Hello folks! Or as they say over here in Scotland, hiya!
I missed y'all! Did you have any inkling that preparing to get married AND preparing an Edinburgh Fringe show (plus all your other normal comedy shows in between) would be EXTREMELY TIME-CONSUMING? Yes you did? Well that makes you smarter than I, fair reader. And that's why I'm glad you're here.
I’m very tired (and probably will be until the end of the summer) and also very excited to be at Edinburgh Fringe with WRONG! If you know anyone who is going to be in Scotland from today thru the 11th of August please send them to our show.
Let’s cut to the chase, I have a bus to catch!
THINGS I’M GLAD I’VE SEEN
CASA LAGUNA HOTEL AND SPA
I cannot emphasize this enough: I got married just shy of a month ago. After our wedding, before I dove into prepping for Fringe in earnest, my wife (who also serves as a producer on the show) and I decided to take a couple of nights to decompress. We booked ourselves a room at this incredible boutique hotel right off the Pacific Coast Highway and spent two nights of sleepy bliss here. We nibbled on salad and chips + guac by the pool, we read, we got sunburnt. We walked to restaurants and listened to locals yell about “getting old dick” and “can I hire someone to drive me around while I’m drunk who isn’t an Uber.” I got my ass kicked at Scrabble. I ate a prime rib French dip sandwich that actually lived up to the hype of being one of the finest sandwiches I’ve ever eaten, and a burger that lived up to the hype of being one of the best burgers I’ve ever eaten. But most of all, we decompressed and returned to LA with brains full of peace and bodies free of ache. We will be back. You should go, too.
A SET FROM LANCE CANTSTOPOLIS
Lance Cantstopolis was a comic I would occasionally see perform while I worked at the Comedy Store. Usually Saturday nights, late in the Original Room lineup. He would dance and riff and dazzle the crowd. Then, he vanished without a trace. Did he go into hiding? Were assassins after him? Could he no longer convince his very good friend Fahim Anwar to give him rides to the club? Who knows.
Lance has been coming around the Store again lately, and I finally got a chance to see one of his latest sets last Saturday. It was everything I hoped for: three full minutes of dancing (and riffing) to Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso”, raw sexual energy, lightning-fast crowdwork and responses to audience questions, strong defense of his mullet. I am so glad he’s back on the scene and encourage you to seek him out next time you’re browsing the Comedy Store lineups.
COMEDY JAMWICH
Advice I was given early on as a comic, that I often freely give to others, is: start a room of your own. It could be a show, an open mic, but it must be yours. And if you put a lot of time, energy, and care into cultivating this room, you could build something really special that a community of comics and fans can rally behind. Comedy Jamwich is such a room.
The moment I stepped onto the grounds of this show, celebrating its year anniversary with a packed-out block party, I knew I was in great hands. Max and his team have cultivated a savvy audience, great production value on clips and promotional materials, and, most importantly, kickass lineups every single time. I felt very fortunate to be part of the anniversary show and can’t wait to go back and sling some new jokes to this hot-ass crowd.1
COUSCOUS
Underrated grain. Why am I not eating this more? My airplane dinner on the flight into the U.K. had a whole mess of the stuff and it was a near-perfect protein-and-sauce delivery vehicle.
A BRIEF DISPATCH FROM RECOVERYLAND
Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and my attitudes.”
Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, p. 417
I’m in this position where I am trying to do all of the things, all at once, but it’s extremely difficult to do all of the things all at once.
I feel good about myself, generally, and not in any sober danger, but I’m also worried about myself because I have this fear and feeling that I haven't done enough with my time, you know what I mean? But I can't do anything about that now. Now I just have to move forward.
I have to accept that what’s happening is what’s happening. And I can't do anything about that other than living in acceptance.
That’s one of the things I find that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is all about: being able to live life in acceptance, and to break down the walls that prevent you from feeling the acceptance.
I must live in acceptance of shit being terrifying sometimes. I must live in acceptance of things not going the way I thought they would. I must live in acceptance of my humanity and my fallibility.
At one of the last meetings I attended before I left the US, the speaker referenced how drinking prevented them from being okay with being human. I had been having a particularly human experience of flaws and failure that day, and I told them as such. “That’s the beautiful thing, though, right?” they said. “Being able to know that’s where you’re at instead of hiding from it?”2
I must live in acceptance of what I’m offering to the world, because that's what ultimately matters the most. I’m making an offering, and maybe it won't go down the way I expect, but it is certainly going down. Let it go down. That's all I can do.
WHAT ABOUT ME?
You can find me:
doing WRONG! at Edinburgh Fringe until August 11th, get tickets here
this month at Edinburgh Fringe, in Denver, and Texas preparing for my album recording - full show calendar is here
Until next time, friends. Thanks for reading, I’m glad you’re here.
We’re talking good laughers and physically attractive! That’s a double whammy!
They may not have actually said this, I am very tired.