Curt Fletcher Blog: t.j. miller

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Tuesday, August 9, 2016

15 Years of Comedy: A Kidney Stone and a Wedding

August 5, 2016, marked my 15th year as a comedian. Thinking back over the years, I've performed at some pretty unique/weird places (a ditch in Albuquerque, a barn that was turned into a bar in Hill City, SD, a campground in Northern Wisconsin, and Nebraska) some of the biggest comedy clubs (Comedy Works-Denver, Improv-Denver, Improv-Houston, Improv-Tempe, Funny Bone-Des Moines, Hyenas-Dallas, etc.), and I've even worked with some of the biggest names (Kyle Kinane, Jim Norton, Harland Williams, Brian Posehn, T.J. Miller) in the business.

In March, I received an email from some wedding planners asking if I would be available to perform at a wedding in Santa Fe in August. It took me a few hours to respond, unsure if I should take the gig or not. But, I'm a comedian, and rarely turn down gigs. It's how I make my living. So, I emailed back and said that I would be available. At first, I thought, it was probably someone I knew, so I asked who the couple was. They told me that it was a couple from California, and they saw my video online and really liked it. That made me even more nervous. Performing at someone's wedding, one of the biggest days of their lives, and not knowing anybody at all at the wedding, I was nervous as soon as I said yes to the gig. Luckily, I had several months to prepare.

From April-July, I talked on the phone with the bride, Emily, who was very friendly, and you could tell she had a great personality and a good sense of humor just communicating with her on the phone. She provided a lot of information about her and Alan, so I would have enough material to roast them before doing my set. So, I began the writing process.

July 21-23 I was scheduled to perform at Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle in Royal Oak, Michigan. I was supposed to be at Snickerz in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the week prior, but it shut down, so it screwed my routing up a bit. I drove all the way to Detroit from Albuquerque, giving myself a couple of days to get there, stopping in Oklahoma City and Memphis, to visit some friends and do some comedy along the way. I had a blast in both cities! I really like the comedy scene in OKC, everyone is so friendly there. And they have a lot of great comics. I also got to see my old friend, Stan Silliman, it's always nice running into him. In Memphis, I got to hang out with my friend, Hillary, who played my daughter in a movie we filmed in June, called Cloud Gamez: The Road to the Chronathalon. She played my daughter, even though, she's a couple years older than me. That's how great of an actor I am, folks.

I left Memphis pretty early on Thursday, luckily, I didn't realize that Detroit was in the Eastern Time Zone. It was about an 11 hour drive, but I got to drive through a bunch of places I had never been before. It made me realize how much shittier it is being a road comic living in the western part of the US. In those 11 hours I drove through Nashville, Louisville, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Toledo. All cities with comedy clubs. The drive was very enjoyable, minus the road construction in Ohio.

There wasn't much time to get ready for my show, so I took a quick shower at the hotel and then headed down to the club. As soon as I got there, I met the manager, Bill, who was super friendly. And, of course, I got to see my old friend, Nathan Timmel, who was headlining. I've known Nathan for about a decade, we worked together at Laffs Comedy Club in Tucson several years ago, where he and Mike "Big Deal" Merryfield nicknamed me, Stabby McKillahoe, because I was reading "Catcher in the Rye," and watching tv shows about serial killers all weekend. It was nice knowing that I would be working with Nathan for the weekend. It was my first time ever working the club, and it's a little nerve-wracking working at a new club for the first time. That definitely helped ease the situation. Had a really fun show the first night, and Bill seemed to really like me a lot. The opener, Tonya Murray, a local, was super funny, too, and very friendly.

Friday morning, Nathan took me to lunch at Panera Bread, the first time I ever ate there was with him in Colorado Springs. During lunch I started getting a really sharp pain in my abdomen, and it wouldn't go away. I decided to leave and go back to my hotel to see if the pain would go away. It wasn't going away and I was nervous that it might have been appendicitis, so I decided to go to the ER. It was already 4:30 by the time they were checking my vitals, so I knew I was going to have to miss the show that night. Nathan was cool enough to talk to the club for me while I was in the ER and they found someone to fill in for me. I was at the hospital until almost midnight. Luckily, it wasn't appendicitis, it was a kidney stone. The doctor told me it was the size of a grain of sand. It's crazy how something that small can cause so much pain. Also, while I was waiting around in the hospital bed, I decided to google Jack Kevorkian, because I knew he was from Detroit (hence the name, Stabby McKillahoe), and it turns out that he died at the same hospital that I was at.

