicely.

The whole experience has been incredible. In the days leading up to the show, everything in the world seemed so bright and vivid. Everywhere I went I saw color and beauty and meaning.

After the show, sitting and chatting with people in that Trenton, New Jersey coffee house I had this thought....

"It's an awfully long way from here to Broadway."

But no matter. I've taken my first step on the path.

Commercial Twinks

I was just watching So Graham Norton on BBC America and saw an ad for the Orbitz Gay Travel Site with the most adorable twinks in it. Yay! Gay ads on TV! Go Orbitz!

Here's the ad.

For tons more gay ads, including lots of very sexy ads from Europe, check out, the CommercialCloset.org.

11 Hours and Counting

I woke up this morning feeling like a kid on Christmas morning.

25 Hours and Counting

On my way home, I saw the Mormon missionaries only a block from my apartment. It's an omen ... a bad, bad omen.

Although, come to think of it, when the Mormon missionaries are as adorably, ass-fuckable as these two, maybe it's a good omen.

Here's hopin'!

(Goddammit I love being a sick bastard.)

Stand Clear of the Sweaty Riders, Please

Ahhhhhh, the subway at rush hour. On the D Train today, a woman bashed me in the crotch with her laptop bag as she exited and didn't even notice. Whaddaya supposed to do? Go running after her and say, "Excuse me, Madam, since your Dell Inspiron with Mobile Centrino Technology and my gonads are intimately acquainted, perhaps we should be?" I decided to just let it go.

RuPaul I Ain't

I went wig shopping today at Ms. Wigs on 14th Street. This has to have been one of the funniest and most emotionally complicated experiences of my life.

And I learned something about myself.

I am one butt-ugly chick.

No really. As a girl, not even drunk, fat guys would fuck me. Not even if I told them I sucked cock like a fag. (Which, of course, I do.)

But it wasn't until about the fifth or sixth wig that I even managed to achieve butt ugly chick.
With my beard scruff, the first several just said, "stoned, hippie, slacker Wayne's World reject."

The owner of the shop was this very bored, itty-bitty, middle-aged Asian woman who was so short she couldn't even reach my head. I had to bend over so she could straighten each wig as I tried it on, because I had no clue what I was doing.

Also shopping at Ms. Wigs were some rather sexy, young-ish black women and a drag queen of, shall we say, a certain age? The drag queen had her very, very, very, hot, hot, hot, Latin boy toy in tow. Did I mention he was hot? Like, fuck-him-on-the-counter-with-his- sugar-momma-and-the-owner-of-the-shop-watching hot.

What is it with Latin boys and ugly, white, middle-aged drag queens?!?! Maybe when I'm middle-aged, if I can't get laid anymore I'll start doing drag so I can get me some of them Latin boys.

Each new wig I tried elicited giggles from these two. When I exclaimed "damn I'm an ugly woman," sugar-momma said, with tourists peering through the door, "oh no you're not, honey, you'll be pretty once you shave."

My head then exploded. Which is why there are no photos. That, and I want to be able to show my face in public again. If you want to see me in my new "Brunette Veronica Flip" you'll just have to come to the show. (Dear, sweet, Jesus, what have I gotten myself into?)

The drag queen kept trying on wigs and making comments like, "no, no, no, I'm already a blonde, I want a change." Then she asked me if I thought the black bob she had on made her look like Monica Lewinsky.

I replied, "no, Andy Warhol."

She seemed satisfied and bought the wig.

I'm actually slightly relieved to know I'm an ugly chick. I don't think whatever fragile sense of my own masculinity I cling to in self delusion would survive the revelation that I'd make a good drag queen.

The Horror!

There is now a SuperCuts on St. Marks place. A mother fucking SuperCuts for fuck's sake!

Fuck!

That's it. The East Village is soooooo dead.

Here's a Riddle

Can you find what's missing from this picture?

Mmmmm, Mmmmm Mamoun's

Having Mamoun's Falafel for lunch. Wish you were here.

NYC Summer Fun

Go MTA!

Have I ever mentioned how much I love the NYC Subway?

33 Hours and Counting

Tomorrow is the cumulation of months of work, the premier staged reading of my script.

Sacred Underwear: Nuns and Mormons Revealed!

I'm busting with excitement and anticipation and at the same time it's all a bit surreal.

Kelli and I got together for a final creative jam and rehearsal this week. It was awesome. We worked for 6 hours straight. She left my apartment, which she said was both the gayest and nerdiest she'd ever seen (why, thank you!) at 10:30pm. I collapsed into a little puddle of artistic exhaustion and contentment as soon she left.

We worked out the dialog and blocking and are scurrying around like mad today trying to find the last few props we hope to have for tomorrow.

This is gonna rock!

My Life Story Covered In Blood

This weekend I was working on the script for Sacred Underwear: Nuns and Mormons Revealed. I became quite frustrated by the fact that my word processor can only show me about 2% of it at any time.

