Spring Update

Egads! It's been just over two months since I've posted here at the Taunt Vortex. As I mentioned a couple of months ago, posting here daily was getting to be more of a chore than a pleasure. Hey, it wasn't you - it was me, I swear. But I also wanted to pursue other things outside of blogging.

"And just what are those things?" you ask, because your insatiable curiosity hasn't waned in my absence, and despite excessive substance abuse.

Stand up.

No, that's not a command. That's what I've been doing with my free time. See, about a decade ago I took an improv class here in Austin. And I've always wanted to try stand up comedy.

After watching Comedy Central for years and thinking "I can write material better than half these comics. Okay, well maybe 27 to 31% of them" I finally decided to do it. So in February I started writing material specifically for stand up. On March 28th I did my first open mic night. I got a few laughs,didn't soil myself, and thought I did as well if not better than some of the other open mic'ers, and so I decided to keep writing and doing 1 or 2 open mics a week. Depending on the venue, I get 3 to 4 minutes.

Then...I entered the FPIA. No, that's not a super-secret Government agency devoted to the protection of wombat breeding grounds. It's the Funniest Person in Austin contest, held every year at the Cap City Comedy Club here in....yeah, Austin. They had over 100 people enter this year, and divided the preliminaries into 7 rounds, with 16 comics in each round. Judges then selected four from each group to advance to the semifinals.

No, I didn't advance. I had only been doing stand up for a month before my round came up on April 28th. And competing against a lot semi-professional comics, it wouldn't have been realistic to expect to advance. Obviously, making rationalizations takes a bit of the edge of the suckiness off.

That being said, I killed. I got good laughs, and even won "Joke of the Night". Yeah, that's right. Not just an awesome title, but fifty bucks! You're envious, I can tell. I'll leave it to you to watch the video and guess which joke won.

So, I'm having fun doing this - both the writing and the performing. And one more thing - comics are really nice people. At least the ones here in Austin. They rock. They've been friendlier and more supportive than I would have imagined.

Oh, and one last thing. As I alluded to earlier, my 6 1/2 minutes of glory was taped. The technical aspects of the video leave something to be desired, but it's not like I can fire my wife, right? Besides, she worked for free - sort of. I had to split the fifty bucks with her.

So I sincerely hope you enjoy this. Pass it on, even if you don't. Thanks.

Comments, critiques, and constructive criticism welcome. My intro is sort of cut off, but I start my set talking about our efforts to sell our house. Sound familiar?









As always, visit humor-blogs.com. And you can sit down now.