Monday, May 17, 2010
Welcome back BLOG readers. And by readers I mean Welcome back mom. It has been a long time since my last BLOG. Many people thought I retired (hoped might be the better phrase). Many thought I won America ’s Next Top Model and then dated Tyra Banks until Naomi Campbell found out and beat the shit out of me. False.
Many people thought I was in hiding while my hair grew out so it could look more like Justin Bieber. Half true. Others thought I had to declare bankruptcy and take a part time job at Smoothie King. Let’s move on to the BLOG shall we...
So 2010 has been a great year so far. I rang in 2010 with Mitch Fatel at the Hartford Funnybone. My second time at that club and I really had a great time. I got to see my good friends Chris and Caroline who live in Connecticut. And their son Liam. Chris and Caroline both work for ESPN and I was able to take a tour of the ESPN studios. Very cool to see Mike Ditka and Lou Holtz walking around.
From Hartford it was off to Chicago to kick off the first full weekend of 2010 with my buddy Ralphie May. After Hartford I flew back to Michigan for a few days to see my mom. The plan was to drive from Michigan to Chicago and work with Ralphie and then fly back to LA from Chicago. Well on the night before my shows with Ralphie started, it began to snow worse than I had seen before. I woke up on the day I was suppose to make that drive and the roads were covered. What was I going to do. I mean I had to get there. I’m sure all the flights were canceled too. I started to make the drive. It was going good for the first hour. Then I hit that black ice on the road. If you’re not from the Midwest you don’t know what that is. Black ice is something hidden on the road that you can’t see but once you ride over it, your car goes out of control and you start spinning. This happens very quick. And since it’s foggy out, you don’t see the other cars in the ditch that have already hit it until your car goes over it. Luckily after me hitting the black ice, I was able to resume control and then dropped my speed to about 35 MPH the rest of the way to Chicago. When I pulled into the hotel parking lot I was all smiles. Shows were great. The owner of the Chicago Improv is one of the best owners in the biz.
After Chicago, I was back in LA. First time in like four weeks. I got a call asking if I was available to work on the hit MTV show Jersey Shore. MTV was filming the reunion show for Jersey Shore and they wanted me to do audience warm up. Basically keep the audience interested during the commercial breaks. I was responsible for making sure the audience didn’t leave once their heroin buzz wore off and they realized “WTF am I doing here...” The show went off without a hitch and it was crazy popular. A new season is filming now in Florida which is very kind of MTV to bring STDs to the sunshine state. Go Gators.
From Jersey Shore it was off to do a one night theater show in Autsin, TX with Ralphie May. Then is was off to Houston for a weekend with my buddy Mitch Fatel at the Improv. This was my second time at the Improv in Houston and it ranks as one of my favs. Although I always love going into a city like Houston and it’s like all other cities. I go to the front desk of the hotel and ask “Hey what is there to do around here...” and I always get “We have one of the biggest malls in the country right across the street...” Really?? Yes because a mall with only one Panda Express isn’t cutting it for me. I need access to Orange Flavored Chicken during my entire shopping day. I refuse to walk more than 30 feet for pot stickers. Needless to say I just stayed in the room.
Next stop--Tempe Improv w/ Ralphie. Ok so this is one of my favorite clubs. Great management, great food, great area, great crowds. I would work this club every week if I could. It’s amazing...
The first week of February kicked off with a gig I had done last year and loved and tried very hard to get rebooked this year. It’s a gig in Sun Valley, ID. It’s hard to get booked because so many people want to do it and they only do it (8) weeks out of the year, from January till the beginning of March. Sun Valley is the Aspen of Idaho. Just a high end ski resort where a lot of celebrities go and spend the weekend. So this is the best gig in showbiz. You fly in Thursday and you are off that night. You do two shows at the lodge where they put us up, one Friday and one Saturday. The crazy thing is the shows are at 6:30 p.m. and end right at 8 p.m. so you now have the rest of the night to hang out at this great lodge. And this lodge easily has one of the biggest and best hot tubs I’ve ever seen. It’s amazing.
