I'm Not Gonna Make It

Despite what 30% of people will tell you... I'm a pretty nice guy.

Eh... that's vague and a little too self back patty. How about this: I'm a lenient person when it comes to mistakes of performers. Eh... no, that doesn't work either; it's too subtle.

Here it is: More times than not, in situation where I could be, I'm not a complete and utter dick. There... that's more accurate. (And it's a comedy blog, so a dick reference must be made in the opening few lines... or what are we really doing here, folks?)

That doesn't sound like it could create a problem, but it does. I'm sometimes politely passive to avoid being seen as someone taking the miniscule amount of power they have too seriously. That would make me no better than every Target assistant manager who carries around a clip board. I can't become that.

I've rarely cut someone's mic when they've went over. I could have. I could have turned the sound off, sent someone up with a hook, and yanked them off stage. Well... not that physical... damn frivolous lawsuits... but in that same vein. Same for when people show up late... I generally let them know not to do that, and we move along with our evenings. 

But... You decided something else came up? Wasn't feeling it that night? Decided not to write any material or talking points and gave me 30 mins heads up even though you knew yesterday you weren't coming? That's become a problem.

The problem is when people do this they have no care, understanding, or awareness on how that effects other people. It's self centered and discourteous.

Here is the series of events of what you did: You asked for a spot. You were listed as a performer and tagged on Facebook. You were sent a confirmation email roughly a week before to remind and confirm you. Then... I get an e-mail 30 minutes before start time saying, "I forgot I was on." Or no heads up at all and then contacted me a day or two later asking to be put on the next one.


Without adequate warning, we have no time to contact the people who wanted to go on stage due to the list being full. These are people who could have brought a few friends (which helps the bar/venue), plus... some of them are semi regulars with a good track record who were held off... for you. In return for us being accommodating and trying to be welcoming... we get a big ol' kick in the pants. (Sorry for the language)

So now... due to my usual laid back approach being taken advantage of too often, it's prison rules! Not... not a sexual acts for drugs trade off. We aren't going to force someone to give us... listen, never mind. I just mean we are going to make an example out of someone. That's all.

The next person who does this will never go on one of my stages again. We will proverbially have a picture of you with a "Do Not Service This Person" warning near our non-existent register. Your mentality is the same as someone who passes bad checks knowing damn well they can't be cashed... so, that is how we are going to treat you.

And I really don't want to do that... because I don't like being a dick...but unfortunately the percentage of people who don't like me is about to be raised to 31.

Soma Showcase Calendar of Events:

Wed May 6th: The second Showcase at Soma Ultralounge will be featuring students from the University of Illinois. A few are a bit newer to stand up, and a few have been with C-U Comedy for over a year now. Before they take their final they are hitting the stage along with C-U Comedy's Esteban Gast.

                                                                                     Wed May 13th, for her first time with us in Champaign, we welcome from Chicago, our feature act of the week: Reena Calm. Reena is part of one of Chicago's most popular comedy shows, Hoo-Ha Comedy, is a regular at the Laugh Factory Comedy Club, has been on WGN Radio, and performed at the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival. Catch her one night only in C-U! Also: Shara Keen, Sandy Ott, Alec Jones, Rich Wentz, Chris Hightower.

Wed May 20th is the the return of the popular game: COMEDY COURT. A C-U regulars joke will be defended and prosecuted to find out whether or not is guilty of hackery! Also featuring sets from Rich Castle, Maggi Mayfield, Andrew Hicks, Steve Schaberg, Mikel Matthews, Kris Gardner, and from STL: Kathy Zeman

Drift Roberts

Wed May 27th: The Hardly Legal Comedy Tour. From Peoria, IL Drift Roberts, Jeff Bailey, and Courtney Rose Bennett. Their tour has taken them through Northern, IL and through Wisconsin and are now coming through Champaign! Drift Roberts has recently opened in theaters for Bo Burnham, including a huge show at U of I's Follinger Auditorium. Jeff Bailey is a regular at The Jukebox Comedy Club in Peoria and won the 2013 Midwest Comedy Competition beating out over 70 other entry's. 

