Doing The Door and Stand-up

I did the door at the Comedy Studio tonight. It was a Saturday night show. The audience was there to have a good time. They were laid back , they seemed to have good time. Sean Bedgood is the Comic in Residence for one more show. I thought he did a good job. Then it was Chris Oake , who I hadn't seen in a while. He had some really funny stuff. Maggie MacDonld was next , she had changed the wording of some of her jokes. I thought they were perfect already and she just made them even more perfect. Then Billy Bob Neck, I was doing something with the door , so I missed some of his set. I was talking to him before his set and I laughed at the new premise. A poll/petition website. Matt McArthur was next , I had seen him before. He has some really fresh stuff and he has a good delivery.
Then it was my turn. Rick said before the show "Have fun out there ! " . Though that should always be the goal, I sometimes fall short of that ideal. I was focusing on making it look and feel new. I had come up with a tag for a joke that I used to do all the time, but I have been focusing on other sections and I came up with a tag on the way home from work , that I thought would work. Sometimes having a new little bit in the middle can help make it feel new again. It did. I thought the ending of my set was a little weak, but I still felt good and didn't lose energy. I was very glad I got to perform after thinking about that new tag today.
After me was John Garrison, he's originally from Kansas City. He's a good writer, he reminds me a little bit of Bill Braudis. Erin Judge closed the show. Always consistent.
I hung out after the show a little longer than I had anticipated. I have to work tomorrow. I ended up with Chris Oake and Rick Jenkins just talking about movies. Frankly , I was a little jazzed from the set and I may have difficulty sleeping. When I feel like I did a good job, it's always harder to unwind.
I have another set at the Studio tomorrow night. Let's see how that goes . . .

It's Hawt Heyah

Oh Man ! So much for a traditional New Englad Fall. It's in the 90's. I'm dripping flop sweat like Albert Brooks in Network, no, it wasn't Network. Crap ! What 's the title of that film anyway ? It starred William Hurt and Holly Hunter. "Broadcast News"? Ah . . never mind, you get the picture.
It's really , unseasonably hot here.
Saturday night, I did the Studio. I had a good start and acceptable ending but the middle part dragged. Don't know why, it just did. Though, I felt very good about what I did. Brian Longwell was on the show and he was terrific. I had planned on posting the line-up but I can't remember what everybody did. I thought it went well.
Monday night , Kiki and I went to see Eastern Promises. Very violent but very good. I reccommend it. Today was a long day. I am ready to go to bed.
Yeah, I know, this isn't particularly interesting writing. Frankly , I don't have anything really interesting to say . I worked and now I'm home.

It's 3 AM and I'm Wide Awake

I did the Comedy Studio tonight. I did the door and I got some stage time. I went out after the show with Rick Jenkins and Chance Langton. Originally, Brain Longwell, Paul Day & Andy Ofiesch were with us. We left the Studio becuase it was too loud and headed over to the Cellar. It , too , was loud and crowded. Andy, Brian and Paul decided to call it a night. We went over to Ryle's and hung out with my favorite bartender, Rick Bogaert. Jenkins, Chance and I know him from the long ago Catch a Rising Star days. I don't have to work tomorrow , so I can stay up all night if I want to ! I don't want to , but I'm not ready to go to bed. It's so weird to be this awake at the this hour , but I have no motivation to do anything short of watching tv or surfing the net. I wish I had a plate of nachoes. I wish I could concentrate to read.
There was a band playing at Ryle's.It was "Mr. Nick and the Blues Mafia" . They broke up yesterday and this was their last show. They were really good. I was surprised I was awake and alert for so long. I wish I had the energy to go out and walk around my neighborhood, but that's probably not a great idea, simply because it'll probably be boring.
Awwwww, I'm just going to go and lay down. I bet I'll be asleep in no time . ..

Extra Working Extra

I did some more extra work yesterday on one of the films being shot here in Boston. It stars Steve Martin and Jean Renau, a French actor of some heft. It was being shot at the Boston Convention and Exhibition center and it was supposed to be an airport , and it sure did look like one. When the girl from the casting company called me, she said to wear sophisticated clothing. To look like a French traveller, they don't wear jeans and sweats and stuff to travel. They get dressed up . Oh, and it had to be in muted colors-grays and browns. Nothing says sexy and sophisticated like nutral colors. I wore what I think is very classy , my gray pantsuit with my brown silk blouse, and, of course, with a good piece of foundation garmentation underneath.

