Life, Baseball, and Stand-up Comedy

Reading this piece by Patrick Flood reminded me a bit of my six years as a stand-up comic. I've written before about how Patrick Flood was becoming one of my favorite Mets bloggers with his dry humor and vivid use of language.  I was disappointed when he disappeared from the SNY.tv blog network but happy when he briefly surfaced on Amazin' Avenue earlier this year before disappearing yet again.

Then his piece appeared this week, where he explained how seeing things behind the scenes wasn't as fun as those of us on the outside think it is.  The piece is worth reading even if you're not a baseball fan, just from this start alone:

"I have had my sneakers caked with the clay from a Major League Baseball field. I have explored an empty stadium in Florida in the rain. I have sat next to Keith Olbermann during a game and had a brief conversation with him about my hamburger. I have lent a pen to David Wright, and then used that pen to take tests for the rest of my senior year of college. I have tried to explain the infield fly rule to a middle-age man from Scotland who writes a rugby blog. I have successfully snuck into the background of postgame television interviews.

I have also tripped on the dugout stairs as Ike Davis was recording a radio interview, and believe his “whoa, easy there” made it on the air. I have fallen over the soft back of a sofa chair in the Mets clubhouse while trying to lean back casually, and then pretended nothing happened. I have seen far more naked men than I ever wanted, and barring an unforeseen career in adult movies, I believe I will die having seen more naked men in real life than naked women. And I have stolen a hot dog from the media dining room at Citi Field."

It is a great read and it really spoke to me because it describes my time as a stand-up comic.  I took a comedy workshop in 2004 just to avoid having regrets 20 years later of how I could have tried to do stand-up but never did.  After a six-week workshop and a "final exam" performing in front of a live audience, I found myself asked back to perform in another show three weeks later.

Eventually this led to other shows and other venues and even a few private events that paid money, although it was clearly a hobby.  I even won 3rd prize at a company talent show, where I was the only non-musical act out of 24 performers.  Four years later, in 2008, I took advantage of a layoff situation to try to make a career out of it.  Unfortunately, that happened in August 2008 and with the entire financial system collapsing in September 2008, opportunities dried up since no one had any money for luxuries like entertainment anymore.  I still plugged away but found that trying to turn a hobby into a job isn't as much fun because you're constantly stressed about the next opportunity, the next payday, when the big break is actually going to happen, is it going to happen, will the material get stale, how much material do I need and on and on.

Then in February 2009 I performed in a "bringer" show, where you only got stage time if you brought someone to the show.  It was the day of a major snowstorm so no one I knew was able to show up.  I had done bringers before but the producer would always let the comics that didn't bring anyone get a few minutes of stage time near the end of the show out of pity.  However, I trekked all the way to The Comic Strip to do a show only to be told by the producer that I couldn't get my stage time because I didn't bring anyone.  He wasn't willing to consider the fact that there had been a major snowstorm outside so the club wasn't full anyway.

As luck would have it, the headliner for that show, Ted Alexandro, was also running late getting the the club for, I assume to be the aforementioned snowstorm.  I told the producer that if Ted can't make it, he can end the show but if he needs someone to stall for five minutes, send me on stage until Ted arrives because I have enough material to go as long as he needs.  Just as the MC was about to close the show, he grabbed her and said, "Send Amod up there."  Apparently he finally heard back from Ted that he was five minutes away.  As you can see here, I ended up doing a six-minute set:



As I got off stage after this set, I saw the producer of the show standing with Ted in the back of the room.  I mentioned a mutual friend to Ted, so he knew who I was.  (My mentor from the job I left in 2008 is a deacon in Ted's church.)  After the show, the producer told me I owed him for giving me stage time without bringing anyone to the club.  I was tempted to say that I saved his ass from closing the show with the crowd never seeing the advertized headliner for the show.  Instead I begrudgingly got the DVD of my set that I posted above and left to go home.  I did send him an e-mail a day later telling him how I thought it was unethical for bringer shows to be strictly enforced.  I also sent an e-mail to Ted because he was trying to unionize comics and I thought the barker/bringer practice was an issue.  I wasn't surprised when I didn't get a response to either e-mail.

I also decided that I had had enough of this business.  If I want to be funny, I'll get a job and add humor into boring and uptight corporate settings, which I'm proud to say that I try to do as much as possible now.  If I want to do something involving public speaking, I'll stand and yell at a street corner, or go to strangers' funerals and give cheerful eulogies (don't worry, I haven't done either of these.)  I have performed twice since then but both times were to help out my dear friend Judy Vincent in her stand-up pursuits, including one show headlined by the hilarious Vidur Kapur, one of the nicest people in a business that needs more people like him.

In a way, I still do stand-up, however it's the toughest crowd I could ever have.  My audience consists of two people: my 7 and 2 year old daughters.  And I couldn't be happier.