"Where am I?"

"Is this part before or after that other part?"

"Where should this part go?"

"What depends on this?"

"If I remove this part, does something else crumble?"

I desperately needed to step back and get some perspective. In frustration, I finally decided to take this need absolutely literally.

I laid the script out on my living room floor and attacked it with a big red marker.

This turned out to be the best thing I've ever done for the story's structure. Looming over it from six feet up, everything started to make sense. I labeled each section by it's theme, "Fall from Grace", "Rituals and Righteousness". Then, the middle section, the part I've been struggling with, finally came into focus ... "Losing Faith!"

Once I realized what it was about, it was easy to move, edit or delete away everything that isn't about that theme.

When I was done, I stood back and looked at my script with red marks all over it ... my life's story ... covered in blood.

"You Think Too Much"

I have heard this more than a few times in my life.

Recently I've been hearing it in reference to my on-stage persona.

"Just stop thinking and relax."

This strikes me as some of the most trite, useless, counter-productive advice ever given.

I can't.

"Just stop thinking."

Harumph!

My little noggin approaches life as a series of puzzles and riddles. I love figuring things out, knowing why things are the way they are and what makes stuff and people tick. I always have.

As a kid, one of my favorite books was The Way Things Work, An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Technology. I still have my copy. It's nearly 600 magnificent pages of technical diagrams and detailed explanations of ... well ... the way things work ... things from elevators to mirrors, from TVs to the Doppler Effect.

The book was translated from the original volume, Wie funktioniert das? (How Does It Work?). As you might expect from it's German origins, it has a marvelous precision and clarity. It take science to the level of art.

If I could "just stop thinking" I might be a more relaxed person, but I wouldn't be Dale Sorenson. I don't know who I would be.

I cannot be other than that which I am.

But that's not to say I can't relax. I can and often do.

And I've realized something liberating about myself.

I will never be a person who can just stop thinking and relax. (Witness the exhaustive navel gazing that is this blog.) But there is something I can do.

I can finish thinking and relax.

Once I've started thinking about something, the only way for me to stop thinking is to come back out the other side. When I reach a conclusion, realization or insight, when I solve the riddle or choose a course of action, then and only then can my brain relax and I can get on with my life.

I finally reached this point with my performance. I'm in a period of explosive growth. It's exhilarating and a tad overwhelming. But I feel I've finally figured out a thing or two and I've been able to relax.

This weekend I decided to be my usual, loud, boisterous, opinionated, larger than life, self. The moment that happened, I had two great shows. And then I remembered something, comedy is fun.

I had a nice career milestone this weekend. For the first time ever, I had shows both Friday and Saturday nights. What fun! And it was very interesting to be able to compare two shows so close together.

Friday night I did Poole Party. Saturday Night I was at Monkeys In The Atrium Stand-Up at Joe Franklin Comedy.

In his book, Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy, Jay Sankey advises the comic to adopt a gently detached attitude toward the ups and downs of different shows and different audiences.

I did this and voila! I relaxed. And I had fun.

Now that's not to say I didn't care. I do ... very much. But I stopped seeing the audiences' response as validations or rejections of me personally. And I started seeing it as, "this material connects to them, this material doesn't."

Fuck whether they like me or not. I like myself quite enough for everyone in the room.

This attitude allowed me to keep my cool, to remain myself, and to truly see what was happening while I was on stage and adapt.

For the first half of the show the audience at Poole Party was so sedate I wondered if they'd just dropped by Don't Tell Mamas because they thought it would be a great place for a nap. It was another in my recent series of joke-to-joke audiences.

They were also distinctly prudish, which is unusual for this venue. So I lowered my expectations, reluctantly omitted my beloved ass fucking jokes and mostly stuck to my greatest hits. Two short new jokes got nothin'. Which was not surprising. But I still got good laughs and had a good time.

The run of low energy audiences ended Saturday night. It was a full house and they were hot. Hot! The energy was up. Everyone was having a good time. As I waited for my turn I got more and more excited. "This gonna be awesome." And it was.

I went up without a strict set list. I knew what I was going to use to open and close. But I didn't have how much of which topics I was gonna do cast in stone. I just started doing my thing. When they liked it, I did more of my thing. When they didn't. I moved on.

My loose structure allowed me to play with them. I was chatty. I improvised a line or two. I tried a couple new ideas, which I hadn't written down. (The horror!) They worked. Two of them worked so well I'm going to edit them in as permanent parts of current bits.

I had a blast. They had a blast. And significantly, I felt like the same person waiting to go on, being on stage and coming off stage after.

I believe it was Jay Leno who once said, "You do stand-up, and you do stand-up, and you do stand-up, and you do stand-up, and you do stand-up and then one day you wake up and realize that the person you are off stage and the person you are on stage are the same person."

