If At First You Don't Succeed......

The past couple of days have been pretty good in some ways, and pretty bad in others.

The Good
On Saturday night I performed with the 7:00pm group at L.A.Connection Comedy Theater. We started out performing for 1 person in the audience, and she was there to tape the show for someone in the show. But by the middle of the show we were performing to 4 people so we quadrupled our attendance in a matter of minutes. Still the show went okay and we went out afterwards to a Sushi place. I only had a beer because I had to be back at the theater for the 10:30 show. During the meal, the team asked me if I was going to be a permanent member of the cast. I told them that I didn't know because of what was going on with the 10:30 cast, and that I might join them if asked. Then I performed with the 10:30 cast. The Reverend came and brought 3 other people and the show went very well. I was happy with everything that we did. There were four other people "trying out" for the team during that show and when we were getting notes afterwards all four of us were asked to become permanent members of the group. I really like performing with them, but it is a little disheartening that this theater never seems to draw more than 20 people and most of them are friends of people in the show. Never the less, I was happy to be asked. The other problem is that I have to pay to be a member of this theater and I just don't have the money to keep paying to perform. I will have to make a difficult decision whether or not to continue there.

I got a package from my friend Taiwan on Saturday. He told me a couple of weeks back that he was mailing me my DVD of "Fight Club" and a couple of Oklahoma Sooner football cards. He is a huge fan of Oklahoma and they are pretty cool cards. He also sent me his copies of "Field of Dreams" and "The Thin Red Line" which are both really good movies. Last, but not least, he sent me a little rubber key chain of a member of G-Force, which is a cartoon that we both watched when we were kids. The cartoon was called "Battle of the planets" and it was a Japanese cartoon dubbed into English. I still think you can see it on The Cartoon Network. I just realized I wrote the word cartoon four times in the last few sentences.

I also got a message from my friend and former roommate Elvis in Chicago. She is one of the producers of The Chicago Really Short Film Festival. I will be performing there next weekend with my friend Patel. Elvis also produces short films for Maia Entertainment. It is something that she started doing a couple of years ago and has quite a knack for it. The message was that the film that she produced is finally finished and will debut at the film festival. Last year was the first year that the festival was held and it was a HUGE success. She worked on it really hard, along with other people, and I was very impressed and proud at the job that she did. It was good to hear her voice and I am looking forward to seeing her in a few days. Information for the film festival is at www.maia-entertainment.com

Sunday, I auditioned again for Improv Olympic West. Before the audition, the guy running it told all of us that there were no open team slots right now on the schedule and they were not looking to add a new team, but maybe some people might be put on existing teams or if there were enough good new people, they would form a new team and put them on the schedule when there was an open slot. The first audition went very well. The call back went well again and I made it to the second call back. I didn't feel that I performed very well in the second call back, but I left feeling good about all of the auditions as a whole. Then at 9:30 this evening I got a call from a guy at IO that told me that I was a member of a new team. I don't know if they were just telling us there was no open slot at the audition to make people less nervous, or if we really were that good that they had to make a new team. Whatever the case may be, I was pumped that I made a team and will be performing at IO in the future.


The Bad
I have been working my ass of the last couple of weeks at the catering job. I got my paycheck on Friday and I might as well have been working at McDonald's. It is really disheartening when you work so hard for so little money. I know I am not curing cancer out here, but a little financial cushion is not to much to ask, is it? I have to find something else to make ends meet, but it is going to be hard to find a job quickly that pays well and has the flexibility in the schedule that I am looking for. All in all there is much more good than bad, so I can't complain.

Plus I will be in Chicago performing in a week, and that really is good.