2015 - Leaving Albuquerque

One month of 2015 is already almost in the books and I have only a couple of short weeks left in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Albuquerque will always hold a special place in my heart as it's the city that I truly "grew up" in (even though I'm still not fully grown up). I have a million memories here, I have family here, and some of the best friends I will ever know. If it weren't for some of my friends, I probably would have been to scared to ever step foot on stage at Laffs Comedy Club in 2001. Here's a blog about my first show.

So many great people in Albuquerque made a big impact on my life. My buddies from AnesthesiA were a huge influence and they offered me a lot of stage time early on in my comedy career. I would often tell jokes as they set up their equipment. Those guys have really come a long way since I first met them, they went from playing shows in my den, to opening for several of the top metal bands that came through town. They even snagged a record deal with Suburban Noize Records and their new cd will be released February 28th, so go to the show! Unfortunately, I will be out of town and won't be able to catch it. I got to perform at their first cd release party and their ten-year anniversary show.

In 2002, I met a new comic in Albuquerque, Marc Shuter. He was just 16 when he started coming to Laffs and doing stand-up. He had some really clever one liners, but he used a Steven Wright joke and I didn't like him at first. And a lot of jokes were about pooping and farting, so I wasn't a fan right away. He grew on me after awhile and we started hanging out and becoming writing partners. Marc was featuring in comedy clubs by the time he was 21 and his cd was being played on XM radio. He decided to quit doing stand-up, but got involved in screen writing. He wrote and starred in his first film, "The Bigfoot Election," which won best local feature at the Albuquerque Film Festival. It was also selected for the Hollywood Film Festival. You can watch it on iTunes or Amazon, it's super funny and well written! Marc and I teamed up to write, "The Consequences of a Feeble Mind," which took us just over a year with re-writes. We are hoping to film this year, we are both pretty excited about it. I think Marc has a great writing career ahead of him, and I have no problem riding his coattails. Just kidding.

It would probably take an entire month and a box of tissues (crying, not masturbating, perverts) to mention everyone in Albuquerque that has had an impact on my life in one way or another, so I just want to thank everyone for all the kind words, the stage time, and the advice. I'll do my best to make Albuquerque proud! Thank you everyone for being a huge part of my life.

And I suppose I will miss my family, too. My mom, Kyle, Chad, Amy and Dylan, Hunter, and Phoenix, the craziest nephews ever! I love you guys!

Thanks Albuquerque.

What's Been Going On

I haven't blogged since the 48 Hour Film Festival, so I thought I would fill my five followers in on what's going on in my life, even though, you probably already know, or you really don't give a shit. My buddy, Marc Shuter, and I, finished up our feature length script that we titled, "The Consequences of a Feeble Mind," Marc actually came up with the title. We started writing on March 24th and finished the first draft in early June. A couple weekends ago we finished the re-writes! It's definitely something that we are pretty proud of and can't wait to get it made. The script was entered in to the Creative World Awards' Screenwriting Competition with the first draft we made it to the preliminary round, not bad. We will find out soon if we make the quarterfinals of the Final Draft Big Break Contest!

On a side note, Marc's pilot for a sitcom he wrote for "Law Show," is kicking some major ass! Not only did he make the top 10 in the Script Pipeline Contest, he also made the semifinals of the CWA TV writing contest, and the NexTV Writing and Pitch contest. He's such a great writer, he's going to big things, and I'm honored to be writing with him. We are starting our next project soon.

As far as comedy goes, I haven't been doing much, I went to El Paso for a week at The Comic Strip with Billy D. Washington, had a great time working with him. I have done some other local stuff here and there, but really focusing on school right now. I do have some great gigs coming up though. I will be headlining the Speakeasy Comedy Lounge in Scottsdale in October, which should be super fun!

This past Sunday I had the pleasure of taping my fourth episode of "The After After Party" with Steven Michael Quezada, who you might recognize as Gomez from "Breaking Bad." (R.I.P. Gomie) I love the crew at TAAP, everyone is super friendly and they work their butts off to put on a great show! And they just announced that they signed a deal with DirecTV, which means the show is going national! So every single person that's been on there and will be on there could be seen by up to 50 million viewers! Not a bad deal, congrats to the cast and crew! You guys deserve it.

Vagtastic Weekend in Angelfire, NM

This past weekend I was in Angelfire, New Mexico, a nice little ski town in Northern New Mexico. Russ Rivas asked me if I would open for him for a few shows at the resort up there for the weekend. I had performed in Angelfire twice before, actually in Black Lake, at the Ritchie-Slater Winery. My good friend, Marc Shuter grew up there and set up some shows there. I'll get back to him in a minute.

So we had three shows, two of which were pg and one extreme show that Russ likes to do. I like it, too, I get to be a little dirtier than usual! The pg shows were held at the Legends Grill at the resort, we had standing room only crowds, admission was free. Everyone that worked at the resort was super nice, we got treated like rock stars up there! The crowd, however, did not treat us like rock stars, they treated us like fat Axl Rose. There was a lot of talking and way too much noise in the room. Not the best set up for a comedy show. Friday night show, Erica Viking from Coyote 102.5 brought me up on stage. She forgot my name, but in her defense, I think she had a few drinks and had no idea she was going to be starting the show. She did invite me to come on the morning show with her and Big Benny sometime though, very cool!