A lot of being an extra is waiting -in lines, for direction, for vans to take you to the parking lot . Stuff like that there. I had to wait in line to report for work and get checked off and then I had to wait in a line to have my hair approved and then the next line was to have my make-up approved and when all those approvals have happened, I can get my wardrobe approved. So, I get in the wardrobe line with my nifty wheeling Samsonite luggage that my best friend gave me for Christmas last year and I wait to get my outfit approved or to have it rejected. When you get near the top of the line , you open your suitcase or garment bag and show the wardrobe guy/girl what you got. Just when I was about to get to the top of the line some Russian chick cut in to get her second approval and then some other chick had to get her belt chosen (yeah, these are just the extras !) and then the guy got a phone call from someone named Richard. From what I overheard, it did seem to be about business for this movie, but I still had to wait a long time. When he finally hung up, he wanted to know what else I had. He chose a blouse and skirt that I just bought at Kohl's last week (with money I don't have yet) and the same gray jacket from my suit. I was a little pissed about it but , you know , when I was all changed I looked really good. I actually got compliments on the outfit from other actors !
During this whole process, I'm hanging out with my friend Heidi. Heidi and I enjoy each other's company when on the sets. We amuse ourselves and create an impenetrable force field so that we don't have to deal with other extras and their boring character flaws. It's boring enough already,do I really need to listen to your college days in Vermont and the one traffic light in town that you went back to recently and found that they still just have the one traffic light in town ? (true story) Hmmmm ? No, I don't need to hear it. Nor do I need to listen to some old coot who's not paying attention and trying to get us to laugh. That's what his wife is for . Go home and bore her ! Heidi and I can simultaneously carry on a conversation in a barely audible tone and keep our ears peeled for direction. Years of practice, that.
Our main direction was to stand and look at the arrivals board. We got to stay in postition for the whole scene. We were the point of reference for the other extras who are hurriedly trying to catch planes to the far -flung destinations. Heidi and I were rooted to the spot trying to figure when our flight to Istanbul was arriving and/or leaving. We had worked out a subplot where she thought I had the tickets and I thought she had the tickets and then we decide we're just going to hang out in the lounge and pick up pilots. Over the course of our stay in front of the arrival/departure board, which , by the way, was a plywood board painted black, we had further evolved the story to include us having escaped from a mental institution and how retarded people must think we are for standing in front of this board for so long. People must think there is something horribly wrong or stupid about us. We would check our watches , we would look at each other's watches to see if the time was insynche. We were desperately trying not to acknowledge the mother -daughter team placed beside us. They kept inching closer to us as if we knew we were on camera and they wanted to make sure they were in the shot. We had no idea if we were or not, though, frankly , we were pretty sure we were in the shot.
We were close enough to see first postition for Steve Martin and Jean Renau. They were both very profesional . I was impressed to see the consistency and also the slight variations, which was from the director, on each take. They really couldn't talk to the extras. It's an expensive enterprise to produce a film, they don't want to slow things down by yacking with the Extras. One of Jean Renau's assistants, as she was walking away, said "Merde" over her shoulder to him as he was about to film his scene. "Merde" is French for shit. It is also the French equivalent of "Break a Leg".
Lunch was fried catfish, summer squash, eggplant, roasted potatoes, flank steak and chicken breast. On another table was a seaweed and scallop entree, it sounds disgusting but it was really good ! The desserts weren't that great -chocolate chip cookies, melted Friendly's ice cream and some pies. I really liked the catfish. My friend Carol didn't finish hers, so I did !
It wasn't a terribly long day. It was 9 hours. It was tough standing for so long in my heels. The shoes looked great but they're not really designed to be worn for more than 4 hours at a time. I have blisters on the back of my ankles. I drove my friend Heidi to the train station and got lost doing so ! But I got her to her train on time.
I was glad I got to do it. Any day on a movie set is a good day for me.

Aaahhhh. . .Work !

I am working a convention today. It is the last day of the convention and a lot of people are leaving. People have been leaving since 10 AM. I have to stay here until 2PM. Just in case someone needs a reservation to a restaurant. The pants portion of my pantsuit doesn't zip all the way up. I am watching people walking by with convention food, cracker jacks, snapples, pop corn, donuts , croissants. There was a sports theme to this event so, there are a lot of people wearing uniforms and identical outifuts- colored polo shirts and khaki pants. Some "Models" -tiny women with bleached blonde hair and fake boobies. The light in here is flourescent so there is a yellow caste to everything here. By the end of the day yesterday, my eyelids were twitching.

