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Moron bombing and my new facebook pic
Why does a simple photo of me and a celebrity elicit so much response from my friends on facebook? I posted this to make myself look super cool and IT WORKED! I guess as long as I continue to have celeb-like encounters in this experiment I call my life, people will continue to at least acknowledge the potential ability I have to really make this something out of nothing happen 
So what?! I met the man, blew him and still have nothing to show for it except I shaved that ridiculous mustache that took 3 weeks to grow… you know how smells can get trapped in your hair…? yeah…
So, Recently in Seattle I had the privilege of bombing on stage in front of Robin Williams at the Laffhole. The Laffhole is a great Wednesday night show at the ReBar in downtown Seattle, put on by group known as the Peoples Republic of Komedy. Great group of comics! The scene here is really good it has already challenged me to step it up quite a bit. Mr. Williams made a surprise apprearance with his friend Morgan Murphy, a comic out of LA. Apparently they are working on a movie together here in the PNW (the Pacific Northwest for you not hip to local abbreviations for parts of the country you probably don’t live in)
I intended to post this like 2 weeks ago when it happened with a video and some other stuff I have been working on but the video is being a bitch and is taking longer to finish so now I post the “I got to meet Robin Williams” half and the other half will have to wait until I finish the video.
more on bombing… moron bombing… (that’s what is known as a “Pantherism” or at least that’s what I’m calling it right now. Aaron Panther is a friend and fellow comic out of Tucson he’s clever with the word play and what not, what knot? www.myspace.com/aaronpanther)
oh yeah, bombing… so comics typically will open a set with material they trust in order to get the audience on their side and trust them with the funny. IF you can get an audience to laugh in the first couple of moments you are on stage they are more likely to stay engaged through an entire set. So the kind of rule thingy is open strong and close strong and then play around with new material in the middle. Some comics even go as far as to say “NEVER DO NEW STUFF UP FRONT!” yeah well at the Laffhole show I kinda let that go and started my set with a minute or two of stuff I made up right before going on stage… bad idea!
The nice thing about it is getting familiar with that feeling of absolutely eating shit on stage, a feeling that is probably most akin to finding out that the two things hanging out between your legs in your scrotum are not actually testicles but a matching set of tumors, and the only way to get rid of them before they kill you is by having the really hot nurse kick you where it counts repeatedly until your yam bag is the consistency of stress ball, only to find out that is the best preparation they can give you before the surgical removal of that which you thought made you man, is that it actually helps. The emotional combination of fear, astonishment and courage is the very same feeling comics endure time after time to the point that it becomes routine and doesn’t have the debilitating effect it should. Like rejection, the more it happens the more you get used to it and if you’re strong you get better and move on, if not you kill yourself. Even the most pessimistic comics are optimists in this sense because they persevere night after night. The silver lining to every cloud, sticking to my my damaged yam bag analogy “at least I won’t have to deal with the vasectomy later” Maybe bombing isn’t so bad after all.
I knew my set was not a complete travesty. I did get manage to pull some laughs it was just a lot more work than it should have been. The feeling of complete ineptitude only took 2 days to completely subside. It was a slow process that began when Robin Williams came up to me after my set (while I was in the back swallowing the tears I was crying on the inside) and paid me something like a compliment, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “you are an elegant soul in the mouth of madness my friend.” I will never forget those words, even if I have no idea what that even means or that they may have come from someone else’s mouth first. I’m not saying Robin steals jokes, I don’t know… I’m just sayin a good set could of ended up on stage somewhere else. At least thats the story I tell myself about why I bombed on purpose in front of comedy legend, it helps me feel less moronic. 
It was an absolute pleasure meeting the man, he was kind and gracious, nothing celebrity-ish about him. I hope I get to continue this trend of meeting comedians the whose work I admire. So far it has been Doug Stanhope, Zach Galifianakis, and now Robin Wiliams. Who knows what will happen next, I don’ t know where I will end up but it sure is a hell of ride!
LAFFHOLE - ROBIN WILLIAMS @ REBRAR IN SEATTLE
August 1st, 2008 at 3:18 pm
I thought your blog entry title said ‘Mormon bombing…’ and I thought “why’s he bombing Mormons and why didn’t he tell me he was in Utah again?!”
xoxoxo
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
HaHa! I would never confuse Mormons and Morons and I’m not even a Moron!