Tickets for THE ROUGHHAUSERS in Scotland are going fast…if you’re at the Edinburgh Fringe next week, come see our old timey sideshow at the Drill Hall in Leith Aug 26+27 at 8PM.  Comedy, mentalism, limb skewering, sleight of hand, pickpocketing, burlesque, aerial, my boobs, and more as we close out the festival!  Only £10! Anddddd: you can catch all the action from afar in our travelogues, which will be posted here as we go: roughhausers.blogspot.com.

I’m uber excited to be opening for Elisha Shapiro’s THE FUNNIEST NIHILIST one-man show at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Believe in nothing? Then this show’s for you! Producer of the Nihilist Film Festival, creator of the Nihilist Olympics, 1988 Nilhilist Party presidential candidiate, and more, Shapiro weaves a hilarious tale of a life about nothing that you won’t soon forget (and if you do, that’s ok with him too…heh). June 24+25 @ 8PM in L.A. Tix are FREE, but they’re going fast—get ‘em while you can!

NEWSFLASH! The Roughhausers were just confirmed at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland! We’ll be at the OUT OF THE BLUE DRILL HALL venue Friday Aug. 26 and Saturday Aug. 27 at 8PM! Tickets are only $10…in dollars? Pounds? I have no idea. We’ll also be announcing kick-ass popup shows in the streets all week long with performance art, dada acts, close-up magic, freak acts, and much, much more! Tune in to our Twitter feed if you’re going to be there! OH MY GOD THIS SHOW’S GONNA ROCK!

I’ll be MCing my first show at the Comedy Store Monday April 18 at 8PM! There’s nothing crazier than trying to wrangle 10-20 comics into a coherent show…come watch the madness!

Featuring Michael Q, Eric Schwartz, Skippy Greene, and special guests…past guests have featured wild talent from Last Comic Standing, The Late Show, and much more! Come on down where the drinks are stiff. 8433 West Sunset, right across from the House of Blues. 21+

Come laugh your ass off at the Comedy Store Saturday April 9 at 8PM! I’ll be doing a new bit about plastic bags and Quentin Tarantino, and I still have a few discounted tickets left…. And check back here in May, when I should have dates up for the Laugh Factory, where I was just passed into their regular rotation of comics. If you stick around after the show, who knows, you might even get to touch Kevin Nealon (see below…).

I’m also prepping for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the fall, where I’ll be performing the week of August 25 (date and venue TBD) with L.A. burlesque hottie Ridley Barlow as The Roughhausers in a madcap Victorian era sideshow with bizarre magic, vanishing clothes, Dada stunts, comedy, and more. It turns out Ridley is a direct descendant of King Robert I, so maybe they’ll let us stay in a castle while we’re there…or not…so far this week I’ve been told to fuck off three times by Scots…I’m starting to think it’s their way of saying hello…. To drum up an audience, we’ll be doing a street act during the week that includes performance art (a brand new piece I’m calling “Songs with a Brick”), stunts, sleight of hand, and maybe a little pickpocketing. If you’re coming to the Fringe, let me know!

Come laugh it up with me and pals this Wednesday Jan. 19 @ 8PM at the Red Rock Bar and Eatery on Sunset in West Hollywood, just a stone’s throw from the Viper Room.  Only $5 and no drink minimum! www.redrocksunset.com

Anddddd for you tequila freaks, I’m performing next Friday Jan. 28 @ 9:30PM at Malo, a kick-ass little cantina in Silverlake (malorestaurant.com). The lineup looks hilarious, and includes Josh Adam Meyers, who starred as Pizza Delivery Guy #1 in Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Don’t miss it!

Come laugh your ass off at El Cid in L.A. with TV stars Laurie Kilmartin, Carlease Burke, Jen Kober…and me! 7:30PM. Only $10 with no drink minimum!!! (Click the flyer to zoom in).

Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink! Yes you will come laugh and drink!

so the club i performed at last night works like this: every 4 weeks you get the opportunity to perform for 3 minutes. afterward, if your name gets called, it means the owner liked you and you’re moving up—you’re entered into the club’s regular rotation of 6 minute slots, and if you do well in those, you move up from there until you’re rich and famous with your own HBO special.

yeah, kid, that’s how it works. it’s easy.

last night was a mixed bag. i had a solid set at the club—got decent laughs, which wasn’t easy because the room was full of comics. not bad. but it didn’t matter because after the show, nobody’s name got called. nobody was moving up. NOBODY. it was brutal. so i left.

i walked out to the parking lot where i ran into a comedian who’d been in the show. he’d had a strong set. he told me that he’d moved up, and he was shocked that i hadn’t. “you had a great set,” he said. i was confused—i told him that i hadn’t heard my name called and he replied, “oh, sometimes they don’t call names. if that happens, you just go up to the owner and ask if you made it.”

WHAT THE HELL???? NOBODY TOLD ME THAT. how was i supposed to know that??? how were any of us supposed to know that???

i sprinted across sunset boulevard and back to the club like a maniac, praying that the owner might move me up.

the club was packed. the next show was about to start. i found the owner in a corner talking to a tall brown-haired dude. i walked up to them and waited—then saw that the dude was kevin nealon. holy shit. i love that guy. but i was on a mission. i waited until nealon paused to take a breath, then gave him a little push on his back. he glanced at me and stepped aside.