Wednesday June 10th - The "Almost Friends Comedy Tour". On their way from Boise, ID to the Limestone Comedy Festival in Indiana, then on to the Comedy Clubs in New York, they are stopping in Champaign for one night only ! Emma Arnold, Ryan Noack, and Chad Heft are all prominent in clubs and colleges in their home state and have worked with dozens of national headliners. This is a cool thing to get them to stop in to our home base, make sure not to miss it! 

Soma Showcase Opening Night

Entrance to Soma

The first 8pm show for the NEW Weekly Stand Up Comedy Showcase was held at Soma on Wednesday April 29th. After 5 1/2 years at Memphis on Main the biggest stand up comedy show in town moved to a new venue. It's a great place in downtown Champaign that we hope to make better than any of our previous shows before. 

Front bar at Soma

There is a terrific front lounge area for people to hang out at before and after the show. Soma has a rep for being a place that is expensive or snooty. $2 Mixed Wells on Wed Night, folks. It's clean, it's big, and the best part for us is it has a private show room in the back. Not to mention a secondary bar so you never have to go too far from the show!

All full for Opening Night!

 It was a packed night. Standing room only all the way back through the covey of the second bar area. There were a few small issues we will fix going forward. The picture to the right was taken from the balcony which is used as a green room for all the performers. 





After every show DJ Mike Ingram starts spinning in the lounge area. 90's and more every Wed at 9:30 directly following the show. It's a very diverse crowd that comes out to stand up comedy shows, you really get to meet a lot of new interested people hanging out post show.





We really look forward to having so many different performers in. Already have people from Chicago, St Louis, Peoria, Boise, and more coming up soon! Here are some of the performers from week #1:

Chris Hightower

Host: Jesse Tuttle (me)

Esteban Gast

Andrew Hicks

Katie Prosise

Justin Tuttle

Steve Schaberg

Mikel Matthews

The Blame Game

Last night I messed up a bit on stage that I have never struggled with before. It's a very focused memorization type thing, one I am very proud of and and have
worked hard on. It has a good track record of a strong response when I am closing. The trouble is, one slip up basically ruins all of it due to the fashion in which it needs to be said. There was a highly inebriated (drunk... just... seven ways from Sunday drunk) woman in the front row who immediately starting yelling "HEY! - HEY YOU!" over and over in an attempt to mess me up. That's right, for the first time in comedy someone was giving me the ol' "Hey batter batter, we ain't got no batter, SWING batter!" routine. Well, she cemented her spot in the bullpen, because... curve ball caught the batter looking.

It threw me off, and I had to stop half way through due to losing my place and scold her. (She was later kicked out). I understand she was a troll of a human being, and it was extremely hard to perform something like that with a humanoid chihuahua barking in my ear... but in reality... as a performer, I should have been able to focus passed that and then called her out after it was done. In that moment... even if it was a excruciating situation, I failed as a performer.

I blamed her, but for the wrong reasons. It irks me about the amount of blame performers put on the audience when things don't go so well on a general basis. The above story is an extreme circumstance, but I'm talking about when a crowd just isn't that into a set... and afterwards... the blame game begins.

A set that garners little reaction is not always your fault alone. Sometimes it IS the crowd fault and you are just in a no win situation. Other times it's like you were set up on a blind date with the audience. Both of you are fine; you two just aren't right for each other. But, if every date you go on seems to be filled with drama and a slew of reasons it didn't work out... then you have lost touch on the common denominator. Hitting a brick wall of blank faces is good for you now and then. But some people can't help but bring up reasoning's that never equate to themselves. 

"The crowd didn't like me because I'm *fill in the blank*" - Stop it. There are some audience members who may not want to laugh at you because you have a different cultural background, a different societal view point, the way you dress, your gender, have toilet paper hanging out your pant leg... and the few people who decide to cross their arms at you for that are judgmental wankers. But... why weren't the other 95 percent of the crowd laughing?

