Fuck GEICO. Because of their commercials, Michael Winslow has had something of a rebirth. If you don’t know of who I speak, Winslow is the sounds effects guy from the Police Academy movies. I’m not here to completely slam on Michael Winslow, as I remember being in Junior High and loving him doing Jimi Hendriz in Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams. (NOTE: The clip also has Timothy Leary and Pee Wee Herman. Trippy Muthafucka.)
I don’t blame the comedy club, as they are taking a bet that might pay off, as even though he makes more than me, he also can bring an audience. Comedy clubs have 2 choices. They can bring in a name act and hope that they will bring enough extra people in at a higher admission price to make up for the bigger salary. The other choice is to bring someone in like me and hope that the lower overhead will make up for not having someone with much drawing power. For some clubs Plan A works better, while for others Plan B is the way to go.
One question many will have is wasn’t the club breaking their contract with you. Here is a dirty secret of the standup world. Most comics don’t have a contract with a club. It’s like the NFL, no guaranteed contracts. Now for a bigger name act, sure, they have a contract. They have major representation, so they are protected from the whims of the club. It’s just like sports, where the superstars get most of the perks. And that is the way it should be, as in a market-based economy, it comes down to how many butts you can put in the seats.
Having said this, just because you have some drawing power, doesn’t particularly make you funny. If you think this is sour grapes, watch this.
Now don’t get me wrong, one of the sweetest gigs in the world is to be the feature act in front of Pauly Shore. Sure you only end up making 10% of what he does, but after the show you have 2 things certain to happen.
- At least 75% of the audience will come up to you and say you were funnier than the Weasel.
- You will be propositioned by some stripper to come by the local Bada Bing the next day and get a few table dances on the house. (And if you are really lucky, she will blow you in the parking lot.)
I have actually worked with Michael Winslow once. He was a peculiar dude, but was very polite and it ended up being a fun week. (This happened nearly a decade ago, when I wasn’t a club headliner.) The thing I remember the most about it was my interaction with Winslow’s manager at the time, who was running his sound cues. The manager approached me at the end of the week and was very complimentary. He said he had been looking for the past couple of months for someone to write a new act for another client of his, Gallagher Too.
If you don’t know this story, Leo Gallagher, who is best known as being the sledge-o-matic comedian, had a bunch of old material he was no longer using. Instead of letting all this stuff disappear into the ether, he let his younger brother and look-alike, Ron, go out on tour with it. The act was called Gallagher Too and it was basically a cover band. It eventually caused dissension among the brothers, as Ron broke a lot of promises he made to his big brother in the places he performed and the way he marketed his act. If you want to read a great summary of the whole fiasco, check in at 90ways.com and read Whitney Siebold’s piece.
The manager of Gallagher Too knew his client had to have a new act and felt I was just the guy to do it. I don’t know if that was a compliment or not, so I asked him what he was specifically looking for. The manager said he wanted me to write a George Carlin-type act for his client. I explained to him that if I could do that, I would do it…for myself. He called me a few times over the next couple of months, trying to press me into helping him out. He told me that I couldn’t write anything that similar to Gallagher’s act, as the court had specified that as part of their decision. I wondered if we could parody it at all, like have Too take a ball-ping hammer on-stage and smash a cantaloupe? He didn’t think that would work. Eventually we could never come down to a price that would make it worth my while, but hey, it makes for a good story, huh?
So I’m pushed back a few months from playing in St. Louis. Something like this happens once or twice a year to me and I won’t pretend that it isn’t frustrating. Such is the life of a comedian who is at my pay grade. I’m left to scramble to find something last minute, which is generally not a good place to be in the standup world. I’m someone known for consistently kicking ass with the audience by the clubs who have me in, but not able to be a top dollar earner because I don’t have that special something that brings lots of fans in the door. Hey, there are a couple dozen other comics just like me, so I don’t think I’m that special. In a world where Dave Matthews sells out amphitheaters, while someone like Matthew Sweet can’t even get a major label to release his stuff, anymore, I guess I can’t complain too much.
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Reading Will Carroll at Baseball Prospectus today and he cued me into this really fun story.
From a Japanese Baseball site called NFB Tracker.
You might remember a post I did last year that had a link to Ichiro pitching in the 1996 NPB All-Star Game. Ichiro came out and immediately hit 90 on the TV gun on his first warm-up pitch, and then induced a soft grounder from pinch-hitter Shingo Takatsu.
Nearly 13 years later, Japan WBC manager Tatsunori Hara has, perhaps unintentionally, prompted Ichiro to return to the mound by suggesting that using him in emergency situations is a possibility in this year’s tournament. In his workout on the 7th, he skipped batting practice and worked out as a pitcher. He threw 56 pitches off the mound at Skymark Stadium, throwing fastballs and forkballs. Word is that he hit 147kmph (92mph) with his fastest pitch. Ichiro said he wants to throw a little bit harder.
How fucking cool is that?
Not Safe For Work Sports!!! 