Stand-Up at the Studio

I did stand-up at the Comedy Studio on Wed. night. I also did the door, because it was packed !!!! There were a couple of new guys on the show and, God Bless 'em, they all tried to bring as many people as possible. While I was doing the door, we kept running out of ones and fives. Everybody was paying with twenties ! Emerson, the bartender, was getting annoyed with me, he was nice about it , but I know I was a nuisance. Also, he had to wait on the tables because there was no waitress.
Okay, because I was doing the door, I didn't completely get to see the aforementioned "new guys" , I could hear them , but I was really concentrating on doing the door. I got the show order off the wall , so here goes. . .
Shaun Bedgood is the Comic in Residence this month. He had some good new jokes, but the audience seemed a bit cool. Frankly, it's their loss. Then John Lincoln, they balked at a couple of the early jokes but he had them at the end. Then Me . . .. .I , also, had a hard time "Getting" them . However, I didn't give up . I kept going and I told them I would do so. My new Amy Winehouse joke didn't go over that well ( I think Amy Winehouse's next recording should be "isn't it Ironic") nope. . . they didn't like it. Maybe because I was making fun of someone who is in rehab even though her hit was making fun of people in rehab .. . . but I digress. The more recent stuff I have reworked is going really well, it's consistent. Basically, it was tough at the beginning and the end, but the middle was Damn Spanky ! I did have a set order and I did everything on it. I felt pretty good about it when I was done.
After me was Ed Kopesky. He's an MIT guy and he writes a really good joke, They seemed to like him (Of course I warmed them up for him !) (just kidding) Then it was Todd Gorrell then Fran Joyce, it was really busy at the door so I only got to see and hear a couple of their bits . I could hear the audience's reaction and they seemed to really like those two guys, probably because they brought half of the audience ! Regardless of the F & R audience , what I heard them do was good and original and not derivative. I look forward to actually seeing them perform sometime. Then , poor Pincus. Poor Pincus was new and his "comedy" was a little mean, without being terribly clever. He also has a very low-key delivery which could be confused for nerves . Then Jimmy Igoe, new guy, second time on stage. He has no jokes. I could see where he might be funny hanging around with him , but he really needs to organize himself . He may have been drunk (or high).
Then it was Peter Bowers, I thought he was wonderful ! He had a lot of new stuff that I hadn't seen before. He just gets better and better-both his material and his stage presence. What a treat ! I got to see most of his set, followed by Tony Moschetto who was terrific ! He reworked a couple of concepts I had seen him do before. In all honesty, I don't think I 've ever seen Tony not do a great job, even when he was screwing around up at Lew's Place, he was always professional and fresh. He's also entered in the San Fracnsico Comedy Festival, he's leaving for it next Tuesday. San Francisco is a prestigious and respected festival. Bon Chance Moschetto !
The closer was a Harvard kid who brought the other half of the audience. Literally, they were all on one side of the club and the latecomers were a little pocket closer to the door. The kid's name is Just Rerira and he had some good jokes , but he had to earn the audience , even though he brought 'em. He got them by the end, again , even though they were mostly his friends. When he walked in , I told him "These are your people". He thought I was joking.
SO , that was the show. It was a pretty good show. Especially because it was packed ! I was so glad I was doing the door ! This the first chance I've had to blog about it. I have to work a convention tomorrow and Sunday. I need to be there early, so I have to go to bed early tonight. Wow ! That's boring . . . . See ya.

More Car Woes

Yup. My car died in between jobs on Saturday. It was so hot and I was dripping wet and I needed to be someplace in a half hour looking really good and all I could manage was a reasonable facimile of wilted chard. I still do not have my car. My mother is going to let me borrow her car to get to the first job tomorrow.
Today , I took the bus to the job. It was okay until the last hour of the day when my boss became possessed and felt I was not doing the job I was hired to do. This is , in fact , true , as I didn't finish sending the billing out last month because she said she would do it . And so we find ourselves here at the next month's billing and she yelled at me for a solid hour about why I did it wrong and I never do what she asks me to do. In the end , everything was to be done as usual. The only thing different from every other billing period is that ,this month, she yelled at me for a solid hour . If I had thought I had done something wrong or if I thought I had made a mistake , I might have gotten uspet. I know I did every thing I was supposed to do. I was not going to engage the drama. There is no point and I don't know how long the rest of might life will be, I ain't going to get upset about something I couldn't mind read. I see the "Big" picture and it's not the same angle as hers.

