Making my stand up debut in March

I will be making my stand up comedy debut at the Hidden House Comedy Club in Phoenix on March 17. They have shows every Wednesday and Thursday with comedians that are very passionate about the art form and are there generally working out new material. The Hidden House Best of CD is quite excellent. I heard Volume I last night. The audience tends to be hard corp comedy fans and not the bachelorette crowd. I'm hoping the ghosts of Hedberg, Hicks, Kinison and others are with me. I've been talking about this too long and need to finally do it. If I do well, and things continue to progress, I'm going to head out to L.A. this summer to get more experience.

I've become a huge fan of Todd Barry

About every two years I stumble upon a comedian, not necessarily an up and comer, just someone I was not in the know about, who blows me away. About four years ago there was Mitch Hedberg, which led me to Doug Stanhope, which in turn led me to Todd Barry. I just got all three of Barry's live albums and listened to them a couple of times. I think this one on the left is my favorite in the bunch, though they are all fantastic. Barry does an enormous number of relatively short riffs on everyday conventional wisdom, and he delivers them in his characteristic low key delivery. He takes everyday incidents and imprecise language, and he slams you with the truth on these little slices of reality.

Jokes.com
Todd Barry - Chocolate School
comedians.comedycentral.com
Funny Jokes Funny Videos Daniel Tosh Stand-Up

A new Mitch Hedberg release

Since Mitch won't be doing any new tours, this is the next best thing: The first and I would imagine last posthumous release. If you haven't caught the comedic stylings of Mitch Hedberg, you're missing out. What kind of world are we living in where Bernie Mac, Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks and Mitch Hedberg die young, but Sinbad and Carrot Top are hale as a horse?

In other matters, I've discovered in just a few weeks on the job that Saipan isn't the only place in America with severe academic issues. Indeed I can see literacy just falling off a cliff in this country. I have scores of students claiming not to have a single book in their house. Now, there is an especially strong tendency here among students to come up with every excuse under sun or moon to avoid work, but I'm starting to think they aren't lying about having no books in the house. Things like spelling here are far worse than in Saipan. With a far better staff of teachers, better funding, though not dramatic with all the federal goodies the CNMI gets or is at least eligible for and not all administrators take advantage of, students here in the mainland are every bit as intellectually troubled as what I saw in Saipan. There are bright spots. I have an honors class that reminds me why I got into this job.
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Chrissy Hyde, who has one of the sexiest voices in history, had an album called Learning to Crawl. I started seeing that already yesterday as Brad Ruszala's goddaughter is becoming mobile, not so agile, and sometimes hostile. She's still on the master cleanse of her own, drinking just milk.