If there is a majority black/gay/asian/conservative/ect. audience, and they don't laugh at me... it's probably not because of how I look. I mean, I'm sure SOME of them get mixed feelings seeing a bald white guy with tattoos and Vodka energy shouting at them from a pedestal... which given history I understand the knee jerk reaction. Even then... they probably didn't laugh because I didn't connect with them. It's my fault, not theirs. Blaming an audience because you perceive them to have social hang ups based on first glance makes you much more discriminating than they are.

The more egregious method of this buck passing trend is the passive self compliments. "I was too smart for them." "They didn't like me because I'm good looking." No you aren't. Maybe they didn't like you because they just didn't think you were entertaining. Look who gets shows on TV, the comics who are moving up to specials, and the actors who are playing the goofy side character in movies. Most of them are a few steps away from being models. This whole new generation is being groomed to think ONLY good looking people can be funny. So your excuse of being a 7 out of 10 on the ol' looks scale is losing it's relevance.

Also, don't blame having to work clean on your lack of ability. "The audience only wanted dirty stuff!" - No they didn't, they only wanted funny stuff. Most people don't like working clean. It's not as fun. Sometimes saying a certain cuss word just makes things funnier regardless of what Seinfeld says. But if you have to crutch on naughty word verbalization to get chuckles then you are going to be hobbling for a while.

Admitting failure, even when it's easy to blame someone else, shows self awareness. Pointing a finger at yourself is more helpful in the long run then looking in the mirror flashing a thumbs up. There are sometimes when it IS the crowd's fault. But a lot of times the excuses are just showing your insecurity on being able to say, "Hey, I wasn't that good tonight." There is nothing wrong with admitting that.

Not being able to cop up to that makes you a delusional narcissist incapable of understanding that sometimes... a drunk person is going to show up, sit in the front row, and pretend they are at a Little League Game with their "Hey Batter" taunts.

Ya know what... now that I sit here and stew about that... I changed my mind, I did fine. Psh, it was all her fault.

2015 U of I Student Competition

1st Place: Erik Scott

Stand Up Competitions are not real competitions. Three point shoot outs are real competitions. The person who makes the most baskets wins. In a technical sense... a hot dog eating contest is more of a real contest than a stand up competition. That's right.. people stuffing enough water dipped faux pork products into their gullets in numbers that could feed every Kindergartner in Tallahassee is more of a real contest than stand up. It's too subjective. You could show someone a great horror movie... but if they tend to only like drama's or Pixar movies... it doesn't matter how good that scary flick is. In short... Stand Up Competitions are ass backwards, really dumb, and the people who run them should feel like the ding dongs they are. 

2nd Place: Liam Miller

That being said, C-U Comedy proudly hosted his years 2015 U of I Student Competition at Gregory Hall! I've watched a lot of competitions, but I don't think I've ever seen one that had 17 people... all of which did really good! I was impressed. (Impressed... hated all of them for being better than than I could have been at that age... same thing.)

3rd Place: Dan Mirabelli

There were some sound issues, so a lapel mic had to be used. None of them seemed to panic, and the lack of mic actually helped their stage presence. Who knew? The mic is the enemy of first timers and young performers. Holding a stick that makes your voice go up decibel levels all these years was actually a bigger downfall than bad jokes and those pesky swamp ass nerves kickin' in.

Spicy Clamato at Gregory Hall

While the numbers were tallied (we didn't need a calculator or nuttin'... just used our fingers and toes) U of I Improv Group Spicy Clamato closed out the show. They did a great job with a 15 minute set. Then the winners were announced. It's always awkward as a judge watching that part... because the people who didn't win forget that the contest is all in fun... and for a moment... really, really hate you. I did what any grown man around a bunch of angry students would do... I went and hid backstage to avoid their mean looks. I didn't want to give them that satisfaction. (They all did really, really good and the numbers were silly close.)

Judges and Showrunners (Minus Jessica Dockins
who left before the picture... good goin' Jess!)

Judges were: Jesse Tuttle (me), Andrew Hicks, Jessica Dockins, and WCIA News' Joe Barlow. Show runners: Justin Tuttle and Esteban Gast.

