How I'm Spending My Summer

I figured I'd keep some of you updated as to what I've been doing lately.  Nothing major, mostly because it's too damn hot out.  I've basically barricaded myself in my bedroom in front of a fan because Summer is horrible. 

The Comedy Scene

Honestly, I haven't been doing much comedy this Summer.  Mostly because my usual favorite places to do comedy have dropped off the radar for the time being.  The weekly showcases at the comedy club have been canceled for the summer since it's usually the worst season for comedy clubs anyway, but whether or not the showcases will come back for the Fall is still up the air, so I'm kinda worried.  And the usual Open Mic I was doing isn't quite worth it because save for a few people there (who themselves have started doing comedy), most of the audience doesn't give a crap no matter what we do.  It's sad because I used to kill at that place, sometimes getting multiple applause breaks in one set, only for maybe like 2 or 3 people actually paying attention.  There are a few more Open Mics in town but they seem to start up and then die off within a few weeks.  One of my buddies started one at his favorite bar and the shows got a very good response.  Unfortunately, it seems like the owners don't want to hassle with it so we've only gotten to do it there twice so far.  And as much as I'd like to go into Michigan, I'm not going to be driving anywhere without working air conditioning in my car.

I've had a few slightly higher-profile shows this Summer.  One of them was at a local battle of the bands and I was getting excited for it because it had the potential of being one of the biggest audiences I've performed for up to that point.  But it ended up being one of my worst shows ever, and I'm not completely sure why.  I don't want to brag and say it wasn't my fault but looking back, I can't really think of anything I could've done better outside of the usual: stage presence, crowd work, etc.  But it was so weird because every comic that went up before me seemed to kill.  Then I go up and suddenly no one gave a shit.  I think it was just because it was getting later in the night and people were getting more drunk and/or restless.  But when I had to get off stage and walk through the crowd I just performed in front of, I felt like absolute shit.  Not that I was expecting a pat on the back or a "nice job" from anyone, but it would've been nice.  I honestly felt like a leper and decided just to leave instead of sticking around and possibly embarrassing myself further.  In the close to two years I've been doing comedy, I rarely have "Why am I doing this?" moments because I instantly remind myself "Hey, this is like the only thing I'm good at" and I forget about it.  I've never been down enough to even consider quitting doing comedy but this was the closest.  I definitely had to re-evaluate things but I seemed to be over it by the next day.  But then I had someone pop back into my life that I necessarily didn't want to see again and...well, that's not funny so I'll just skip over it.

I had another show up in Michigan about a week or two ago and it was part of a contest and I guess my friends and I won because we've been invited back to the next round.  But the thing is we were the only ones that were even somewhat prepared or even capable of doing comedy.  The first two to go up were the kind of awkward "nerds" that would piss Bill Burr off and really should find something else to do.  I mean, I consider myself a nerd and awkward in my own right but it's something I'm trying to work on and improve, not use as a crutch or an excuse for my behavior.  The third guy showed promise but unfortunately he forgot his routine mid-way through and spent a legit minute or two completely stopped and trying to remember, only to finish up with some half-assed impressions.  Then I went up and did alright.  I'm still trying a bunch of new stuff out so it wasn't my best.  Then my two friends went up and did better, despite a drunken heckler that started in around my set and progressed to get even more annoying through the rest of the night.  By the time the "headliner" got up, he just spent his time yelling at the heckler.  So it seems like all I have to do to advance in a contest is take a two hour car ride, wait for another two hours for the show to start and just hope that other people suck worse than I do.  :-P

Also, don't forget to pop by my YouTube page for some sets and other random crap.

Video Games

I must say, the only other thing I've really been doing these past couple months aside from comedy and work is sitting on my ass playing a lot of video games.  Or rather, BUYING a lot of video games, at least.  On one of my last blog entries, I mentioned the last Humble Indie Bundle, which consisted of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Limbo, Superbrothers Sword and Sworcery EP, Psychonauts and Bastion but then in the second week unlocked Super Meat Boy, Braid and Lone Survivor.  Well, turns out my computer is so cheap that I could only play like 2 of those games.  Really, all I needed was a new video card so I got a cheap low/mid-range card to play them.  Soon afterwards, that's when the Steam Summer Sale started.  I gave in and joined Steam now that I had a computer capable enough to play decent games.  But I decided to run a little experiment with the sale: Get as many games as possible for just $25.  And here's the haul I ended up with:

Audiosurf
The Binding of Isaac (+DLC)
BIT.TRIP BEAT (+soundtrack)
BIT.TRIP RUNNER (+soundtrack)
Jamestown
Peggle Deluxe
Peggle Nights
Terrarira
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (OK, I didn't buy this one, it was a belated birthday gift from a friend but if I were actually awake during the sale, I probably would've bought it myself.)