When I arrived at the club the next day, the staff was very friendly, everyone asked how I was and they really made me feel very comfortable. It quickly became one of my favorite clubs that I have ever worked at. They even paid me for the show I missed, I was contacted by them a few days after I had left, and they wanted to send me a check, I was blown away. Not many clubs would do that. I got to meet the owner, Mark, also, very nice guy. We had a couple of great shows on Saturday night. Nathan talked me in to driving to Iowa that night, he was heading home, he lives near Cedar Rapids, and I was heading to Ankeny to stay with my cousin, Devon, for a couple of days. I had a hard time staying awake and was still experiencing some pain, so I ended up sleeping in my car for a couple of hours. I got to Ankeny around noon on Sunday and slept while my cousin was at work. When I woke up I was going through some of my stuff and realized that I was missing a few things: my favorite Iowa Hawkeyes basketball shorts...and a joke notebook. The notebook had all of my roast jokes that I had written for the wedding, along with some new material that I had been working on. Luckily, all of my new jokes were saved on my phone, but the wedding stuff I hadn't copied down anywhere. I had to start over.

So, from that time, up until the wedding, I was freaking out a little bit. I wanted to be very prepared for this since it was such a big occasion. I woke up on August 6th, super nervous. I remember being pretty nervous when I got to open for Jim Norton, but definitely not as nervous as this. And then, of course, I had some abdominal pain to go along with the nervousness. I'm not sure if it had to do with my kidney stone or if was just me stressing myself out even more. I took some pain pills and that helped a little bit. I went and picked up my friend, Niki Mangin. She went to the wedding with me, she loves weddings. She was crying almost the whole time, then we got to the wedding. Haha, just kidding. She did cry a lot at the wedding though. We sat with some friends of Emily's at the wedding, and they were all very friendly. As soon we got to the venue, all of my nerves went away. It was such a beautiful ceremony, and it was a lot of fun. I could tell that the couple definitely had a great sense of humor during their wedding vows.

I took the mic at 9:30, they introduced me as the next "toaster." So, everyone just thought I was going to go up and give a quick toast. That's when I roasted Emily and Alan, or "Marjorie and Albert," as I called them. The crowd was very receptive to the roast portion of my set, I had no idea how it would go. Especially, not knowing anyone there, and roasting people who I had never met before. It was difficult, but I just went up there and had fun, and it went well. I roasted them for about 10 minutes before going into my material. I was so relieved when my set was done! I had such a great time, and several people talked to me afterwards and said that they really enjoyed it. And the wedding planners, Liz and Krissie, were great. They did an amazing job with the wedding.

Thanks to Alan and Emily, and I wish them and their new family many years of happiness and laughter. Thank you for an amazing experience.

UPCOMING GIGS
AUGUST 18 CAREFREE, ARIZONA
AUGUST 19-21 LAUGHLIN, NEVADA - EDGEWATER CASINO
AUGUST 22 PINETOP, ARIZONA - HONDAH CASINO
AUGUST 26 BURBANK, CALIFORNIA
AUGUST 29 BOULDER CITY, NEVADA - BACKDROP SPORTS PUB
SEPTEMBER 16-17 SHAKOPEE, MINNESOTA - DANGERFIELDS W/MARC YAFFEE
OCTOBER 5 COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO - LOONEES COMEDY CORNER
OCTOBER 6 DENVER, COLORADO - SUSHI HAI
OCTOBER 19 TAOS, NEW MEXICO - MESA BREWING
NOVEMBER 3-5 PLANO, TEXAS - HYENAS
NOVEMBER 10-12 FORT WORTH, TEXAS - HYENAS
NOVEMBER 17-19 DALLAS, TEXAS - HYENAS
DECEMBER 8-11 DENVER, COLORADO - IMPROV

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

14 Years of Comedy

So today marks my 14th year of doing stand-up comedy! The dream started in 1984, when I was just four and I've always enjoyed making people laugh. I still remember making Katy Malloy spit milk out of her nose in kindergarten. When I was 21, that's when I decided to give it a shot. I was working at Pizza Hut on the westside of Albuquerque, where I met a lot of my closest friends. Nate Tramontina was the one who really pushed me into doing it. He was probably only 18 at the time and he said something like, "quit talking about it and actually do it." The night that I really got serious about it was when we had a big party at our house. I was living with Nate Guyre and Larry Campbell. Nate Tramontina's band, AnesthesiA, was playing and we had probably about 75 people at the house. It was pretty noisy, and the cops ended up showing up. Luckily no one got in trouble, but the band had to quit playing. Everyone ended up leaving, but about half hour later all of our closest friends ended up back at the house. Someone convinced me to hop up on the microphone and start telling some jokes.

