Las Vegas Comedy Festival

Ok, so I know I said I would talk about the Las Vegas Comedy Festival that I went to from the 13th to 17th as soon as I got home. I held off on talking about it, because I didn't want to come across as too negative.

Overall, the trip was probably a waste of time... hmm, so much for avoiding the negativity. I did the Laugh Across America competition/ Las Vegas Comedy Festival for a few reasons:
1. To get seen by industry professionals
2. To perform alot
3. To audition for the Letterman Show and Boston Comedy Festival
4. To win the competition
5. To do a morning radio show
6. It was a free all expense paid 5 day trip to Vegas

Well I got 1 out of those 6 things. My competition finals tooks place on Thursday at 3:30 in the middle of the afternoon. The industry people, i.e. managers, agents, bookers, talent scouts, etc didn't show up until the later shows on Thursday and then the Friday and Saturday shows. Nobody was at my show. There was barely any audience members at all, so getting audience momentum was impossible.

So nobody got to see me perform. I was going to audition to compete in the Wild Card competition, because the top 3 finalists of that got to perform in the final Best of the Fest show. They didn't let me compete in this competition since I was already in the Mainstream competition. This sucked alot because everyone in both the Wild Card and Royal Flush Wildcard (which was suppose to be "headliners") all SUCKED. They were HORRIBLE. It was like watching a bad open mike. Now the only way to get into the big Best of the Fest show was to win the Mainstream category... which I didn't. I don't want to say that I should have won, because that would make me seem like a sore, bitter loser, so I won't say anything but that I lost and the guy who won was a decent comic...

So now I don't get to perform in front of industry people, I only get to perform once, besides a rehearsal show, and I didn't win. Well what about the Letterman and Boston Festival auditions. Well you had to be selected to audition for those and the way you were selected was from your performance. Of course nobody came to my performance so I wasn't selected to audition for anything.

The morning show would have been fun to do, but like everything else, it was cancelled.

The festival was decent but could have been a lot better. Things weren't planned out too well and changed last minute a lot. The audiences were very small and the talent wasn't very good in the shows, which probably led to a small audience turnout.

I tried to go see a lot of comedy shows, but I was even worn out by the consistently bad performances and stopped going. And I got into the shows FREE, imagine people paying $10 to see bad shows.

I would have liked to have been seen by industry people more than I wanted to actually win the competition. I knew I wouldn't win the competition, because I never win competitions. I always get robbed in the end and that's part of show-business I guess, to get screwed.

The morning radio show I wish worked out. The communication was pretty bad because I wasn't sure if it was happening or not. I woke up at 7 AM and went to the lobby to see if I was going, but at 8 AM I figured out that I was wasting my time and went back to sleep.

Some of the seminars I went to were entertaining and somewhat informative. There were some bigwigs there and old time comedians who people who were born before the 60's probably heard of. Milton Berle's (sp?) wife was at the final banquet. She made a few remarks regarding the legend of her late husband's penis size which were funny, if not disturbing. Ed McMahon was there to accept an award as well as some other C to B list actors/ comics. Perhaps the funniest person at the festival and the guy who hosted the awards ceremony was this comic named Andy something who is a regular on Everybody Loves Raymond as one of Ray's friends. He was hilarious and hopefully someday I'll find out his name. I could probably look it up online, but who has that kind of energy...

The main thing that came out of the festival was that I realized I want to be more of an actor than a comedian. I don't want to go through 10 years of obscurity playing small rooms all over the country before becoming a headliner. Right now, I don't have that kind of passion for comedy that other comedians have. I don't want to drive 10 hours in order to feature at a club for $100. My dream is to be an actor and that's what I started out as. I got into comedy in order to get more stage time since I wasn't getting good acting gigs. It just happened that I have a gift at comedy, so my comedy took off more than my acting did and I became more of a comedian than an actor.

