Busy week comes to end

I had a total of six shows this past week. This was in addition to working six days at my day job. If it sounds exhausting, it sure was. But it was also eye opening as well. On Monday, I hit up the open mic at Britannia Arms in Downtown San Jose...first time I was there, I did really bad, so I wanted to redeem myself. I ended up having a pretty good set. Tuesday - night off.... On Wednesday I hosted my monthly show at The Gaslighter in Gilroy and the show featured Veronica Porras, Dan Wilson, and headliner Mike Guido. The headliner didn't seem to enjoy himself but the crowd enjoyed the show and that is all that matters. On Thursday I hosted the same monthly show with the same comedians at the Morgan Hill Playhouse. This show also went well. After the show, I took off for downtown San Jose and did a smaller show at South First Billiards. I did a 5 minute set to brush up some material which was done in front of mostly other comedians...but I still had fun. On Friday, I did an open mic at Paddy's Coffee House in Union City. This show turned out being a lot better than I thought it would. On Saturday, I ended the week doing a show with host Sean Sinha, Sammy Obeid, John Dekoven, and headliner Grant Lyon at Bunjo's Comedy Club in Dublin.

 Me at Bunjo's on 8/29/09

I missed my friend's housewarming party in San Jose because of it which I felt bad about, but this is my dream I am trying live out and I'm not going to accomplish it if I don't get out on the stage as much as I can. Sammy and Grant were amazing like always and their sets reminded me that I still have a long ways to go. These next few weeks I don't really have any shows booked right now (aside from September 2nd) so I'm hoping to focus more on writing. I really want to get to the point where I can quit my job and just live off doing shows.

The Englander

Last night, August 22nd, I did a show at The Englander Sports Pub & Restaurant. I had known about the comedy shows they did at The Englander for a while, but never had gotten the opportunity to perform there. Before yesterday, they only put on one show a month, featuring two or three comedians. Now they have added a new monthly show which features both professionals and amateurs, so I took part in the first such show last night. The comedy show itself takes place in a separate room from the main bar/restaurant. The showroom has a long stage, lighting, and a mini-bar. The mini-bar wasn't open last night, so a waitress was running back and forth from the bar to the showroom to take care of all the audience members. She did a good job too. The crowd turned out to be quite a good size, which was really cool considering it was the first such show.

I'm looking forward to going back to this place again and definitely suggest this place for any sports fan. When I walked into the bar, they had televisions on showing the Niners-Raiders preseason game, the A's-Tigers games, the Giants-Rockies game, and the Phillies-and "whatever team they played" game.... in addition, they have like 80 beers on tap!

So I will definitely be going back to this place one way or another, whether it is to do another comedy show or not.

Now I must go and get ready for my Fantasy Football Draft.

Three Nights

On July 28, 2009, I booked a special one night only show in conjunction with Capital T. Productions at the Historic Hoover Theater. I had never performed at the Historic Hoover Theater, so I decided to take a few pictures of the place.

                                     Looking at the stage of the Historic Hoover Theatre.

                                                Looking at the audience from the stage.

I was impressed with the theatre, which hold almost 200 people. We ended up drawing about 40 people, not bad for a Tuesday night and a show that was promoted mostly by word of mouth. The comedians I selected to be in the show were Sammy Meeker, Brian Salwasser, Candy Churilla, Richgail Enriquez, Dan Wilson, Michael Slack, and Kurt Weitzmann. I was emcee for the show and Weitzmann was the headliner. All the comedians were received well and comedians even walked away with a little money. Richgail is a co-worker of mine and just started doing stand-up comedy about 4 months ago... she was really nervous, but did really well. Candy Churilla has since moved on to the finals of California's Funniest Female Competition. All in all, it was a fantastic night. On July 29th and 30th, I did my monthly shows at The Gaslighter in Gilroy and the Morgan Hill Playhouse (in Morgan Hill, duh)... I was the emcee like always for the shows and the comedians were Jason Lane, Rebecca Arthur, and James P. Connolly. Sometimes booking and running these shows seems like a lot of work and I question whether all the work put into it is worth it... but whenever the show is complete and generates the laughs like these shows do, it is totally worth it.

Myself with Rebecca Arthur at the Morgan Hill Playhouse. She won California's Funniest Female Competition in 2004 and demonstrated to the crowd why she was the winner.

                               With headliner James P. Connolly at the Morgan Hill Playhouse.

 I had never met James P. Connolly prior to these shows, but I am glad that he made the trip from Los Angeles to be in these shows. He was a great hit. Check out his comedy on his website. AND NOW, it is time to get to work on August! New shows to be posted to the schedule soon, so keep looking!