#so many ppl said my last art reminded them of va-11 hall-a

[winstonhcomedy]

How’d Winston Do This Weekend? 10/12-10/14

WHATTTTT A SWEET DELICIOUS DADDY OF A WEEKEND! I had a show each night. Two booked and one open mic. I love weekends where I am working. This coming weekend I’m off because of a wedding, but then after that it is back to work!!!

Let’s start with Friday night. I figured I was in town so I might as well head down to Slyderz in Richmond. This room on Friday night’s is run by Lynn Painter, who used to run a show at Cary 100 on Wednesdays. It’s an urban room with dope staff, and killer wings and sliders. I got there at around 7:15 and only other person there was the bartender. 

I ended up ordering the dry rub wings and they were absolutely delicious! I am a wing boy. I love chicken wings. This was like the 5th time in 7 days where my dinner was chicken wings. I am going to die young, but I will have a huge smile in the casket with sweet buffalo sauce and lemon pepper running through my veins.

Lynn showed up around 7:50 and started to set up. We caught up a bit, and shot the shit until a couple other comics showed up. Chris St. John and Moe Singleton. Both newer comics who are out here grinding at shows. Chris had a ukulele with him and was also carrying a copy of the book Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. It’s basically a self help book written by a plastic surgeon. I know nothing about it other than it sounds like it would be some of the most superficial wack ass shit of all time, but Chris swears by it. 

Turns out he set some of the groundwork for a lot of modern self-help books and workshops. It’s all about getting a positive outcome through visualization. So sounds pretty interesting, but honestly I’ve never been into self-help stuff. It always feels like common sense with fancy wrapping paper and a price tag on it. But if it works for you laydees more power to you. I am definitely a proponent of self-fulfilling prophecy so I don’t have too much room to talk.

At this point it starts to look like nobody is going to show up. It is after 8 (the start time) and we have a limited number of comics and no audience, but then they started to come in. When the show started we ended up with about 11 ppl there, so we were ready to get it on the road.

Lynn went first and was performing with hip-hop music playing super loudly behind him. He did a good job of making sure the audience was done ordering, and eating by the time he brought the first comic up which is always appreciated.

The first comic up was Moe. The best part is Moe had been waiting like 35 minutes for his wings to get there. As soon as his wings arrive and he takes his first bite Lynn yell’s, “give it up for MOE SINGLETON!” 

That is one of the great fears as a comedian. That your sweet, delicious, precious, dripping with sauce wings will arrive as soon as you’re called on stage. 

So Moe is up there doing his material with Asian Zing sauce on his hands an the has an ok set. A lot of stuff doesn’t work but he has some stuff that does. There is one lady in the audience who is throwing shade the entire set. Just side comments and being salty during the set. The highlight of which was Moe closing super strong doing his best joke, and people start clapping. She responds by saying, “y’all really gonna clap for that? Ok then.” Which honestly absolutely destroyed me. 

I am up second and I decide that Im going to have to get control of this crowd. So I start my set by talking to “the mean lady”. Just busting her balls by asking her why she had to be so mean to Moe. That we are all following our dreams and she’s just ruining them, and it was killing. It was a super fun set. I ask her what her name is and she avoids the question multiple times by shoveling fries in her mouth which was absolutely hilarious to me. This goes on for like 5 minutes and I get other people involved and it turned out into being a super fun set.

Honestly those are the best and most fun ways to handle a heckler. It was addressed to the point where she apologized to Moe but nothing was said that was so mean that she’d feel offended and walked out. She was laughing and having a super fun time as well. 

After getting control of the room I did about 2 new jokes and they both worked really well. They were both race jokes, and I like gauging an all black crowd to make sure that what I'm saying makes sense and isn’t ridiculous and offensive. 

I’d give this set about an A-. I felt really good about it, and it was definitely the best set of work week. It put me in a good mood for the two booked shows I had the rest of the weekend.  Definitely a dope start to the weekend.

Saturday I had a super chill and relaxing day which was nice. I almost completely forgot I was booked at The Push comedy theatre in Norfolk VA. I was supposed to be on the showcase, but regular host/comic Hatton Jordan was under the weather and needed someone to host and zaddy needs the money so I agreed. 

They had several dropouts so I had to snag a comic to ride with. I figured I’d pick a newer comic who could use the experience, so I guilted Rick Williams to skip his hockey game to ride with me.

We headed down, and had a super good conversation about comedy, Richmond, goals, aspirations, and just bad show stories. So it made the 2+ hour trip go by super fast.

We get there a little early and decide to look for a bite to eat. We find this hole in the wall taco bar called Sanctuary. It is sketchy looking af. It is down an alley, it has a flickering light overhead and absolutely no way to see inside or out. 

We go in and we are in this super narrow but dope spot. There is two tables and then the rest of the building is a bar that runs all the way back to the kitchen.  There is like pop/punk art on the wall, and they’re playing some rocking tunes over the speakers and running music videos that don’t match the songs on the televisions. It is like we are in a refurbished lane from a shooting range it is so narrow.

The tacos were delicious and the bartender was super nice. This will definitely be my spot to eat whenever I'm invited back to The Push.

We go over and check out part of the show going on before us. It is an improv theatre so they’re doing an improvised Halloween show to a nearly sold out crowd. The audience is loving it even if Improv isn’t my cup of tea. We watch for about thirty minutes and decide to head to the lobby to get ready for the show.Once in the lobby the other comics start to arrive including Kyle Phalen and Nick Deez (rva transplant). 

