Tommy's Journal

Wednesday, March 26th


I'm sitting in the miami airport. I got off the Ecstacy yesterday and got to spend the night here in Miami. I am flying to Grand Turk today and get another night off in a hotel. I sign onto the Imagination tomorrow. The shows are going pretty good. Spring break is usually a nightmare out on cruise ships, but this year the crowds have been relatively tame. It runs in cycles sort of like the weather. Some hurricane seasons are rougher than others, some spring breaks are rougher than others.
Next week I am in St. Louis with some of my friends who happen to be some of the best stand-ups in the country. We are working the Westport and Fairview Heights Funnybones at night and shooting comedy sketches during the day. We will post the sketches on the internet. You can see a sample at my website or on myspace comedy. I'm really looking forward to the shows. I don't get to work with other comics as much as I would like. I'm really a big fan of comedy so I'm not even sure if I am looking forward to being onstage or to being in the back of the room while my friends are onstage.
In the last few years I've gotten very comfortable with mid-west crowds. Its almost like a hometown show in St. Louis for me. So now I feel at home on the west coast, in the mid west and in the south. Still a little out of sorts on the east coast. I'm talking about nothing now, avoiding the topic I wanted to write about. They are making a final call for a houston flight here at the gate that my Providenciales (the first flight on the trek to Grand Turk) flight is going out of. One of the hardest parts about being out on the road when you know you still have three or four days before you get home is being in an airport and seeing the flight that does go home and not being able to get on it.
Okay, here it is, Carnival just fired a bunch of people who do my job. Quite a few entertainers who thought they would be working for Carnival for a long time were let go. Many of them could tell you why they were fired, but most of them didn't expect it, either. I experienced the same thing to a smaller extent when I was on the Cher tour. When you are onstage and doing well, the feeling is very powerful. You feel strong, confident, irreplaceable. The truth is there are a lot of very talented people who don't have shows tonight or this week or this month. Along with them, there are a lot of talented people that have been doing this a very long time and are sick of their own act or where they are doing it. They dread their shows, they don't enjoy being onstage. I don't ever want to become like that. As soon as I'm not having fun onstage, I'm getting out of the way for other comics until I can fix it. I don't know exactly how to avoid getting sick of myself or my venues, but I think trying to continue to add new material all of the time, to phase out older stuff when I can, and to bring back and re-work parts of my act I haven't done in years keeps me on my toes and interested in what I am saying and doing onstage.
Other performers inspire me, also. I know after watching my friends onstage next week I will have a whole new energy about stand-up and loads of new, undeveloped material to keep me busy.
This business is unpredictable. Sometimes that is very exciting, other times it is terrifying.
tommy on 03.26.08 @ 11:45 AM CST [link] [No Comments]

Sunday, March 9th


I got to do a couple of shows at the Addison Improv in Dallas. This is a great club and I don't work there enough. I plan to return every few months for one or two nights. I also got to do a show at the Houston Improv and I will be appearing there again on the 13th. The morning after the Houston Improv show I had a six a.m. flight to Miami to get on an eleven twenty flight to Nassau to board the Carnival Sensation. I only got about three hours of sleep, but that isn't a big deal for me, I can fly out and sleep when I get on the ship, I only had one show at 10:30.
The six a.m. was postponed to 9:30 because of weather which would have got me into Miami after my connecting flight. They moved me to a direct flight that left at 10:30. I was looking forward to boarding the plane and taking a nap, but that would have to wait a little. I arrived at the gate and sprawled out on the floor of the airport to get a little sleep. I checked in at the gate and the gate agent told me that she wouldn't have a seat assignment for me until they started boarding the flight. They then started to try to get volunteers to take a later flight with travel vouchers. It is spring break and there are a lot of once or twice a year travellers in the airport who won't give their seats up.
Needless to say, I didn't get a seat on the direct flight, but my bags got a direct flight which is always good. I was put on a flight to Ft. Lauderdale to get a six forty flight to Nassau.
When I arrived in Ft. Lauderdale I noticed that many of the flights leaving near mine were weather delayed. I had been travelling for thirteen hours at this point and I couldn't outrun the weather. The same storm that delayed my six a.m. out of houston cancelled my six forty p.m. out of Ft. Lauderdale.
I finally arrived in Nassau at 10:05 for a 10:30 show. Luckily, I was working with the very talented Tia Thompson who always goes first. By the time I got through customs and immigration at the airport and security at the sea port, I boarded the ship at 10:35. I took all of my luggage backstage and changed clothes. I had about seven minutes to relax before I went on. The show was fun and it was the best show I've ever done in a baseball cap (no time to fix my hair).
I signed off of that ship at five that morning because it was leaving at six. The Fascination (the ship I'm on now) didn't arrive until seven thirty. I huddled on a bench surrounded by my luggage and literally waited for my ship to come in.
I'm getting really good at napping on floors and benches.
tommy on 03.09.08 @ 12:07 PM CST [link] [1 Comment]