I hadn't really started writing any material up to that point, and I was probably too hammered to remember it anyway, so I got up on the microphone and just started talking some shit. I don't remember anything I said, but I remember just roasting everyone basically and getting a lot of laughs. That's when I knew that I could give it a try. I did some research on the local comedy club, Laffs. They held their open mic the first Sunday of every month, so I picked August. I gave myself about four months to prepare five minutes of material. I talked to my good friend from Iowa, Matt Evans. Matt was and is one of the funniest people I've ever met in my life. I asked him if he had any ideas for jokes, I had no idea how to write a joke. So, Matt would send me joke ideas and some bits that he came up with. Most of them were kind of long, and I wasn't comfortable telling longer bits. When I wrote my own stuff it ended up being a lot of one-liners and shorter jokes. I did try some of Matt's jokes out, they were funny, but didn't really fit with the style that I wanted to do. I ended up using some of the funny lines and just shortening the bits. Matt finally got to see me perform a few years ago in Fort Dodge, Iowa. If it wasn't for him I would have had a really difficult time getting started.

My good friend, Dennis Verrall, was very helpful, too. He gave me some jokes that he had written, when I was first kinda starting out, too. I'm such a hack! I finally talked Dennis into doing stand up several years later. He only did a handful of shows, but I got him gigs in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and South Dakota. Not bad for someone who probably only performed like 10-15 times. I think if he really tried he would be really good at it. He's a talented sumbitch.

I started to become a regular at Laffs pretty quickly. The owner of Laffs, Russ Rivas, was very helpful and took a lot of time working with me and helping me get better. As I got to know him more when I worked at the club, I realized that he never did that, so I appreciated it years later. I know there are a lot of people who don't like Russ, but he really took me under his wing and made me into the comedian that I am today, and I am very grateful.

Don Morgan was another guy who helped me out a lot. I met him in Denver just shortly before I moved back to Albuquerque a few years back. We kept in touch and I ended up living with him in Denver for a few months after my divorce. He was very helpful, he's a good friend. And he's super funny, I love traveling with him. We got to spend a few days in Iowa performing and hanging out with my family and had a blast! My family really enjoyed him, too. Especially since he made fun of uncle Melvin! I think Don will do some great things in comedy, too, he's very sharp and likable.

My good buddy and writing partner, Marc Shuter, has always been a huge inspiration throughout my career as well. I was pretty bummed when he quit doing stand up, he was always one of my favorites to watch. We started writing a script a couple of years ago and we're pretty happy with it right now, can't wait for everyone to see it! Marc's a talented fella and I think he has a bright future in writing.

The past 14 years have had so many ups and downs, but I really love the lifestyle. I have met so many people and I've had an opportunity to travel all over the country and see some really beautiful things. I have performed in 24 different states, in December I'm performing in Utah, that will put me at 25! I have done over 1,300 shows and I've performed at some of the best venues in the country. I've even got to share the stage with Jim Norton, Brian Poshen, Josh Blue, John Caponera, T.J. Miller, Theo Von, Dante, Jackie Kashian, Harland Williams, Dan Soder, Ben Kronberg, Steven Michael Quezada, Michael Malone, Robert Hawkins, Carl LaBove, Troy Baxley and Chad Daniels. I've made so many great friends in this business, too.

Unfortunately, I've lost some good friends along the way, too. My good friend, Dave Ashley, died earlier this year and that broke my heart. I find myself thinking about him a lot, he was a great guy. We hit it off right away when I met him in Tulsa. I feel so awful for his wife, Beth, who was one of the nicest comedy club managers I've ever met. Dave always wanted me to go visit them in Jacksonville and I never got the opportunity. Some other great comedian friends who have passed: Lori Callahan, Jimmy Wiggins, Scott Kennedy and Kelly Moran. I know there are definitely others, but those are the ones who came to mind right away. It's definitely a tough lifestyle being out on the road away from family, but it's what we do.