The first show ends and they make na announcement that if you were there for the first show you get into the stand up show for free. This is dope and we get a pretty good retention with about 20 people staying for the stand up show. This coupled with the people that bought tickets led us to having about 35+ ppl at the show which was sick.

They had us set up with a music mic stand stand, I said bump that and went to the car to get a traditional one. I just never really like anything but a round base mic stand. I might be crazy but it just is comfortable.

The show starts and I do about 15 or 16. I had a pretty good hosting set. I get so in my head and don’t do what I should do which is crowd work. I do about 1 minute of it and then go into my material. Half of my stuff hits really hard, the rest does ok, and only one thing doesn’t work at all. All in all for a host set it was pretty dope. I’d say this was a C. 

Honestly compared to what I can do I’d say this was definitely average, but that’s ok. People are now settled down and ready for the show. I did my job as a host, and I can tell people appreciated what I was doing. The big pops really popped.

Next up is Rick Williams, and he DID NOT DO SO HOT. Oooooweeeee laydees. He definitely was having one of those sets where you can tell the person on stage is hating it. It was a good learning experience for him. He’s in that stage of being a new comic where a lot of what he writes is sexual, violent, edgy, etc. 

It was cool to see him work through that, end up getting a few laughs and realize once he got off stage that he has other things he needs to work on. Always impressive to see a new comic really understand that not everything is going to work everywhere and it is good to be versatile. 

Later Nick Deez went up and had the set of the night. The people really dug and vibed with what he was doing on stage. He’s about a year in, and def making some strides. These are some of my fav people to bust balls with, so we were having a blast after the show.

I was singing a cover of Harvey Danger’s Flagpole Sitta where I changed all of the lyrics to being about Rick bombing. I had so much fun I’m definitely recording a cover of it on Garageband and when he leasts expects it I will release it haha.

All in all a super dope night with good friends. The ride back was fun as well. We got deeper into comedy, and our fears about doing it. Talked about my hopeful future move, and why I’m so scared of it. 

We really got into some kinda deep territory, but it was definitely good to do. I am super self conscious about my self and especially my comedy. I pride myself on being the hardest working comic in the area. All I can control is how many shows I do, how much I write, and how critical I am of myself. I legitimately will do and have done shows anywhere. I’ve done clubs, colleges, coffee shops, urban rooms, improv theatres, dive bars, redneck bars, nightclubs, alt rooms, theatres, I've opened for bands, singers, poets, drag shows, and this week I’ll be performing on my first burlesque show. Unfortunately I always have this fear that I can’t cut it in certain rooms, but each show is a reminder that that is bullshit and I’ll put my stuff up against whoever.

We ended our night getting McDonalds drive thru at 2 am, and that is the perfect way to end a night of comedy. I went to sleep happy knowing I had brunch and one last show the next day.

Sunday I go to brunch with Brock Hall and Rick Williams at Metro Diner in Willow Lawn. It was a nice relaxing brunch which I followed up with watching the last Harry Potter movie. 

Then it was time to get ready to head down to Newport News to be on Sunday Funnies at Cozzy’s Comedy Club which is Virginia’s longest continuously running comedy club. I always enjoy this show, because it is run and booked by my good friend Holly Owens. 

This week Mu Cuzzo was hosting and the lineup was filled with some of my favorite people to hang and chill with. Closing it out was Sid Bridge who runs the open mic at Cozzys and is an all around swell jew. We also had Jounte Ferguson, Torrey Huggins, and Ryan Valentine on the mic. Allison Moore was also on the show and finally there was Mike Jay. I’ve never met or seen Mike Jay before but he seemed like a good guy.

This is one of those shows that you have to make fun. There were 13 people there and 5 of them weren’t on the show and weren’t employees. But honestly Mu brought some good energy in what I assume was his first time hosting. We all just got into it and it became one giant super fun workshop.

Jounte did a new joke about how he might have slept with a r******d girl. I work at a school for autism so I don’t use that word on stage, it doesn’t work for me personally, but I will never police a comic’s language on stage. 

When I went up I just made myself have fun. I did nothing but crowdowrk for the first 8 minutes and it was all me asking questions to Jounte about how it was a “maybe.” Like how didn’t he know, and asking him a bunch of questions. he was getting so uncomfortable it was hilarious. Everybody was dying laughing and we were all having such a good time. I then closed with 4 minutes of new jokes and they didn’t go so hot. With an intimate crowd they really wanted the crowd work which was ok. I had a super hot and fun set and I'd honestly say for the room and how everyone else’s set went I’d give myself an A-.

The rest of the show was fun. Allison had a fun set as well, and Mike Jay did fine. He had some questions after the show about Clash of the Comics at the Richmond FunnyBone so we chatted about that for a bit before I left. 

Sid closed it out and I forgot he has a few jokes I really really dig. He has one about replacing any word in a sentence with the word “jew” and it becomes offensive and it’s a great joke. I’d never seen him play bass on stage but I guess that’s what he closes with. 

This was a fun show and my entire ride home I just kept thinking to myself how good it felt to do super well in front of nobody.

All of my success is tied directly to how much fun I am having on stage and I always forget that. Even in tough or weird rooms with or without audiences I need to remember I love comedy and that this shit is supposed to be fun.

So that was my weekend and it was super fun and delicious so until next time LAYDEES!!! I LOVE YOU ALL XOXO

#comedy #jokes #standup #improv #Richmond #norfolk #newportnews #cozzys #push