Come on Down....come down

I am on vacation in Miami Beach Fla. I needed a change of scenery. I'm at a Trump Sonesta. The weather is horrible. Its 68 and windy. You cant sit on the beach with out getting a free dermabrasion treatment. The wind it so strong. Pool side its worse...there are lounge chairs flying into the pool. I cant complain. I could have been scuba diving in Sri Lanka and boom its all over. Off the big vacation in the sky. My children are fighting my husband and I aren't talking and its costing us a fortune. I was so bored I went on Chuckle Monkey to look for an open mic.Then I calmed down. This hotel is crazy too. It is moderately expensive however with Orbitz and Priceline an entire different class of people are here who ordinarily would be priced out...including me. Thrifty folks.... they give out free apples at the front desk. Everyone looks like a pig at a BBQ with an apple in their mouths. At breakfast in the lobby they have a coffee bar with cereal and fruit and bagels etc. A dad is cutting a free apple on a plate.." Daddy I want a bagel. Mommy says you have to have the fruit. Can I have a banana? No Mommy says you have to eat an apple." Crap live a little your on vacation..a banana is a dollar. People are walking in with grocery bags from the local supermarket.They dont want to spend 3 dollars for a coke... I get it. However.. If I have to go grocery shopping when I'm on vacation in a hotel that cost more that $300 night..without discounts. I'm going home. I spent the day at Linens and things and Borders. I ate lunch at Chilies because it was the only place 4 difficult people could agree on. It's like I never left home and they took away all the good stuff. Like my own bed....with out the kids in the room. My vacation begins the day school starts again...Heres looking to the New Year.

It beginning to look a lot like Christmas

As the clock gets closer to C day.... Chia pet ads and Clap on Clap off the Clapper ads start to flood the airwaves for thoughtful last minute....oh shit I forgot... gifts you get at Wallgreens and Dwane Reede. You can always tell when it is almost Christmas with out looking at a Calendar. QVC starts to dump it clearance winter clothing and storage containers. Since it is too late to get anything to you in time for Christmas. You can see that its almost Christmas by the moms at the mall screaming at their kids that if they don't shut the hell up I'm telling Santa not to give you a god dam thing. Yes joy is in the air. I got the finger today for taking too long to get out of a parking space. On a happy note for this week only LA weight loss has lowered its prices for the many people looking to start their diets before the New Year. Oh and let me be edgy and say Merry Christmas to you all....even the Moslems, Hindus and Jews. I have been wished a Merry Christmas for all my entire Jewish life and I lived to tell the tale unscathed. Oh and while I'm at it Happy New You.... as all the fitness and diet ads will be telling us as of Jan 1, to motivate us all to undo all the holiday damage. I can hardly wait to hear that and to buy gift wrapping paper at half off...

Comments are below
dont forget old navy
Posted on 12/23/2004 at 12:51 PM by

With those annoying ass commercials showing last minute gifts at $10.00 and under. god i hate those commercials



Happy Happy!
Posted on 12/24/2004 at 11:13 PM by Adam Sank

Here's wishing you a very happy (belated) Hanukkah, Robin. And the best of everything in 2005! Mwah!

Riding a rollercoaster.

I have been saying how hard it is to get good at anything 5 minutes at a time...no less comedy. Well maybe I was wrong. I see that the many months of dragging myself to countless open mic's is paying off. I don't feel the burning need to do 6 or more a week...been there done that. Yet the discipline of writing and trying to have at least one new joke a week at open mic has really paid off . After my performance at The Stress Factory Contest... I was feeling down. I really wanted a chance to do a weekend set at my home club. I have something to prove to myself... Time will tell .I want to thank my fellow comics who emailed me because they knew how upset I was going to get about how things went at the contest. I decided to put it all behind me. The following weekend went fantastic and got to do 3 amazing shows. I performed at Gotham and had was very happy. I thought I got a good tape but I came home and it was 7 minutes of static. I spoke to the club and they said they were having problems with the equipment. I walked 44 blocks after the show to drop off a tape at a club. The person who I was to drop it off was away on vacation. I noticed a bunch of comics on the bill I knew but had to run downtown for a set. I almost got to meet Adam Sank....he was playing on the bill. (this was 2 weeks ago) After that I ran down to the Village and had a great time at Sal's and had a really solid set and got paid to boot. That Saturday night I hosted the Callallo Cafe in Morristown. I had done a show there last June and had a great opening set however when I came back to MC between the feature and the headliner I blanked out and a few jokes went flat. I also was afraid to do crowd work. Fast forward to now and .... time and experience must have paid off. I came prepared to do crowd work, I went to the show with several topics to ask the audience about and a few come back lines I might use. When I got to the show the club manager said the headline was running late and asked if I could I stretch it out a bit. Go Long A DREAM COME TRUE!!!! Well like it or not...I did crowd work. I asked about the holidays and about how people decorated. I had a few people there celebrating...different events. I prayed for the years of improv to paid off. I got an applause break during the crowd work. Then I did 20 minutes and brought on the feature. The headliner arrived and I did 5 more minutes of crowd work and 15 minutes and brought up the headliner. It was my best show ever and I have been on a high ever since. It was the most amazing thing to have that much stage time and to do well. I had a fantastic time. Fortunately I audio taped it. This field is filled with such lows at times it is great to have a night that you feel it all came together. I was fortunate the club was mostly married couples and several groups of middle aged women out for a night with the girls. The comedy stars were all in alignment. I say this all the time....You have to be prepared so that if luck shows up you can make the most of it. I sometimes get bitter about the open mics that I have to drag myself out to do. I often forget that even though I do 5 minutes at these...If I have the right attitude and use it for what it is...I could grow into something more than just an open micer. I need to focus on the positive more often. Its better than sitting home dreaming. I did that for 20 years and can never get that time back. If you see me down and out...remind me that its not all fun but there is no place else Id rather be.

