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How I Really Got Into Stand Up

 

If you’re reading this blog, I’m going to let you in on a secret. While I did get into standup after being booed off stage at karoake, there is more to the story.
 
Years before I ever got on stage, my randomly assigned freshman year roommate, and very quickly one of my best friends, Jay Schultz started performing stand up during college. Since we were already business partners and co-founders of an online website that parodied Rutgers University (our now alma mater), I quickly became his stand up manager. 
 
Since I didn’t have any show biz contacts or too many social skills, my management mostly consisted of hearing his jokes over and over again and helping him find the best delivery, walking around dorm lounges and asking people to listen to his 5 minutes of material, and collecting 10% of practically nothing.
 
Once we graduated, Jay moved to NYC and continued doing comedy while I remotely and terribly managed him from 100 miles away in Connecticut. Jay wound up moving to L.A. but was spending the summer in Atlantic City before the move. I was on a project in Philadelphia , which is an hour from AC. I felt a duty as his (useless but still not fired) manger to scout out the comedy clubs in Philly (all 2!) for him as he was coming to visit one of these weeks.
 
After watching the free open mic show for two straight weeks, I went home slightly buzzed and wrote some jokes that I thought of while watching the performing comics. I edited the jokes throughout the week, ran them by Jay and other friends, they all provided different feedback and said I should try getting up there, so I said “why the hell not?” and tried it the very next week. That was July 2008. You can view my first time diasaster here. My heart had never beaten so fast as the first time I got up there and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Philly Knows How To Riot

So I was in Philly last night when they won the World Series. And based on my 4 hours of riot observation, Philly knows how to party! Some high lights:

  • A guy running with a large orange construction barrel towards the riot police
  • Looting taking place at an Italian Restaurant that closed
  • Rioters rocking the police bus and almost tipping it
  • Random dumpster fires with 10 foot flames
  • 100 people climbing on a firetruck and celebrating
  • Guy climbing the traffic light, hanging there for 20 minutes and then jumping
  • Ten different people trying to knock down the holiday liberty bell light display hanging on the corner and ten different people failing to knock it down
  • Bank window getting smashed (they had some nice bullet proof glass though, as it didn’t break, just had a HUGE spider web)
  • Lots of beer bottles getting smashed into the ground (and a few being chucked into the crowd / at the cops)
  • Me deciding that a wooden, ten foot, police “do not cross” board would make for a great championship belt to parade through the streets. And not seeing the cop three feet away from me. Good thing I know how to talk to cops or I’d be posting this from jail!*
  • Me spilling my coffee this morning as I was sorting through my riot photos

I just hope Rutgers riots this good when we win a football national championship!

 

*My conversation with the police officer went something like this:

“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know”
“You don’t know?”
“No ma’am”
“Well you better put that back”
“Yes ma’am”
“That’s not how it was”
“Sorry maam. Let me fix that. Have a nice night.”
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