A Slight Comedy Detour
This is Finish Your Monsters, a weekly blog/newsletter/blogletter about the creative process. I'm sharing adventures in art and life as well as setting CLIFFHANGER goals for myself, so--
DID I MAKE MY GOAL?
Last week, I committed to memorizing my stand-up sets for my big birthday show this Friday, Aug 16th.
And I’m on a great run of only HALF-completing my goals. I was in the San Francisco Bay Area for a beautiful wedding this weekend and I managed to get up very early one of the days and spend some time in the hotel room, pacing and quietly murmuring to myself as Sara was still sleeping.
But I do not have the sets fully memorized. When I was doing comedy shows more often, I would leave memorizing my own sets until the day of the show. I’m aiming to avoid that stress for this one. So I’ve got to buckle down and get those words in my brain over the next couple of days.
Part of the challenge is the constant tension in SHOW BUSINESS between the SHOW and the BUSINESS. Today I was going to work on memorizing first thing in the morning. But then I got distracted by doing another round of promotion for the show. (Tickets are available for in-person and livestream here!)
See? It happened again. I’m trying to write about the actual creative work and the promo bursts through the wall like Kool-Aid Man in a business suit.
Kool-Aid Man is like, “There will be stand-up comedy about Vikings, Martinis, and Graveyards! The premiere of a short film! Amazing guests! Plus, if you buy a livestream ticket, you’ll be able to watch the show for a whole week! And if you buy in-person tickets, you’ll be able to see the creepy paintings of children and sailors on the wall of the Lyric-Hyperion, a fantastic venue that—”
Okay, okay, enough, Kool-Aid man, I have a blog to write.
ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK--
I had two main adventures this week. One was emotional and one was physical, but they dovetailed nicely. Thanks, adventures!
I had a great time at this lovely wedding up among the peaceful redwoods. The bride is one of my wife’s friends from high school. There’s a tight-knit group of 5 friends (including Sara) and the weddings of this group have been little signposts of life. The first wedding in the group was VERY EARLY in myself and Sara’s dating. Another a little closer to when we got engaged. Then our own wedding. Then a wedding right before we decided to move to Los Angeles. And now this one, right before a milestone birthday for me.
There are great shared memories from all these adventures in matrimony, many children, many struggles and victories, and for me a bittersweet realization that this is the last of THE GREAT HIGH SCHOOL FRIENDS weddings!
It was a very fun weekend, but one that made me very reflective. The old friends and their spouses (who are also old friends at this point) all kindly asked me about the feature film I’m working on and about my upcoming birthday show. There was a lot of fun talk about comedy and comedians and performing.
It made me very aware of the concrete choice I’ve made to not perform as often. I love performing and I love comedy. They are both a huge part of my identity. But after trying to have about TWELVE different careers for the last GRUMBLE, GRUMBLE years, I realized I had to focus more to accomplish my goals.
The truth is I’m choosing to focus on film. It’s not a rejection of performing and comedy, it’s just a reality that sometimes you can only travel down one road at a time.
As I had all these symbolic thoughts of choosing a road running through my head, we also had to literally choose which road to take home. It was Sunday afternoon, we were tired and emotional and had a lot of deadlines to get back to. We could take one freeway—which was faster but duller and one we’ve seen many times. Or the longer and more interesting one.
We decided to extend the fun of the weekend and wind around the scenic route. I’ve been wanting to stop at an A&W for several years. I have fond childhood memories of the root beer floats and haven’t had one in decades. At one point this weekend when I was thinking about A&W I just shouted out to Sara, “They used to have a bear!” Then had to explain what the hell I was talking about.
So on the way home, Sara searched and found an A&W that still had a bear. Their name is Rooty and they are from Canada. I am a fan.
Besides a bear and fast food cheese curds, we also enjoyed zipping through small twisty roads, seeing beautiful vistas of misty ocean, stopping at a hill overlooking rolling yellow hills filled with eerie silence, then finally getting back into Los Angeles late enough to avoid really gnarled end-of-trip traffic.
Roads taken or not taken, are, at this point, brutally blunt metaphors. But after a bittersweet weekend of musing on metaphorical road choices, it was very reassuring to make a good choice about what literal road to take home.
Plus, I saw a lot of great things to add to future comedy sets. And bears. So many bears. I will not choose between the bears.
MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
By next Tuesday, the birthday show will be over and so will my actual birthday. I’ll be pushing forward hard on the feature film and I’ll be trying to finish up the short travelogue horror film about my trip to Norway. So for this week I’m committing to being at least halfway done editing the travelogue short. It’s a really solid goal because the film is due on Wednesday. Fun!
YOUR GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
I would absolutely LOVE to hear what you're working on this week in the comments below. What's your goal? Do you need to meet a new bear statue? How can I help you finish your monsters?
LIGHT PLUGS—
AWOOGA! NOW AVAILABLE FOR LIVESTREAM!
This comedy/variety show celebrating a big birthday is also going to be LIVESTREAMED! It’s called HORROR YEARS OLD and tickets are live here! Friday, August 16th at Lyric-Hyperion or viewable anywhere with an internet connection. I would love a packed house (and friends watching from afar) so if you’re interested, grab the tickets now!
I also wanted to share about Vote Forward—it’s a program where you sign up to write letters to voters. There’s a typed form and you add a personal message about WHY voting matters to you, nothing partisan. The org has done follow up studies and it really works to increase voter turnout. My goal this year is to write 200 letters. I’ve written 40 so far. If you’re interested, you can find out more by visiting Vote Forward!
Our short horror film, THE NIGHTMARE ADORABLE, has now been accepted in 19 film festivals. Screenings coming up in the Houston, Missoula, and more! Details on my website!
A LITTLE SKETCH--
This week’s sketch is a cartoon bear doing stand-up. What is the bear saying? Why is his arm moving like that? Why are his pants so high? Important questions only our imaginations can answer. I hope everyone’s goals go well this week, thanks for reading and maybe I’ll see you at the show!
I'm still reeling from finally finishing the draft of the third book in my sci-fi/romance trilogy. The whole thing is now narratively complete. I took a couple of days off and then went right back to running book two past my writers group from where I left it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself when these things are finished up and published.
That's great progress! For myself, once I clear a few big projects in the next few weeks, my creative goal is going to be to rest a little bit!