Saturday March 24th, 2007 - Chicago, IL

Crawling out of the abyss one step at a time. Today was pretty good on a lot of levels. It started with a lunch trip to the Old Country Buffet with Jerry and Warwick. I have simple tastes in life and hanging out at the O.C.B. is one of my favorites. There is a dinner/show package that’s very affordable. I get all the baked chicken and spaghetti I want to eat and I can amuse myself watching all the people pack food down their gullets like zoo animals.

Today’s show was especially entertaining. It looked like Ellis Island in there and I could watch people of every color in the rainbow beat their children and start family arguments. It always fascinates me to watch people and study human nature even when I don’t have a clue as to what language they are speaking. People are people and I watched and learned.

Most of the time walking through the cemetery we were brainstorming about improving the comedy classes. Warwick is a marketing major and Jerry has known me since I started teaching and even financed my first version of the classes on cassette ten years ago. Those are pretty dated now and I am a much better teacher so rather than try to salvage that stuff it would be better to just record a new course on CD and start over. The time seems right.

Charles Atlas was the other website that blew me away. That’s the guy who advertised in the comics books for years and years selling the bodybuilding courses through the mail. He died in the 1970s but someone bought the rights to keep his name and image and has a website that is really slick. They still sell the course for $49.95 but have the downloadable e-book course for $45. Personally I’d rather have the actual course and pay the few bucks more but there is something very attractive about receiving $45 to hit the ‘send’ button.

That site also sells vitamin supplements and t-shirts and it must be doing well or I have to believe it wouldn’t still be up. I remember seeing it a few years ago and today I looked at it again and it looked even better. These are the kind of things that get me EXCITED.

I have always been fascinated with mail order and thinking outside the box and taking a project from absolute nothing and breathing life into it and this may be what I’m looking for. I am not that far off from making this work and I’ve paid my dues for years so I won’t have to start from total zero. I have the product, now I need to market it and present it for a customer base that wants it. There are WAY more people in a town that want to learn of comedy SECRETS than actually be a comedian. It’s like magic books. More people want to know the secret of how the trick is done than to actually learn to do the trick itself. I am increasing my customer base exponentially by presenting the course in this way to them.

I still want to offer a course for people who want to be comedians because I love that so much but making something more digestible to the masses is smart business and I will do that ASAP. Not that I need anything else to do but this is really a worthwhile project. I am already experienced in teaching and have worked hard to get this far. Now all I have to do is put it in a product that can be both sold and used to get my name out to a new audience.

I now have projects up the wazoo, wherever that is. I need to get that movie script back on the front burner and I will do that next week in Colorado Springs. Then I will also get cracking on the classes too. Pretty soon my wazoo will be so full I’ll have to get a wazoo sidecar to carry all my projects around. And if that’s not enough I’ll get myself a trailer.

The best way to keep my spirits up is to keep focusing on projects like this and not the misery of driving 700 miles for $200 five days in a row. I will eventually find a place to live and I have a few bucks put aside to use as a cushion so I don’t HAVE to make those long drives if I don’t want to and can spend time finishing these other projects. I know it is a gamble but the gamble is on ME so I’ll take that one every time. Now I’m starting to think a little smarter and I am starting to have fun again. This is what I was meant to do.

I can’t say I won’t get depressed again but I can say I’m starting to work out of this one.