In The Movies

For those of you living in far flunged locations or those who don't pay attention to the local news, there are 3 major motion picures being filmed in Boston right now. 2 of them had open calls while I was in Scotland but I was able to get myself submitted and the other one my best friend is assisting the extras casting director who also happens to be a friend of mine. Long story short, I expected to get a call from one of these projects. Tuesday, I did. While I was on my way in between the 2 jobs I work on Tuesdays, I got a call that I was booked for Friday if I could make it to a fitting in Chelsea before 6 PM. Fortunately , both bosses are pretty understanding, so, I ran a delivery and then went for my fitting.
I was to be one of the three chefs in a scene featuring Dane Cook, the great Tony V and a beautiful young Hollywood actress whose name I did not get , but who was really skinny. When I went for the fitting, I was to be outfitted with a chef's uniform. I was fitted and then I headed off to another Red Sox game with my beloved cousin. Sox won and it was a great game. Also, they cut off the song "Sweet Caroline" for some reason, probably the game was in play, but the crowd finished the second verse accapella and then great cheering was had. It just increased the fun. Beckett pitched 7 innings and Papelbon brought it home. But I digress. . . .
Today was the day of the filming. My original call time was 12:30 and then it was changed to 1:30. I drove downtown and paid for parking. Though the Dorothy Quincy Suites validated my parking so it ended up costing about $12.00. I parked, in case I ended up staying aftr the trains stopped running. I had also been corresponding with two friends who were already working on this movie, so we were all keeping each other up to date on what was going on . I arrived at the Holding at a little after 1. The guy showed up after me with the forms I would have to fill out. I had my drivers license and passport with me, in case they checked it for the I-9 form. I then went to costume , put my costume on and then went to hair and them make-up and then back to holding. My friend , local actor Rick Park was one of the Chefs with me. They were missing his chef's jacket, so he was standing around a little longer than I was. However, while I was getting my hair done, he was brought to set and got to be there while they were setting up the shots with "First Team" which in this case would mean Dane Cook, Tony V and the skinny actress. Then they were sent outside to wait. I got there just after they came out to wait.
At some point , the assistant director came out and thought we should get moved from the area in front of the pay phones and ATM into a holding room so they sent us to the props area where they were holding the cake parts and the flowers for the wedding scene they were shooting at the Copley Fairmont Hotel. It was fucking cold in there . They kept the temperature up to preserve the flowers and the cakes. It was very boring. All I wanted to do was go to craft services and gorge on anything they had. I wasn't hungry , but the spectre of party food somewhere, available to me, was more than I could handle. Then they came in and took 3 of us. I was not one of the three. Right. I'm off to craft services . They had guacamole and chips and fluffy croissants and bagels cut in half with cream cheese and salmon smeared on them and jars of gum, pretzels and hard candy. There were display boxes of granola bars and Hostess products- cupcakes, ding dongs and coffee cakes. I stood and had some chips and gaucamole and I snatched a granola bar and a single wrapped Hostess cup cake and brought it back to the chilly holding area. My friend Rick put his t-shirt on his head to keep himself warm .
The room we were in was carpeted and had a shiny golden pattern design on the wall paper. The chairs were upolstered in the same gold on white pattern . In the rooms down the hall , they were having a convention for prosthetic devices salesmen, or something to do with prothetics, that 's all I heard. I also broke into the craft services stash. I liberated a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies for my fellow extras . I read both the Globe and the Herald. Rick was bored not doing anything.
Finally , some guy with a Greman accent came into the room and said "You ! and You !" pointing at Rick and me. He walked fast and I had to run/walk to keep up with him. He led us to the kitchen of the hotel, where the scene was finishing up . Rick and I were to walk back and forth in the background while the action was going on. Tony V was there in costume - a wife beater t-shirt and what appeared to be pajama bottoms and he had been instructed not to shave. He really didn't look like a guy I 'd want cooking my food, but he was perfect for the part. Rick was set up right behind the action I was was to walk into the kitchen , check the calendar walk back off camera . Wait a couple of seconds and walk back into the scene and tell Rick to check the fry-o-later then I walk back out. Then I walk back into the scene and check the spice rack. I had decided that I was checking for a particular spice that we were running low on. Then I decided I couldn't decide which would be the correct spice I wanted to use in the dish I was preparing. Eventually, I picked up a cannister of parika and walked out of the scene with it. I did these sequence of things 4 times and then they finished the scene and wrapped us for the day. I was home by 7:15. I was glad I took my car. I had hoped to get more time on set, but it was fine. I'll get paid a days wages and I may end up in a movie. That's about it . That's showbiz. . .. ain't it grand ?

Whining

I am whining here, so maybe you don't want to read this. . . . We are slamming at the visitors center today. The computer is not connected to the internet , so , I am writing this from an internet cafe. I have allergies, so I took a generic Claritin this morning, so, I feel like someone has poured glue into my sinuses. I can't cough or properly blow my nose. I feel like when the drug wears off, I'm going to sneeze an everlasting snot. I am tired and wish I was asleep or napping. Other than that . . . . the weather here is beatutiful. It's warm , but not muggy, the sun is shining and the sky is blue. I wish I had an ice cream cone. . . .. .