Friday after the show we were hanging with some of the people that were at the show. Including this crazy drunk girl, who apparently worked at the hotel. My lady asked her, "we travel the country with Russ and we screen the girls he hangs out with, he pays a yearly salary. The question for the night is, what's the grooming situation downstairs?" And she wasn't shy, "I shave on Tuesday and Wednesday, those are my days off." My lady replies, "that's great, but what's the situation tonight?" I'm sitting there just trying not to laugh, then the girl undoes her pants and pulls them down a little bit, revealing her stubbly vag. I looked around the restaurant, which was still pretty packed, and not one single person was looking! We had a pretty good laugh. We told Erica the story that night, she seemed to enjoy it. My lady was star struck, too, she couldn't believe she met Erica Viking, what a nerd! Haha, jk.

So, on Saturday, we were planning on eating at Willies, a local bbq joint, but on our way in to town on Friday we noticed that Willies wasn't around. I called Shuter to see what the hell happened to Willies! He didn't answer, cuz he's a pretty busy dude. We ate at the Pizza Stop near the resort, the pizza was pretty good. I was impressed. After we ate, I decided I was going to quit drinking soda, or at least cut down to one per week.

After lunch, I called Marc Shuter back on the mobile phone. We chatted for about an hour. He told me that he sold his movie! I'm so fuckin excited for him! I've seen the movie twice and I loved it. Very funny and well written. "The Bigfoot Election," check out the website link, and click here for a youtube clip of the trailer. We talked a little bit about school and stuff and we decided we needed to start writing together soon. We used to meet up all the time and write back in the day when he was still doing stand-up. He's the only other person I've ever been able to write with for some reason.

Saturday night we had two shows, one of the pg variety. The first one was a lot better than Friday night's show, but still had a hard time with the noise and people not paying attention. The extreme show was at 9 pm in a different room that could have easily held 250 people. There were about 70-80 for the show. Big Benny from Coyote got the crowd going with a few minutes of jokes, which was nice, it's always shitty to go up to a cold crowd. Actually, quite a few of the people were at the first show, so I planned an entire different set. It was cool to see Benny again, it had been a few years since I had seen him.

Since it was an extreme show, I decided to start off with some extreme jokes about child rapist, Jerry Sandusky. A lady got up out of her seat and started walking out, apparently she was offended, whoops. I asked her if she realized it was an extreme show, then the crowd started getting on to her about leaving. She then flipped everybody off and yelled, "Fuck you." She was also black, and the only black person at the show, so I all of my racist jokes right then. Had a pretty solid set, felt good about myself. Even got an email from one of the guys in the crowd today, here's some things he told me in the email: "Just letting you know we enjoyed you Saturday night. You were the only saving grace. You, I also youtubed and we found that you were a funny mother fucker still." I chopped it up a bit.

So, overall, it was a great weekend, saw a stubbly vag, Erica Viking, talked to Marc Shuter and offended a black lady on a child rape joke and no racist jokes. And for fun, here's a clip of Shuter on Art's Talk, I found it while getting the link for the movie trailer, enjoy.

It was nice to get away for the weekend, haven't had much free time since starting school. And my boss is a douchey cock smootch who always asks me to come in early just so he can sit on his lazy ass.

Here's a list of upcoming shows
2/2-Albuquerque, NM-Sandia Bowl (Headlining)
2/4-Taos, NM-Casa de los Cordovas (Headlining)
2/25-Albuquerque, NM-The Press Room (Headlining)

10 years of comedy

I've now been doing comedy for 10 years, its been pretty amazing so far. This month, however, has been one of the worst comedy-wise. Had a couple gigs cancel on me. Did a show in Santa Fe, one of the weirdest experiences I've had in comedy, but had fun watching Mike Long. Dude is crazy!

My buddy, Marc Shuter, wrote and starred in a movie "The Bigfoot Election" which has been selected for some big festivals! Its a great movie, lots of great jokes. Marc is a talented sumbitch. It was part of the Albuquerque Film Festival at the Kimo Theatre, they had a great turnout. It was cool to see my buddies on the big screen. Matt Peterson starts in it as well and has a very funny character.

I did a show last night at the bar inside Silva Lanes, it was pretty awesome. I had a lot of fun with the crowd and I saw some people I hadn't seen in years.

Tomorrow I find out if I get selected for the World Series of Comedy in Las Vegas, I'm really hoping I get selected! If not I have to go to my wifes uncles fourth wedding. If it was in Vegas I could've done both.

College football starts in a couple of weeks! Pretty excited about that. I think Iowa will have a decent season this year, hopefully beat up on the shit talking Huskers. And the Brewers are kicking some ass which is awesome, too! They never win, I keep waiting for them to start a big losing streak but they keep winning!