After all that, I still have 31 cents left in my account!  So far, I've only really played the BIT.TRIP games (liking RUNNER a whole hell of a lot more than BEAT), Audiosurf and Peggle Deluxe.  I mostly wanted games I could just pop on and kill a little bit of time with.  But I am interested in starting up a Terraria game and sinking tons of hours into it.  If you're on Steam, find me at TheRyno665.

Also, I got a couple new games for the 360.  At first, I was playing back and forth between Just Cause 2 and Wet.  As much as I like Just Cause 2, the open world is a little bit TOO open and it takes too long to get things done sometimes.  I had started playing Wet to satiate my urge for dumb shoot-em-up action games because it looked like I wasn't going to get Lollipop Chainsaw as I wanted...but I ended up buying it after all.  As it was nearing release, I was getting kinda worried that it wouldn't be worth $60, especially considering I rarely buy games at launch prices anyway.  So I waited a couple weeks and Gamestop ran a sale on it for a couple days.  Between that and a birthday coupon, I ended up getting a used copy for a little more than $30.  Not bad for a game that had only been out for maybe a month at that point.  So far, I've only played the first couple of levels and I'm glad I didn't spend $60 for it.  Lollipop Chainsaw isn't a bad game, just kinda clunky.  For a button mashing game, some of the mechanics don't quite work and come off ineffective.  For example, you're encouraged to dizzy zombies before killing them to get more points.  But there's a definite lag going between dizzying and attacking that chances are you will get attacked by other zombies that you haven't dizzied or have become undizzy, so you might as well just stick with regular attacks so you don't get hurt, kinda negating the whole purpose of the dizzying mechanic.  Also, I was really pumped to hear that James Gunn was doing the writing for the game but it's not exactly his best work.  I didn't expect Lollipop Chainsaw to be high-brow entertainment or anything, but he can do better.

Instead, I've been playing Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning, which I ended up getting at Best Buy for just $10 (Well, $15 if you include having to buy a $5 magazine to get the coupon inside but still, worth it).  I'm having much more fun with KoAR, despite not being much of an RPG fan.  But since one of the few RPG games I like is the Fable series and considering KoAR plays almost exactly like the Fable games...but better, it makes sense.  Really, Kingdoms of Amalur is basically like Fable II but with better gameplay and a better fighting system, unfortunately it doesn't have the interesting characters, story or charm of the Fable games.  One night playing the game, I seriously just started accumulating side quests and doing them, not knowing who I was doing them for or why or what I was getting out of it.  It was just "Go here, do this, get that, come back, get stuff, lather, rinse, repeat."  It's like the video game equivalent of what I do when I'm bored with a book, my eyes continue down the page but I don't actually read the words and nothing ever registers in my brain.  Also, for all the random weapons and loot you get in the game, your inventory is so small you can hardly carry anything.  Even if you buy backpacks to expand your inventory size, it doesn't help much at all.  So I'm constantly picking up stuff and either selling it or trashing it.  I've actually gone halfway through a mission in a cave only for my inventory to fill up, so I backtrack and leave the cave so I can sell my stuff.  That proved to be too time-consuming so I ended up just trashing it.  And I'm the kind of guy who'll pick up just about anything, including books and notes and such, not knowing if it'll come in handy for a future quest or what.  So I never know what to get rid of.  But other than that, Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning is fun and will probably be the game I sink the most time into in the near future.

...At least until Sleeping Dogs comes out.  Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be getting that game anytime soon as I'm pretty strapped for money right now.  Oddly enough, I got 2 high profile 360 games and like 10 games on Steam for about the same price I'd pay for Sleeping Dogs on release.

Also, I've been playing Extreme Warfare Revenge (aka EWR for the kids on the streets) a lot.  I've been working on booking WWE since January of this year, starting at the Royal Rumble on.  Right now, I've hit October and I'm kinda in a transitional period where most of my feuds are ending and I need to be thinking about what to build up to for Wrestlemania.

