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06/07/2008: ""

I just signed off the carnival Liberty and I'm stuck in the Miami airport for most of the day. I'm heading home for a few nights off. The rest of this month should be pretty exciting, I'm travelling to Alaska to perform on the Carnival Spirit a couple of times. I'll also be on the Elation out of Southern California. I haven't been to Alaska since the forty-ninth show of our 'fifty states, fifty days' tour in '05. I'm looking forward to seeing it from a ship.
I've been having very good shows lately which is good and bad. It is a lot of fun to perform for full house cruise ship crowds, but they are such good crowds that you don't learn anything about your act and you can't get a read on new material. They just seem to love everything.
A few weeks ago I was in Boise working the new room there. The legendary Boise Funnybone has closed, but there is a little bar in Meridian, Idaho that is doing one show a night, Wednesday through Sunday. It is a dueling piano bar and a 'headliner only' show. This is turning into a bit of a trend. Instead of bringing in two comics from out of town and using a local comic to host the show, many smaller budget rooms have eliminated the 'feature' spot and just hire a headliner. This gives them a bigger budget for the headliner, but it also makes the show a bit tougher. They often don't have locals doing any time up front, either. Just somebody (in this case, one of the piano players) settling everyone down and introducing the headliner to do an hour. Very similar to a cruise ship show. I had to warm up the crowd for myself. Quite a challenge and a great opportunity to get better at what I do.
Wednesday night was their radio party and ladies night. Folks from the local radio station give away booze and t-shirts and get the crowd nice and confrontational, then they have a comedy show. I accepted the challenge and attacked the crowd up front then settled into my act. I did my best to ignore two drunk ladies who just weren't getting enough attention during my show. All in all, it went well on Wednesday, but it was a lot of work.
Thursday through Saturday reminded me of the old Boise Funnybone. The crowds were very hip and extremely well behaved. What I have grown to expect from Boise audiences. It is almost spooky how good they are in that bar environment. Five minutes into the show, the baby grand pianos I was standing between seemed to vanish and the upstairs of the little bar transformed itself into a theater. The drinks and tables also disintegrated and all of the chairs faced forward. There was no more fried food with dipping sauce on the table and shorts and t-shirts turned into suits and dresses.
I have quite a few comic friends who avoid this type of gig (one comic doing an hour in a bar). Do this one in Meridian if you can. It will be a pleasant surprise. It is good to have Boise back on the calendar.

There is a lot of down time on the cruise ships, of course. I spend most of it hiding out in my cabin, reading, writing, working out. There is limited television in the cabins. We get a handful of regular channels when the satelite is working and there are three or four movies that run all day. One channel has the 'crew movie'. This can be anything from a relatively new release to a favorite from the past few years and it changes every day. 'Across the Universe' was the crew movie yesterday on the ship. I watched it four times.