The weekend ended on Saturday 2/6 and I was suppose to fly home that Sunday which was Superbowl but I wanted to watch it in Sun Valley. The lodge was kind enough to let me stay an extra day and I flew home Monday. Nothing better than watching a great football game in a ski lodge while the snow is falling outside the window. And BTW I also met a great band up there that weekend that would go on after our comedy show. Check out www.soljibe.com they were great.
After Sun Valley I came back to LA and was off to another great ski town, Lake Tahoe. This was my first time doing the Improv at Lake Tahoe. My buddy Kenny had done it a few times and said it was amazing. And it was. A local guy named Howie Nave hosts the show. He also hosts a morning radio show in Tahoe that I did during my stay up there. These shows were a lot of fun. Would love to go back there ASAP. Thanks Howie for a fun weekend.
So now it’s first week of March and I return to a place I had been in December, the Comedy Quarter in Appleton, Wisconsin. When I was there in December, the weather was so cold and miserable that I was excited about March because spring was right around the corner and I could enjoy some outdoor activities and see what Appleton had to offer in March. Wrong. Freezing cold. Miserable. I assume by mid July the weather heats up for two weeks. I grew up in Michigan so I know cold BUT man this was ridiculous. I hated it. Luckily the shows with Ralphie were fun and the owner is a good dude even when I was making fun of his last name. And his bad stand up comedy routine.
After Appleton I flew to New York. It was going to be a busy two weeks. I got a call in February asking if I wanted to work on a new Emeril Lagasse show. Emeril was taping (13) episodes of a new show that would start airing in April on the ION network. The idea behind the show was cooking meets talk. So Emeril would bring on guests to cook but also interview them as well. So we taped (13) one hour shows over two weeks. We would do two shows per day. I didn’t realize how many people LOVE Emeril. I mean I knew he was popular but I had no idea to what extent. People drove for hours to see this show tape. And Emeril didn’t disappoint. The audiences loved the show and loved Emeril. I’ve worked on a lot of shows were the host and the crew are just a big pain in the ass but I must say this show was one of the most enjoyable shows I’ve ever done. Emeril was a great guy, class act. And the entire crew was fun. The great experience of this job was meeting a guy named Dave Koz. Dave is a very talented, successful musician and was the leader of the houseband during the show. When I saw he was doing the show I got excited. During my first year of college, I was living in Michigan with my parents and my buddy and I decided to go see a local tv show being taped in Detroit. It was this woman named Danya Eubanks. Dayna was the weekend news anchor but she also had a morning talkshow that aired live Monday through Friday. So my buddy and I decided to go see the show tape live. Well the guest on the show years ago was a guy named Dave Koz and he played a song on his sax called Castle of Dreams. I remember this because years later as he started to become more well know my dad loved listening to him in the car. My dad loved jazz and was a fan of Dave’s music. My dad passed away a few years ago from cancer so meeting Dave at Emeril was a big deal to me because I knew my dad would have been so excited knowing I was in Dave’s company. As a result of the show, Dave and I have become friends and I’m going to see him in concert this June. And Dave invited my mom to come see him perform in Michigan this summer. She is so excited and can’t wait to meet him. The Emeril Lagasse show is currently airing on the ION network. Watch it so it gets picked up and I have more work in New York soon. BTW we taped the Emeril show in the same place where Maury Povich use to tape his show before Maury moved to a new studio in Connecticut. For some reason you could still hear the ghost of Maury in the hall saying “You are NOT the father of this little girl...”
After we got done filming Emeril during the day, I was off to perform at my favorite comedy club in NYC, Gotham. I did a bunch of shows with Dean Edwards, former SNL cast member.
Fun week. And it was my first time enjoying a St Patrick’s Day in Manhattan.
It’s April 1st and I’m off to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time--heading to Iraq to entertain the troops. Now I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time but for some reason over the years things have come up from me doing it. A lot of these tours to Iraq run about four weeks and in the past I’ve worked on tv shows that unfortunately film all the time and it’s hard to break away for weeks at a time.
