Working Comic: Post Fest

10441031_10152775703651259_7794176790900264653_nHello friends,  welcome back.  This past week was fun and exciting most of the time, and sad and disappointing at other times.  That’s the way it goes when you are performing in a comedy festival.  It starts out with so many comics hoping to win the big prize and everyone is excited to be involved and then as each one gets eliminated there’s one more bummed out comic sitting around.  It is a great week to meet new friends from different places.  It can also be a great time just going to shows to root on your friends.  Al Park tied for 1st place in the Fest.  Congrats Al!  But I’ll tell you more about the fest as we go through the week.  So let’s do it.

Monday –  I handed off hosting duties at Sally O’briens to Thom Crowley for the night so that I could go watch the BCF because I had some friends performing in Monday nights prelims that I really wanted to see succeed.  I was really pulling for Ted Pettingell as he is probably the person that makes me laugh the most often and hardest.  So I was a little bummed out when he didn’t advance.  I was also super excited to see Kenice Mobley kill it in her prelim.  Although she didn’t advance it was a great set and I’m hoping some more people have taken notice of her since.

Tuesday – I hosted the Stadium open mic in Quincy.  There seemed to be fewer comics than we usually get there, I imagine it’s because of the comedy festival in town.  We had a good time though, and the debate was as fun as ever.

Wednesday – This was the night of my prelim in the Boston Comedy Festival.  If you’d like to read about my thoughts heading into the night you can read about it here.   So since that will cover my thoughts pre show.  I’ll  just tell you what happened during the show.

Thirty minutes before the show all the comics draw a number that determines where they perform on the show.  I draw three.  Not a great spot.  But Sean Sullivan and Harrison Greenbaum draw one and two.  Those two guys kill it all the time so I figure even though I’m going on early at least the crowd will be warmed up.  I did my set and I feel like it went well but I didn’t feel like I knocked it out of the park.  I  guess I didn’t because I did not advance.  Bummer.  I sulk for 3 or 4 minutes.  I’m OK.

Thursday – I spent most of the day hanging out with my new comedy friend Christian Pieper.  Christian is a comic from Salt Lake City and a heck of a nice guy.  We do tourist things in Boston, like feed my girlfriend’s turtles.  I brought him out to have a lobster roll.  He told me about all things Mormon which I thought I knew something about but as it turns out, I knew nothing about Mormonism.  Thursday night we went to the Hideout for the open mic.

Friday – I was showing Christian around the area once again.  We got breakfast

via ingeniusprep.com

via ingeniusprep.com

at a place that was probably very much like every breakfast place anywhere in the U.S.  He asked me to say “park the car in Harvard Yard”.  Later we met up with another comic and walked through Harvard Yard.  Then we went to watch the Semi Final round of the BCF.  I was wicked excited to see my good friend Andrew Mayer make it through to the finals, he’s one of my favorite comedians anywhere.

Saturday – Had a poker game with some of the participants of the BCF.  Lost my money on a semi bluff where I had an open ended straight draw over two cards on the board.  I had 8-7 the flop came 5-6-Q  my opponent had the Q and made a good call as I didn’t catch the straight or the back door flush draw.

Saturday night I went to Cape Cod.  The show was at 9 pm but I got there early so I could record for Steven Gould’s podcast.  The podcast was fun.  I’m not sure when it will be on the internet but it was a good time.  And the show at Land Ho was even better.  Steven Gould did an amazing job of putting it all together, the crowd was great, the show was solid.  Steve hosted it and got everyone on board right away and had a great set.  Then Kristin Seltman did a spot and she’s super funny.  After that I did my thing.  And do close it all out they had Myq Kaplan and he is just a beast.

Sunday – I watched football all day.  At some point I drove Christian to the airport.  “Later dude, good luck in Cleveland” is what I said to him as he’s flying to the Cleveland Comedy Festival next.  Then I watched more football.

Ok… as is tradition at this point I’ll give you three jokes that I could possible make into a stand up shot for easy consumption on the internet.  Please let me know which one you like best.  Either in the comments below or on my Facebook wall or on twitter at @shawncarters.

1.  When I worked on cars sometimes we’d get cars in that had a breathalyzer attached.  It prevents drunk driving.  Great!   The problem was, none of us in the shop could get it started.

2.  My girlfriend has curly hair and so she has about 27 different shampoos and conditioners.  Now there’s more bottles in my shower than there was when I was married and I would drink in the shower.

3.  I got a gig telling jokes where a couple of scientists were doing an experiment to see if laughter and comedy could help people that were suffering from depression.  I was really excited about it …  until I found out I was supposed to be the placebo.



Shawn is the owner and creator of UnSceneComedy.com


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