Bird Flu

I've had a few people ask about Elsa after reading my Hollywood blog. She's doing a lot better. In fact she's doing so much better she's giving me lists of things to do around the house. Welcome to married life John. We're having the big family xmas dinner at the ole' Garrison household this year, so we've both been busy getting the house ready (putting the tree and lights up). My neice and nephew are coming over and I don't want them to think their Uncle John is a scrooge, even though I kinda am.

I haven't been as productive in comedy the last few weeks as I'd like. On Tuesday I was at the Funny Bone and my set was alright, not great. The audience didn't seem to like any of the comics. The only guy who got consistent laughs was a guy who had a bit about a woman with a giant p***y that smelled like bologna. Which pissed me off because I was working on such a bit and now I have to start over. Such is comedy. Oh and the audience liked Carolers. There were a bunch of old guys who came in and sang xmas songs and they were a hit. So if you either talked about giant p***ies or sang xmas songs, you were in with this crowd. God I sound bitter.

The best part of the night was the ride up to the Funny Bone. Jammer and I were talking about Tookie Williams who was recently executed. Jammer asked me if I felt someone could be totally rehabilitated. It was a good question and required a lot of thought. I told him I thought someone could but that person would have to be an incredibly strong individual. Jammer stays up on current events, I do not. I just have no interest in them. Not that I don't think they're important, I'm just tired of getting depressed everytime I watch the news. I still bug Elsa about the bird flu. Anytime she tells me I need to do something in the future, I say "Hello bird flu, we're not going to be around. What's the point?" That s**t never works no matter how much I try.

On that note, happy holidays everyone.

Week In Review

On Tuesday I went to the open mic at Westport and was the final comic that peformed. I could tell the crowd was getting tired. Several people started to leave two comics before me, so I decided to keep my set short. My set was alright. I tried a couple of new jokes out, one joke did alright one fell flat. It was good to get the stagetime.

On Wed, I went over to the Comedy Forum to perform in Bill Davis' company xmas party. Bill's a fellow comic from St. Louis. The show was a lot of fun. There were probably atleast 150 people there and they were a really good crowd. Bill mc'd and did about 5 minutes up front. He introduced me and i went up. I felt I had a good solid set throughout and I finished strongly at the end. Mike Stranze came up after me and did very well. Mike is one of my favorite comics here in St. Louis. He's got a very different style, almost Andy Kauffman like. Bill got back up and did about 30 and then Arvin Mitchell closed the show. Arvin rocked the place. He got a standing ovation at the end. It was the first time I'd seen him peform more than 10 minutes straight and man I was impressed. It's only a matter of time before he hits it big. Thanks to Bill for inviting me to peform, I had a great time.

Back in St. Louis

Alright this is going to be a long ass blog entry, and yes I used the phrase "long ass" because I'm a comedian and I can't think of anything original and witty to say. I'm a hack even when I blog.

About my trip to LA. Elsa and I were staying in downtown Hollywood. Let me preface what I'm about to write by saying this, I've never been to Hollywood before. The first time I ever had any idea what Hollywood was, I was 10 years old and I saw the movie "Vice Squad" on cable. Now for those who haven't seen this gem, the whole movie is about hookers, pimps and drug addicts. Throw in Wings Hauser as a hooker-killing psycho and a cameo by Fred "Rerun" Berry and goddamn if you don't have an all time classic. Still after seeing this when I was 10, I had reservations about going to Hollywood. I just imagined I'd wind up doing tricks on Hollywood Boulevard just to get directions to my hotel. Suffice to say I was pretty nervous.

Well Hollywood was great, atleast where Elsa and I were staying. We got in late Wed night. On Thursday I met with Barb North. She and her husband Steve run a management company called Brook Forest Entertainment. They represent several major comics such as James P.Connolly and Rob Little. Barb was very nice. She looked over my tape and portfolio and gave me some nice compliments and suggestions on how to become a better comic. She said that with my sensibility and jokes, I scream "writer", which I took as a very nice compliment because my major goal is to eventually write for a talk show or variety show. Before I left, she told me to stay in touch and let her know how my career is progressing. I defintely learned a lot from her and came out of our meeting a better comic.

After my meeting with Barb, Elsa and I went and did the dorky tourist thing. We went to the Hollywood Wax Museum, saw Mann's Chinese Theater and walked the Walk of Fame. For lunch we went to "In and Out Burger". If you're ever in LA, go there. Best burger experience I've had in a long time. Can't rave about it enough. Thursday night, we met up with some of Elsa's co-workers and drank at the Lucky Strike in Hollywood. We had a blast.

Friday wasn't so much fun. Elsa was sick all morning and finally we had to rush her to the hospital. She was getting numbness and tingliness all over and she couldn't feel most of her body. Very scary shit indeed. We ended up taking a cab to Kaiser Permanente hospital and they took very good care of her. She had food poisioning and was incredibly dehydrated. They ended up shooting her up with two big bags of IV and that did the trick. Everything worked out but I got to admit when she started getting numb and couldn't feel her arms and legs I freaked. I learned one thing that day, I cannot handle a crisis. If I'm going to stay married, I got to do a better job of staying calm in stressful situations. The funniest thing that happened that day was, here's Elsa lying on a hospital bed, a huge IV pumping into her and she's out of it. Out in the hallway we hear two nurses yelling at each other in Spanish. I mean they were going at it. Elsa turns to me and in complete seriousness says "We should learn Spanish". I almost lost it. Yeah lets' learn Spanish so we can hear what cuss words these two women are saying. That'll be fun.

After 5 hours in the hospital, Elsa was finally discharged. She took it easy the rest of the day and we ended up going to the xmas party that night. I didn't drink because she couldn't. It was alright but would've been better if we weren't sober. So we left early.

Saturday night on the flight back, we hit a bunch of turbelence. I'm not crazy about turbelence. The pilot called it "small turbelence", but my feeling is every major plane crash probably started with "small turbelence". So forgive me if I wasn't too crazy about the plane shaking. Once again it goes back to the whole handling a crisis thing. Luckily we survived and made it back to safe and f***ing freezing St. Louis. Atleast if the plane had crashed, I might have been able to warm up in the burning fire afterwards.

When I got home I checked my email and got a message regarding my two weeks at the Improv for winning the showcase. So in retrospect I'm glad I made it back from Hollywood in one piece.

Still it would've been nice to have gotten Wings Hauser's autograph. He was the shit back in 82.