So when this tour came up and it was for two weeks, I knew I wanted to be part of it. My buddy Scott Kennedy booked me for this tour. Scott has been going on these tours to the middle east for years. In fact while this was my first tour, this was Scott’s 36th tour. Amazing. He goes out all the time and entertains the men and women serving our country. I was fascinated that he had gone that many times... until I went and realized how incredible the experience was. Now when Scott goes, he brings two comics with him. So this trip, he brought me and comic Julia Lillis. This was her first trip to the middle east as well.
So fly from LAX to Washington DC. Off the plane. Three hour layover. Then DC to Kuwait. A 12 hour flight. The longest flight I’ve ever been on. It’s crazy when that flight takes off and you’re thinking “WOW I’m here for 12 hours...”
When I checked into the airport at LAX and the guy at United printed out my boarding pass he was like “You’re going to Kuwait. Are you going for business or pleasure?” Are you kidding me? I don’t know if you’ve watched the news the last eight years. But there is no Disneyland Kuwait City. They didn’t just open up a Hard Rock Café Baghdad.
So we finally land in Kuwait. Now Scott has been here a ton of times before so he is definitely great at helping us get through the system faster. We grab our bags and head to a military base in Kuwait to spend the night. We don’t have a show this first night. Now Kuwait is a neutral zone and relatively safe. The military base we are staying on is huge. It’s very westernized. This base had a Starbucks, Subway and Pizza Hut. We all fall asleep immediately.
We leave our base and head to another base in Kuwait. This is where we are going to fly to Iraq. The Baghdad airport has two sides, commercial and military although I didn’t see many Southwest or JetBlue flights heading into the commercial side. So we board this military flight from Kuwait to Iraq. So we are on this C130 military plane with a bunch of soldiers heading to Iraq. Me, Scott and Julia are the only ones in regular clothes. So one of the captains from the flight crew comes down and notices us. He finds out we are the comics heading to entertain the troops in Iraq. He asks if anyone wants to join him and the crew in the cockpit and enjoy the flight from up there. Scott had done it before and Julia kindly offered it up to me. So in seconds I was up in the cockpit with the crew awaiting our departure to Iraq. Moments after takeoff, the captain told me I could stand and watch. So literally three minutes off the ground I’m standing behind him and the co-pilot wearing headphones listening to their communication. It was amazing and it quickly made me realize that all commercial airline rules are bullshit. No ipod till 10,000 feet. You can’t get up till the captain turns off the seatbelt sign. On a military plane nobody cares. You can stand up as the plane rolls down the runway and start a full court basketball game. No rules. No nothing. They don’t care on a military jet. It’s amazing.
I had heard sometimes these C130 military jets have to do what’s called a combat land flying into Iraq which is basically the plane flying erratically simply because it doesn’t want to be shot down by Iraqis on the ground. If the plane is flying in a straight line making a gradual decent into the airport, it’s easy to spot and shoot down if they wanted. So sometimes the plane will do a quick drop, speed up, slow down etc so it’s harder to fire at. Well we didn’t have to do that on this flight.
We land in Iraq and we are greeted by a guy named Warren. He is from St Louis but works for the military until the end of the year. He is responsible for me, Scott and Julia. So remember that we felt perfectly safe in Kuwait. The first thing Warren says to us is “OK here is the deal. I know you will be on a military base which is well protected BUT the Iraqis can and will fire scud missiles into the base.”
He said our military can detect them but because it’s so fast, they are detected at the last minute and if/when they do detect them, a siren will go off and you will hear INCOMING on the speakers throughout this large military base. Warren tells us if you hear this, immediately hit the ground and don’t move. He said whatever you do, don’t run. Welcome to Iraq. So now I know I’m in a war zone. I love it.
So here is what is crazy. Warren takes us to where we will be staying. He pulls up to this crazy palace that is now turned into a hotel. We find out this is one of Saddam’s old palaces. This was just crazy. It was beautiful inside and this was the place I would be staying. It was really like a first class hotel. They had a military staff that took great care of us. In fact the room I slept in was right up the hall from the area where Dan Rather interviewed Saddam years before. It was crazy. I was like I remember this from tv.