“hi!” i blurted to the owner, “i was in the earlier show and am hoping that i moved up—”

the owner shrugged. “sorry. i don’t remember you,” he said. “come back in 4 weeks.”

i felt repulsive and idiotic and was pretty sure that i was about to die as i waved goodbye and backed away. I AM AN IDIOT.

at least i’d touched kevin nealon.

his shirt had felt expensive. i think it was camelhair—hairy but soft.

or maybe that was just my palm.

I got up on the Comedy Store’s main stage last night. The show went well—I was fifth up—a good slot. I had a solid set with decent moments of kill and met some new faces, including one comic who had just been on the Tonight Show, and another who won a recent season of Last Comic Standing.

Halfway through the show, a new comedian from Jersey came out on stage wearing a cheap suit, did some ranty cheesehole schlock about wanting to “fistfuck breast cancer in its dime-sized asshole,” ran off stage, and came back wearing a strap-on 10″ dildo over his suit pants…he ran around, took a bow, removed the strap-on, stuck the dick in his mouth, and slobbered into the mic, “I love this thing!” Apparently.

The backstage green room was porno slick—hi-gloss black and shiny with vanity lights, and in the middle, a 2′-high black piano-shaped table with a mirror top. A comedian told me that that 80s comics used to snort mountains of coke from it. I looked up close and yeah, there were deep razor line nicks all over it—click on the picture for a close-up. I considered rolling up a bill and sniffing around for Pryor’s leftover punchlines.

After my set I stepped out back onto Sunset. It was starry out but freezing and smelled like rain. Skinny hookers in 6″ heels and leather pants wobbled past on the sidewalk while frat boys in an Escalade drove by slowly to whistle. I walked around to the club’s outdoor bar. There was a famous comic hanging out. I ordered a gin and tonic and the bartender whispered, “That comic takes home a different woman every night…he likes the sluts.”

I sipped my booze and watched the bartender make a sloppy Long Island for a guy who was high as a kite. The guy took a sip, spit out some drink, shrugged, then walked away, apparently satisified…maybe he was hallucinating that he was in Napa….

This morning I have a splitting headache…not sure what gin the bartender used, but it must’ve been cheap shit—head’s thumping behind my ear…I keep reaching back there and expecting to feel Lars Ulrich’s foot. I am some kind of monster.

Today I leave work early to go stand in line in the rain at the Laugh Factory on Sunset…livin the dream.

In the 2 months that I’ve been in L.A. I’ve hit a ton of mics so far—some open and some booked—and without a doubt, most have been overbooked with too many comics. 3-hour shows are not uncommon here. Some bookers seem to think audiences can last that long, but of course they can’t, especially when faced with a good percentage of newbie comedians and an endless march of bad dick jokes. 2 hours maybe if they’re watching a high energy act like Robin Williams, but 3 hours? No way. NO WAY. The laugh chakra can only take so much in a sitting until it’s cooked.

On the other hand, these marathon shows build endurance, albeit painfully. Because you’re waiting and waiting in the back of the club, praying that you’ll be called up to the stage next (but you don’t know for sure if you will because of course there’s no lineup posted) and so your hopes are dashed when the next comic up isn’t you, or the one after that, or after that, over and over and over…then finally…2 hours in—and that’s early for this beast of a show—the MC approaches in the dark and says, “Hey: you’re up next. What’s your name, again?” Fantastic…it’s your time…except that YOU ARE FUCKING EXHAUSTED. Your nerves are raw. You’re dehydrated and starving and need a nap. But you’ve gotta muster it…because by now you know the audience is pissed off after being forced to sit for 2 hours. The MC gets on stage and tries to rouse some enthusiasm, but fails; it’s more of an apology for the marathon than a proper introduction for you. The audience seethes. They’re burnt, baby, BURNT…some have even left…and for those remaining, their Long Islands have long worn off, leaving them cranky as hell. Luckily you have a weapon: you KNOW the audience is pissed, so you can use that—use it by acknowledging it. You run up on stage and crack some jokes about this being the longest running show ever, that the audience members are saints for sitting so long, that you just can’t believe the number of dick jokes the comics have trotted out (“Unlike Paris Hilton’s vagina, they couldn’t fit another dick in here!”), and that every possible topic that could’ve been covered HAS been covered in the past 2 hours except maybe for (INSERT OBSCURE BUT HILARIOUS TOPIC HERE) and you’re off and running…the audience remains skeptical at first, but when you get your first laugh at 15 seconds, then another at 25, then turn up the energy so high that the agent trainee from Creative Artists wearing the $12 pink tie like a cheap Ari Goldberg at table 12 (yeah, I saw you, punk) laughs his ass off and dribbles O’Douls all over his pants, YOU’VE WON, BABY. 7 minutes speed by, you get the red light, hit the closer, and run off with a wave, 30 seconds early, giving high-fives to the back of the room, where the MC mutters with venom, “Way to bring them back.”

Congratulations. You just survived another one. For now. Muhahahahaha.