Lovely Lew's Place

I made the trip up to Tewksbury tonight. I had arranged to pick up my friend Heather and we drove together. Most of the comics were there already when we arrived. . . except for Kris. Kris has to bring the sound system and set it up , otherwise, it ain't much of a show. Rick Cormier had heard from Kris and told everyone he was on the way. Again , it was mostly comics and a couple of comics girlfriends, but not a bad size crowd. Kris handed me the list and I brought it around for people to choose their spots. I picked number 4. Tonya Dalhaus picked #3, Ellen Moschetto picked #2 and my friend Heather picked #1. Some guy whose girlfriend asked if he could go first because they had a 2 hour drive back to where they live. I suggested he could trade with somebody. I might have been a little snotty, but COME ON!!!!! We all have to get back somewhere. You had to know where you were going to end up when you heard 2 words "Tewksbury" and "Skating Rink". If the precious Poo was really any good , he wouldn't have made the deal to drive 2 hours in the first place. But I digress, in a mean and bitter manner. . . .
When I brought the list around, Kris had told me to write numbers 1-10. Of course, as these things go, we ended up with closer to 14. Kris opened with some new material, it was good. Ellen did new material as well and Tanya did material I hadn't seen before and , thus, it was new to me.
My original plan, when I asked for the stage time , was to work on my set for tomorrow night. I had planned to be all rehearsed by tonight, including new stuff and then I would have time to fine tune by tomorrow night. In my fantasy, I would rehearse my set every day and work on structuring jokes that I have written the premises of. I would be confident and kick some comedy butt at the Studio, just to do good. So, the operative word in that previous passage is "Fantasy" because I never got a chance to do anything. I 'm so tired from work and I 'm drained at the end of the day, there's nothing left for creativity. However, I did do a couple of new things and I kept to my time. I improvised something that got a big laugh and decided to end on it. I'm going ot have to listen to the tape.
There were a lot of people trying new material. One of my favorites is Steve Smith, he had like 5 new jokes. Rick Cormier did a good job . Matt Winneger did some new stuff and a couple of my favorites of his. Chris Perri & Derek Gerry also did new material. Heather forgot the punchlines to her jokes and that was very funny , but for the wrong reasons, but she perservered.
There was also an angry, recently separated from his wife , white guy who brought a bunch of people. He paced the stage and his friends yelled out the premises of the jokes he apparently had told them he was going to do. He also alluded to killing himself and/or killing his wife's new lover. Not funny. Kind of scary. He paced the stage like an agitated pitbull on a leash in a front yard, trying to remember what he was going to say. I don't think he realized the kind of preparation this was going to need until he actually had the microphone in his hand. Fortunately, they all left after his set. There was a potential for danger there. Not the least of which was that the angry guy's sister looked like an ex-girlfriend of Kris's, he told us that after they left.
Heather and I stayed until the end. Even though it was more like a workshop for comics, it was still a good evening. We all felt like we had done something. I got home around 12:30 AM. Now I'm going to go to bed.