Irony of Effort

You'd think the area where I extend the bulk of my effort would be the area with the most results, right?

Not so...in fact, it always seems the opposite is true, which explains why I am single, now that I think of it, but I digress...

The deadline for entries for the Boston Comedy Festival is fast-approaching. Thursday, June 15th... hard to believe we're in the middle of June already. I wavered briefly before deciding on trying to get in again. I have not been doing much comedy and have been focussing on "preparing for the World Series of Poker" as I like to call it and "playing obsessively on-line" as my roommate likes to call it.

I decided that winning an entry to the main event was not enough, I wanted to get into one of the "smaller" events as well. So, as I dedicated myself to winning the 10,000 main event entry, I threw myself into trying to win the $2000 entry, or accumulate enough $$$ to buy in directly.

It has been disastrous. I have gotten my ass kicked regularly for the last week. Poker is strange with me. Pros go through cold spells and downward swings, but mine seems to hit very quickly, then move on, they seem to come and (hopefully) go in the blink of an eye.

The annoying thing is that I haven't learned much from these losses, other than a familiar lesson- burn out makes me a poor player.

But I digress... the funny thing is that while I have totally thrown myself into poker this week, I have reaped negative returns. Ironically, I have logged next-to-zero stage time in the last couple of months and blew the roof off The Comedy Studio in the process of making the DVD for me Boston Comedy Festival entry.

I listened to a set close to what I wanted to perform twice, practiced twice, showed up and ran with it. Admittedly, just before I got on stage, I felt totally unprepared and the audience had been sweet, but weren;t real "laughers", so I was skeptical about how well I would do. The director of the BCF was on the show with me, so I didn;t want to look like an ass, plus, this would be my only opportunity to make a tape in time for submission, so it was a one-shot-deal. I told myself if I didn't do well enough to make a really good tape, I would skip this year's festival.

I said a little prayer just before I hit the stage, some mumbling meanderings requesting that God just help me to go out there and be myself.

Being as objective as I can be, I seemed to get thje reaction of the night, kudos from the BCF director and the club owner, as well as a bunch of patrons coming up to me after the show to ask where I was playing in the near future.

It never ceases to amaze me that when I relax and just roll with it, I seem to kick ass, and when I obsess about something, my results are generally best described as craptastic. All I have to do now is print a bio-page, slap it together with a headshot and the DVD.

My friend Debbie and her brother did a sweet job making a DVD case that actually makes it look like I know what I am doing. It always blows me away when people put together something so professional looking in half an hour.

I should lay off poker for a couple of days. If I do, I will probably find myself qualifying for that early tournament.