We would leave our luxury digs every morning for a full day of entertaining the troops. Each day was different. Some days we would hop on a Blackhawk helicopter and fly off to another base and do a bunch of shows. Other days we would spend all day on our homebase and have a van take us to different parts of the base and we would entertain different groups. You have to understand our homebase was HUGE. It was miles wide and miles long. So it would take us 20 minutes or longer to drive to different parts of the base. Each area of the base did something different. One area of the base was the Air Force, another area was the military hospital, another area was special forces. Each area was like their own little mini city. It was crazy. Everybody doing something different but all there for the same purpose. Some days we would do six shows a day. We would get there an hour before the show started, learn more about what this particular unit did, we would then do the show and meet with everyone after. It was amazing to do shows of all sizes, some small with (12) people and others with (300)+ people. Some shows indoors, some outdoors performing while the soldiers sat on picnic tables with guns strapped to their backs. Every show more rewarding than the next. Truly amazing.
We did a ton of incredibly rewarding shows in Iraq. I met so many amazing people. I can’t believe I waited so long to make this trip. I’ve gotten to do some amazing amazing things as a comic but this by far trumped them all. We flew back to Kuwait and reflected on what a great trip it was. I still think about so many of the people I met over there and always want to make sure they are safe. I can’t wait till everyone is back safe. Thanks to Scott for giving me this crazy trip that I will never forget.
Back to the states and the end of April. I spent two back to back weeks in Nevada. One good, one not so good. I did (12) shows at the Improv in Las Vegas. I hadn’t performed at this club in years. I love working in Vegas because people save up for a long time to be there and I get paid to be there. That’s when I love this business. Those kind of moments. I usually play at the Riviera or the South Point Casino but I was back at the Improv at Harrahs Hotel which is also where I did my first Vegas week ever back in 2004. So this was very cool. Harrahs is also in the middle of the strip which is a great location. It was great seeing the Carl again. Carl runs the room and is a good dude. He always takes great care of the comics. It was one of my favorite weeks in Vegas. The shows were great. Some of my family from Arizona came out. I went to see a daytime performance by Mac King. He does a magic show during the day at Harrahs. Very entertaining.
From Vegas I drove (90) minutes to another desert casino area, Laughlin, NV. This week I was working with my bud Ralphie May so I was excited. Now the crowds in Laughlin were fun and appreciative BUT Laughlin. WOW. Do people know they can leave Laughlin? It could be one of the most depressing places I’ve ever been and I’ve been to Shreveport. I asked the woman at the front desk of our hotel where I could find a gym. She looked at me as though I asked where a KKK meeting was. Although I think she probably knew where one was. It was a long long week. One show a night. Six nights in a row. Ralphie and I decided if we got a speeding ticket leaving Laughlin we would split it. It would be worth it. Working with Ralphie made the week tolerable. We were there the same weekend as Tony Orlando. Enough said right...
Now it’s the beginning of May. This month started off with a weekend at the Miami Improv. My first visit to this club. The room was a little on the rowdy side most nights but I love it because I like to mess with the crowd and it challenges me to bring them all together and calm the room. So I had a great time. A guy named Joel owns this room along with Ft Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Louisville.
Just a great guy. Another great owner in this biz. Miami was just about to end and I was planning to fly home on Monday excited to unpack my new apartment I had just moved into. Joel said “why don’t you stay in Florida and you can work next week in West Palm with Darrell Hammond from SNL.” So I decided the apartment would have to wait. My dad always said work comes first. And when you only make $9k a year it should. So this BLOG ends with my run of shows in Florida and my weekend with Darrell Hammond in West Palm Beach.
Coming up. My first visit to the Arlington, TX Improv. Zanies in Nashville again. The Richmond, VA Funnybone debut and I’m participating in this year’s Autsim Speaks Celebrity Golf Outing at Winged Foot Country Club in New York. I’ve done it once before and it means a lot for me since my niece has autism. Although I feel bad for the foursome who paid good money to play golf with a celebrity and I walk up as their celebrity. Hey it’s Radar from Mash. This sucks.
posted by Gary Cannon at: 2:11 AM | 0 Comments
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