But with all these commercials I've gotten lately, I realize that my true passion is in acting. I'm using comedy as a way to break into acting and to give me an extra edge over other actors. Don't get me wrong, I love comedy and plan on continuing to perform, however, acting is my top priority. I spent the last few years wondering if I wanted to focus on acting or comedy, in case I couldn't do both because of work. For example, do I want a day job, where I have nights off to do comedy or do I want a night job where I have days off to do acting auditions. Luckily when I move to LA I won't have to have a job so I can do both, but if I do have to get a job, I now know that I would want to focus on acting over comedy.

Unfortunately I don't have the passion or patience to go on the road for years and work and work and work and get maybe a gig or two on tv before I start getting booked as a headliner. I would rather focus on acting and continue comedy on the side and after making it as an actor then I can headline because people will know my name and want to come out to see me perform. And when it comes to comedy headlining, it's all about who's funny AND who can fill the seats.

I'm doing a lot of rambling because I'm trying to figure things out and I feel like I finally made a choice and big revelation. Of course it could change in two months knowing me. But for now, I'm an actor first and comedian second.

Commercials Playing Online

Great news, I just found out that I didn't get cut out of the Star Wars Battlefront commercial afterall. I got an email today from one of the other actors who was in the commercial telling me that I was in it and it's playing online. This was good news because I was bitter when I thought I had been cut out. I regret all the threatening letters I sent George Lucas and I will return the Ewok I took hostage as soon as I can. It seems like other people have seen it, and it's played all over the world. So that will be money I didn't expect to get. Which is good because this Wednesday I will be leaving for Vegas to perform in the Las Vegas Comedy Festival and compete in the finals of the Laugh Across America competition. So I'll need some extra dough to donate to the Golden Nugget Casino.

The commercial is pretty cool. It has the booming dramatic voice at the beginning and everything. My scene is of me running after another character from the movie in the snow, saying "Dude, hold up." I'm dressed up to look like a nerd, and they even made me talk like a nerd. I have no idea what scene I'm in or who I'm chasing because I don't know anything about Star Wars. I did check out the message boards on the website, however, and saw that people were talking about me. I'm going to paste some of the comments and respond to them on here, since I don't want to directly respond to them. I gotta keep some of that celebrity mistique ya know.

"It is the same trailer only difference is that they showed 3 nerds." - this guy is calling us nerds. doesn't he get that we're actors. isn't it funny how a guy who is writing on a star wars videogame message board is calling me a nerd.

"lol i thought it was pretty good... " - this was from a guy who goes by OldMan.exe, I guess I'm popular with the old geezers out there.

"i liked it when the guy said "duude hol' dup" - your a cool guy. we should hang out sometime. we can do calculus or whatever it is you like to do for fun.

"I guess, but if you look closer you can see that the guy has a droid blaster instead of a Rebel weapon " - this was the best post. this guy is the king of nerds and probably of virgins too. i can't believe he magnified the shot so much that he could see the kind of gun i was holding. i feel sorry for his parents, i'm sure this wasn't what they were expecting when they had sex that one night.

"yeah I like to big guy who was like, "dude hold up, I'm out a shape because I haven't left my mother's basement!" or something on those lines. And the albino guy who really hasn't had sun in a while. " - i can't believed i just got dissed by a star wars geek. it's pretty clever though, he must sit around and practice his disses when he's sitting around blowing up his blow up doll.

"The "dude hold up" was probaly the best part of it" - they even added a smiley face at the end. what a nice guy.

"the fat boy running in the ESB flash is bringing a Blaster Droid instead of a Blastech E-11.. " - this geek just called me fat. doesn't he know the camera adds 10 pounds. they were filming me with 3 cameras... ESB flash, Blaster Droid, Blastech E-11? This guy must of made his dad really proud growing up. His dad probably wanted a son who played sports, and ended up with an Erkel. I hope he gets severe handcramps and can never get online or play another video game...whaaaawhaaaawhaaaaa

now to see the star wars commercial, this is what you do:
go to www.starwarsbattlefront.com
Click on Navigate
Click on Gallery
Click on TV Spot

to see my Sprint commercial online, this is what you do:
go to www.sprintpcs.com
At the bottom of the screen, click on TV Commercials
I'm in the Peanuts commercial.

Enjoy people. I'll update after my Vegas trip and let you know how much I owe the casino, buffets, and hookers.