Giving and Getting

I went holiday shopping the other day at Target. I love the option of buying toys,lawn furniture and Tide all at the same time. I went to the Barbie aisle wanting to see what the old broad was up to. Barbie is always into new things...She is up for any adventure. Heck she should be on Valtrex she's so friggen adventurous. I saw Nothing new...no new campers no great job... Barbie for has had her pulse on the hopes and wishes of little girls for decades. Just last year I bought a wheel chair Barbie. (she could have used one of those back in the 60's before her knees bent.) It was kinda routine. Barbie dentist, Barbie surfer, Barbie on roller blades,Barbie Princess and Barbie Bride. Kinda the same old thing. I also noticed Barbie usually got one side of an asile all to herself and today it was almost half of its normal size. I turned my head and saw the New girl on the block.. and she was working it baby.....She NOW had an entire side of the aisle all to herself... Its the Bratz dolls. These dolls look like little Ho's They look like Britneys' and Christianas', ....sluttly cousins. Bratz have heads 2 x the size of their body. Full make-up,and lips bigger than Angelina Jolie. They are scarier than finding your 9 year olds first thong in the wash basket. I'm sure if you take her clothes off she has implants,a thong and a Brazilian...I hope batteries are included for her vibrator. She is outselling Barbie 2 to 1 I was told by a sales clerk.

I walked over to the electronics department to buy my son a game for his game cube. $79 dollars?? Is that for real. Its not that I'm cheap....its that I cant wrap my brain around a toy for $79 bucks. So I rationalize. If I buy him a board game it means a play date...so he can play it. Which means because all his friends moms work...I will have to pick up the kid. I will probably have to make the kid lunch. Then I will have to tell my son after I drive the kid home 3 x to put the game away. Then after stepping on a piece of the game in bare feet and jumping in pain I will give up and I will clean up the mess myself. My son will play the game 4 more times and it will eventually wind up in a garage sale where I will sell it for 50 cents. If I get him the $79 game...He can play it himself, no pieces to clean up...no play date no garage sale....Worse case...It will wind up on ebay?? I decide to tell his grandmother that I found out just what he wants.....and that I will pick it up for her. She is thrilled and thanks me for being so thoughtful. Done.

I walk over to small appliances. I want to buy my sons math tutor a gift. We are also friends who have known each other for over 10 yrs and I love her. I found a great new product a few months ago....Its the Home Cafe Coffee system and it makes a fantastic single cup of coffee in 45 seconds. Best of all there is no clean up. You use pods and when your done toss them. I love it. I used to buy coffee out at Dunkin Donuts on the way home just to avoid the mess of making a pot. The only thing better than finding a great new thing is to share it with a friend. I think that's why I worked in advertising. I saw my friend last Monday and gave her the gift and she cried. It wasn't the gift itself that she was crying over,she told me. It was.... that I had gone out and thought of her and wanted to get her something she would love. It was really the best gift giving experience I have had in a long time. I was one of those moments that giving really was better than receiving. I like to give a gift that the person truly wants and wouldn't give to themselves. Best of all I got to see her reaction.

I like to go to the post office and get letters from kids to Santa. I read a bunch of them and sure there were kids looking for i pods. There are also letters asking Santa to bring their mom, a warm winter coat...and new underwear for their bother who is afraid to wear Spiderman underpants with another kids name magic marker-ed on the back to school because the other kids will know they came from good will. I stood in the post office crying. PMS.... Another card was from a girl asking Santa for new clothes that she had gotten fat and nothing fit her. Before I mailed my gift of some cute clothes in her correct size. I wrote a note as Misses Clause and told the girl to love herself and that I understood, we Claus's all have to struggle with our weight. My gift I wish I could have given her was self esteem.

I never have been good at receiving gifts.. I often don't like what I get and if I do I feel awkward . I remember getting a gift when I was 9. It was a Barrel of Monkeys game. I hated it. It was cheap and I hated the ads on TV. I hated that it was just a bunch of plastic "S-e's" with monkey faces on them. I cried and cried so much so that my parents wouldn't let me have anymore presents till the last night of Chanukah. I am an ingrate.