Also thanks to The Illini Bookstore and The Dancing Dog Eatery for the gift cards they donated to the winners. Great vegan food at The Dog (that's what the cool kids call it... NOTE: No they don't) Even if you are a carnivore, check out the link and visit them!

Also... thanks to Pizza FM for co-sponsoring the event. Great to work with, and nice people. Hit the link and give them a like! Also to Gregory Hall! Great venue for our made up contest of dick jokes, naughty words in front of parents, and vocal goodie treats that were handed out by the U of I Students.

WCIA News

On 4-20 I was high... high on a chair in the WCIA News studio. (No, please don't quit reading, I promise I will not say anything that cringe worthy again.) I was invited to go on the 5 o'clock news to promote the new Soma Showcase Show starting April 29th. I was in studio the whole time. If the weather man would have reached out passed Wyoming on the Accuweather Forecast green screen he could have poked me in the eye. Before the show, I don't think he knew I was in the studio as he said, "what kind of fake weatherman stuff am I going to say today?" And as a normie I thought, "I KNEW IT!" All those times I didn't think I needed a coat and ended up chilly were based on a web of lies.

With Jennifer Roscoe on WCIA News

The staff there was very nice, Jennifer Roscoe, who has been the long time anchor woman for WCIA was terrific. It is weird going from them doing stories on a child missing, domestic assault, and then saying: "Coming up next... where to find some laughs in C-U!" I did enjoy me and Jenn's (I call her Jenn now... I am very sure she would in no way approves of that...) attire matching as if we had planned it. It was sad to wear my new blue suit and realize... I'm not even the best looking person in a screen shot wearing blue.

It's hard to make a short segment funny (at least for me) - but getting the brand out there is what was important, even if my answers are a little mundane. Really hope to continue working with WCIA on the comedy scene in town. Here is the full video of my mug on the squawk box: http://www.clipsyndicate.com/video/play/5724591

"Coffee Work Ethic" - Friday April 17th - Jukebox Comedy Club

Underrated coffee they have at the Jukebox.
With: Justin Tuttle (@tuttlecomedy)

On Friday April 28th myself, U of I's Juan Villeta and 106.5 X-Country Kankakee's Maggi Mayfield headed over the the Jukebox Comedy Club in Peoria, IL. I was slated for a guest set before headliner Chris Schlichting.

But the real goal was to try to get some newer performers from C-U a spot at a comedy club. Which, success, due to a lot of local Peoria performers being out of town, owner Dan Conlin was nice enough to give two people he didn't know a guest spot, which as long time performers who go to comedy clubs know, that's pretty rare.

Maggi Mayfield on stage (@maggiontheradio)

I've seen Maggi and Juan go up at several different places, and even though the crowd was a bit smaller for a Saturday Night, it was fun to see them excited to go on stage at a legit club for their first times. I think I felt that way on my first guest set... I don't remember... not because it was so long ago, but because most happy memories have been washed away by all the other times I've tanked (and being tanked) - so it was a short reminiscing session on my part.

With Juan Villeta (@JuanVillGar)

I had a pretty well received 12 minute set. Busting on house emcee Joe Roderick (@TheJoeRoderick) for his intro (which was after a missed joke, then a very abrupt "Ok, well... here's Jesse Tuttle") gained me some favor with the crowd, but alas, Joe returned post set shirtless wearing just his vest to "out-sexy" me as he put it - was white flag time... I had been defeated by the better man. It was my mistake for poking the ribs of a hosting professional like Mr. Joe.


 

Andrew Hicks on stage

For the 10:30 show, I graciously (patting the ol' back pretty hard to be honest) stepped back and watched Justin Tuttle and Andrew Hicks take over the guest sets. They were coming back from the Quad Cities after a show and made it just in time. It was also Hicks' first set there. I felt proud of the C-U area not only representing our little area well, but for two other reasons: word of mouth is good if a club owner in a completely different area will trust to put them on stage on a weekend show when he doesn't know them personally, and also, as pictured at the very top... free coffee. How am I proud of free coffee? Because I went behind the bar and poured it. This guy doesn't slack on that kind of work ethic.