Johan Santana: The Lost Man of Mets Camp

One of my favorite Mets bloggers, Patrick Flood, has joined one of my favorite Mets blogs, Amazin Avenue. If you've never read Patrick's writing before, he has a way of creating vivid imagery with words that very few sports bloggers are able to do. This was a particularly interesting post about Johan Santana, with this astute observation as to why he flew under the radar before becoming an All-Star and two-time Cy Young Award winner with the Minnesota Twins:

"...at his best Santana was genius. He didn’t throw remarkably hard by major league standards, his slider was just a junky waste pitch he only threw to lefties, and he always seemed to be fighting himself. He’s not unusual physically, maybe other than being broad shouldered. There are good reasons he was never a prospect and the Astros now-famously let a young Santana go in the Rule 5 draft. His gifts were never obvious because they were always hidden away in his mind. Santana’s brilliance was not only in reconciling his body and his will in the way all great control pitchers do, but in that his will was able to dominate the physical in ways that seemed, at times, almost supernatural. Like he could actually decide, after throwing a pitch, whether it was a fastball or a changeup. Or he could cause a popup to hang in the air just long enough for the shortstop to chase it down. Or he could not only manipulate most hitters, but actually control some. As in some poor slugger like Dan Uggla didn't even have a choice as whether to swing, he just swung or didn't swing because Santana made him."

Matt Harvey = Bruce Wayne?

Patrick Flood has a great theory on what could happen to Matt Harvey if his Major League debut is a failure:

"...best-case scenario is that Harvey is ready and pitches to a 3.50-4.00 ERA with the Mets for 10 starts. The worst-case is that Harvey struggles and descends into an existential crisis, leaves pitching to join a ninja monastery, and emerges years later as a crime-fighting vigilante. Which really isn't that bad, all things considered."

Enjoy The Dark Knight when it comes out. That could be Matt Harvey if things don't turn out as hoped.

Knuckleballer in Full Ascendancy | Patrick Flood Blog

Fantastic blog post by Patrick Flood. Well worth the lengthy read. Here's a great excerpt from it:

"Hitting a good knuckleball may be near-impossible, but it’s probably easier for hitters trained to make contact instead of swinging with max-effort. E.g., Omar Infante, a cardinal in the church of just-making-contact, has excellent career numbers against Dickey and is one of the few hitters who looks comfortable in the batter’s box against the knuckleball. But Infante is the exception, and most modern hitters run closer to Dan Uggla’s troglodytic approach to hitting. Which approach can be reduced to: see ball, swing as hard you possibly can, repeat. The violence and power of the modern swing is basically useless against a well-thrown knuckleball, and no hitters yet seem to know how to adjust to Dickey’s magic show."

He gets extra points in my book for use of the word 'troglodytic', which is quite apt in describing something being done by Dan Uggla.

The poetic simplicity of Spring Training, according to Mets blogger Patrick Flood

Patrick Flood writes a very long and extremely descriptive piece on his thoughts from spending time at the Mets Spring Training facility. Patrick is quickly becoming one of my favorite Mets bloggers with his dry humor and vivid use of language. Read this piece for the comparison of Johan Santana's changeup to driving behind a car with no brake lights, as well as for this nugget on where a press pass allows you to sit at Digital Domain Park:

"You, with a press pass, can also sit in places other people aren’t always allowed to sit. You can sit in the air-conditioned media room where there is free soda. You can sit in the conference room and listen to the manager’s post-game press conference. You can sit on the top of the scattered picnic tables, and security persons are less inclined to ask you not to do so. You can sit just about anywhere in the stadium during the major league games. You can sit in section 203, row L, seat 15, provided it’s unoccupied, but if that seat wins free KFC giftcard in a scoreboard promotion, you don’t get the giftcard because it’s not actually your seat. This will be made clear by several people, even if you have no intention of trying to claim the KFC giftcard. You can both sit and stand on the Arrigo Dodge Chrysler Jeep Palm Beach Party Zone along the right field line, but — full disclosure – “Party Zone” appears to be a misnomer. You can sit on the berm behind right field, on bladeless grass that seems to have no dirt beneath it, only older yellowed grass no matter how far you dig with your fingers, and watch the five-year-olds play catch with their mothers with found baseballs. Only most mothers are informed about their participation in the game of catch mid-flight, so it’s really more watching five-year-olds peg their mothers with baseballs."

Could the Mets Release Mike Pelfrey?

You know the saying, "With friends like these, who needs enemies?" The same can be said of the person that wrote this post on whether the Mets should cut Mike Pelfrey:

"I’m a big Pelfrey fan, have been from his college days but this is now six years in with inconsistent performance."

Patrick Flood recently wrote about how Mike Pelfrey isn't as bad as everyone thinks and isn't as good as everyone believes he could be. However, I think the big man is out of lifelines with the $1 million question hanging out there.