The best gifts I have received have involved doing something with someone. When I was 10 I went to a special lunch with my mother. Mom took me out of school... a gift in itself and we went to lunch at Lord and Taylor's, The Bird Cage resturant. They had watercress finger sandwiches and all the ladies wore hats and gloves. I still remember everything 3 decades later. I hated the food, but on that day I knew in my gut that I wouldn't grow up to be a hat and glove kinda gal. The fact that I got some special time with my mom is what made the gift so special and memorable. To this day the first really nice hot day in spring I pull my kids out of school and take them to the beach. I might take my son out of school early next week and take him to see A Series of Unfortunate Events movie.I think he would like that. Best of all it wont wind up on ebay.

To all of you ... I wish you all wonderful holiday and much health and success in the New Year.

Indigestion from Eating it

Well,last night I ate a big bowl of crap. It was the last round before the finals of the contest for stage time at the Stress Factory. Two weeks ago we had 160 people in the audience. Last night 10-15 people outside of 25 comics. My opponent is a great comic and I knew I had my work cut out for me. He is a seasoned performer and half my age. He went first, my choice. He did a brand new set. All the comics laughed... hell I laughed!! I started to panic. I had planned on a bigger crowd and was going to do my standard set. I decided to do a new joke I had been shopping around at open mic's and thought It would get me off to a great start. Well its a semi made up story...however these 25 comics know me and I think I shocked them more than I made them laugh.

Its a joke about having an affair with a college prof. When I was 18...which in reality never happened. It might have if not for the fact he was MARRIED. So the comics in the audience just looked back at me. I plowed on. I started doing a bit of this and that and they have all heard it before for the past 18 months. Also the real audience who were laughing were sitting in the margins of the room on each far side. So it was like playing ping pong trying to connect.

Every joke I did felt like I was doing it to a mirror. All a could hear was my own inner voice saying..."turn it around ...do this...nah...don't panic. You can fix this. Its not getting better. Its a lost cause." I had won all of the other rounds I had done. I got off stage not disappointed in the fact that I might very well have lost but that I am not omnipotent...I am going to do poorly sometime. I don't know what the answer is. I don't know if I would have been better off doing my standard set. I am glad I had the courage to try something new. I felt I had nothing to loose. I felt that my opponent did new material for an room full of comics who needed to hear something new to laugh at. I went up to my opponent and told him what a great set he had. He told me he thought I might have won. I said he was nuts ...he said that my last joke ended stronger than his. I had a bunch of friends there who are comics and they may have or may not have voted for me.... Who knows. I do!

To be frank... I'm flustered. I'm embarrassed...I blew it in front of my peers. I have 3 shows this weekend 2 of which I will be getting paid for. The other is a guest spot. I am worried. What if ....and then it get ugly. I guess this is part of the process of becoming a comic.

I got a wonderful email from a dear friend who was at the show last night. .. the kind words of another comic really helped. I just need to let it go and really focus on doing a great job this weekend. I'm hosting a show at the Callahoo Cafe here in NJ. Its a fantastic room and usually its a full house. I need to do well. I did it 6 months ago and had a great opening set...and so so in the middle of the 2 acts. I think I will do more crowd work this time. Talking about the holidays would be good. Why is it that all the good stuff has to show up when you feel off your game?

Comments are below
I have never seen you before
Posted on 12/02/2004 at 03:27 PM by Mark Anundson

but feel like I know you a bit from reading your blogs. I bet you have success this weekend with your shows. I bomb more often then I would like to admit but for some reason my next set after a bombing kills. It isn't something I plan on it just seems to go that way.

When too much is too much

I cut back on my obsessive open mic going for a few weeks. I didn't see the point of it. I had a set that worked and other than to keep fresh how many times a week is necessary anyway? Add in a good 3 month dose of writers block and what's the point. I found myself looking for alternative spaces to do comedy. I will be hosting a booked show starting this Feb. once a month with 10 comics a night. It is impossible to get good at anything in this world 5 minutes at a time. I make my kids practice there music for 30. Plus they just go right upstairs...no need to drive for 2 hours and wait for 2 hours to do 5 minutes. I have my favorite open mic's. I like the Stress factory for there audience and to see my friends. I like the Lantern for the quality (usually of the comics...some nights are better than others) and Sal's it great for the above reasons and then there is Sal of course.

So I cut down to 2 performances a week for the past 3 weeks. Guess what happened???? My writers block lifted. I don't know why. Maybe because ...I thought I was done for the day when I knew I had a mic that night. I found myself...performing in my everyday life again. Cracking up the produce guy at the supermarket. Being hysterical at motor vehicle. The curse is over. ...at least for now. I have been coming up with new stuff for several days in a row now. Some not all usable for a set.

SO this all said I want to hear about your writers block and if it correlated to doing too much and burning yourself out. How have you gotten your writers block lifted I want to know? Also what are your favorite open mic's and why?

My favorite open mic's are based on a few criterion. I do like one that is fair. I like the mc to do no more than a few minutes in between sets. I don't mind if he does 5-7 at the start the room usually needs it. I hate when the mc does a complete set between each performer. Rule of thumb ...I don't want to be there for more that 2 hours do the math. No more than 20 comics. Lastly give me a real audience and it seems I will forget about a lot of the above. I am booked for 5 real non bringer shows in the next few months and find that using the open mic's to hone a set with a goal in site makes it seem much more productive and meaningful for me.