Movies

I really haven't gotten any new movies either.  I did manage to snag Drive, Super and Horrible Bosses on Blu-Ray for cheap at a Family Video sale but I look back and actually mentioned that in one of my previous blog posts.  Beyond that, I did get a bunch of new WWE Blu-Rays.  Shockingly enough, WWEShop.com was running a sale with a few Blu-Rays for $9.99, including the brand new Falls Count Anywhere set.  So I got that, The Best of Raw and Smackdown 2011, The Best Pay-Per-View Matches of 2011 and The Best of Clash of the Champions, all for about $40 total.  So that's 9 Blu-Ray discs worth of wrestling that I eventually got through in about a couple weeks.  I wrote it off as a birthday present to myself...even though I also bought the video card for my computer soon thereafter.  

Music

Honestly, I've been listening to the same stuff I talked about in my last blog entry, same exact CDs and all. I haven't made it out to my local used record store but I got bored while writing this blog entry so I did just that earlier today.  I went there expecting to pick up the new Nachmystium album "Silencing Machine" thinking it came out this week but come to realize it comes out next week.  Ah well, they've released enough tracks as previews that I feel like I've already heard most of it.  So I ended up getting a used copy of "Reign Supreme" by Dying Fetus.  I'm beginning to wonder if my shop has some sort of hook-up with Relapse Records or some guy just listens to them and trades them in immediately because the album just came out like a month ago.  Last year, I was able to snag "used" copies of  Exhumed and Fuck The Facts' new albums right after release.  Ah well.  Anyways, I've only listened to a few songs on the way home and it's typical Dying Fetus.  Then again, I did kinda lose track and stop listening to them after "Stop At Nothing" and apparently I missed the albums where they experimented melody and whatnot so whatever.

Also, I bought WCW Slam Jam No. 1, a compilation of themes from early '90s WCW.  This will make a good companion piece for Hulk Rules.

Oh, and I decided to make a Pet Shop Boys playlist on Pandora, even though I haven't even used Pandora in like a month.  I've been hankering for '80s new wave, even though I have a Blaqk Audio station that kinda became that by default.  But after hearing "It's A Sin" for the first time in years and then numerous times within a week, I figured it was a sign.

Books
 
Lest you think I'm some sort of heathen, I actually have been reading a little bit more lately.  I'm finally getting to the bottom of my stack of books from when Borders closed last year.  Right now I'm reading The War For Late Night by Bill Carter, about the whole debacle for The Tonight Show between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brian.  But I've stopped reading that for the moment because it's just too damn long.  Normally, I don't mind long books but the chapters are so big, they might as well be their own books.  It's not a good book to just pick up and read on the toilet (which I usually do) so I end up taking multiple days to finish a chapter or I just have to sit down and force myself to finish it before bed or something like that.

And even though I've sworn off dating and thinking that there would be a girl for me somewhere out there, I decided to finish up The Art of War for Dating, mostly because it was an easier read for when I needed to shit.  I'm so glad I'm giving up on dating because this book reminds me that most women aren't worth the trouble of going through all the crap we have to do to attract them.  There was one example where a guy goes to his frat party, chats up this girl and they end up talking for hours because they got along so great, but when the girl left to go to the bathroom, she never came back.  Instead, the guy found his dream girl giving one of his frat bros a handy.  So instead of blaming the girl for being a trash bag ho, they blamed the guy for making a friend instead of sealing the deal by doing her or whatever.  Again, not worth the trouble for me anymore.  Leave me to my food, at least I know it loves me back.

Then I decided to pick up No Wonder My Parents Drank by Jay Mohr for cheap.  When going to a new Chinese buffet in town only for it not to be open yet (or closed down already, maybe), I found myself walking around Big Lots in search of crap.  I wanted some books about comedy so it was down to this or Tracy Morgan's book...or Hulk Hogan's book, but I wasn't looking for unintentional comedy.  So I picked up Jay Mohr's book, being a bigger fan of his than of Tracy's.  But unfortunately, the book is about having a kid and how magical the experience is and all that crap.  Jay usually has some long-winded story about how his kid mispronounced a word or something but at least he's aware of how cheesy he comes off, remarking "What kind of a homo has this kid turned me into?" early on in the book.  And there are some funny stores, but as a twenty-something who doesn't exactly plan on settling down and having kids anytime soon, it's not exactly my bag.  But at least his bits about farting in public and blaming it on his kid are pretty funny.