For me, that day was Saturday.

My Internal Narrative

I was about 26 years old when I first realized the narrative of my internal thoughts has an audience. Not like a comedy club audience. But rather, when I think I imagine myself speaking to someone ... a friend, client, lover.

From time to time I've thought of keeping a journal, to focus my narrative inward. I find that my thoughts are most clear when the audience for my narrative is me and me alone.

This blog has accomplished that shift, at least as relates to comedy. When I come off stage these days I immediately begin thinking, "what will I write about this show?"

Writing here helps me find the lessons that are there to be learned. And I've noticed I'm less likely to seek or need perspective or validation from outside sources.

It's ironic the consequence of the extroverted act of blogging is the introversion of my thoughts. It has helped me become more self-sufficient and self-aware.

This is a very good thing.

College Honors for a College Drop Out

Steve Jobs gave a powerful, personal, moving speech to the latest graduates at Stanford.

Sequence Sets the Tone

Last week I was chatting with an artist friend of mine, Joe Maller, about my current audition set (which you can see on my recordings page). Joe is both a creative genius and a tech genius, perceptive and intuitive. His insights never cease to absolutely blow me away. I wanna be Joe when I grow up. He pointed out something subtle but significant about the set.

There used to be a complicated transition between my Utah jokes and my computer jokes that set up a major change in persona. The theme was "from reviled to revered" and made the point that the things for which I was persecuted for in my childhood, being gay and a nerd, are now things that are cool and valued in society (to a point and in NYC, anyway). This has been cut down to a one line pithy segue. This is great for time, but has creating a sudden, jarring shift from "feel-my-pain" victim to condescending "know-it-all" with no warning.

I was thinking of trying to put some of the transition back in to address this, then realized I can fix it with something incredibly simple. If I do "dumb questions" before I do the "being a consultant" bit the shift in tone will be more gradual. Suffering dumb questions still has a component of victimization to it, but starts building towards the arrogance of the consultant stuff.

It's nice when, every now and then, a problem turns out to have an easy solution.

What Plays? What Doesn't?

I had my regular Joe Franklin Comedy, Monkeys In The Atrium Stand-Up gig on Saturday night. It was another young crowd, but a fair number of middle-aged folks, too.

It was also another "joke-to-joke" audience. These audiences are engaged, having a good time, but not raucous. They decide for each joke, one at a time, whether they like it or not. {A} jokes get laughs. {B} jokes get a few muted chuckles. And {C} jokes get coughs.

I'm starting to develop a feel for what an audience will go for, just by looking at their faces and watching other comics play. This is one of the little light bulbs that has come on for me recently. Dimly and flickering at first, but it's a start.

For example, at this show I thought, "technology jokes and dick jokes will play well with this crowd and my Utah jokes won't." I was right.

So I decided to keep the Utah jokes to short versions, four quick bits to set up who I am and then move on after about 2 minutes. I was doing the Utah jokes, and they were doing fairly to poorly. I was thinking, "can't wait to get to the stuff they'll like." But then something weird happened. All sudden I found myself doing long versions of the jokes and then doing bits I hadn't even planned to do.

What the fuck?

I remember thinking on stage, what am I doing? Why are these words coming out of my mouth? What's worse, I wasn't talking to them. I was talking at them. I dug myself a nice little hole so that when I finally got to the computer jokes, it took me about a minute to dig myself back out. After that, the rest of the set, the majority of the set, was fine. "Passwords" and "Gay is Trendy" killed.

I got off stage and racked my brains. Why did I do more of the material that wasn't working instead of less?!?!

Then it finally hit me.

I was scared of the bit that was supposed to come after the Utah bits and before the computer bit ... my ex-boyfriend jokes. These jokes cast me as a fairly crass character. It's a rather risky bit and I've never done it at Joe Franklin. It's killed a few times. And it has bombed as badly as I've ever bombed twice. I could see they were pretty sure they didn't like me. And I was sub-consciously afraid that the ex-boyfriend jokes would finally push them over the edge.

I ended up not doing them, the right decision. But instead of just moving on to something I thought would work, I stalled by doing more Utah jokes.

This is a case of my "always have a set list" work ethic backfiring. I'm going to start being more casual about my set list. I plan to continue to have one, but I plan to be more flexible.

I'm also thinking about putting together a set with no Utah jokes at all and wondering how I would introduce myself if I don't do the Utah stuff. I'm not entirely sure if this is a good idea or not.

Now, this analysis aside, the show was fine. The show producer was pleased, as always, to have me in there. Many audience members went out of their way to shake my hand, thank me and compliment me on the way out. So I'm the only one who knows about my silly little set list blues.

I continue to struggle with not being too hard on myself.

A dear friend said to me at dinner tonite, "stop trying to be perfect."

Good advice.