Ending

This is it. My final blog post of the summer. For full effect, you can listen to these songs while you read the post. Here and here.

That's better. This morning I awoke and hung out for the last time downstairs. At around 11 we started the final clean-up and packing effort. It culminated with the baking of cookies (from a mix...) to welcome the guys back. We headed out around 12:30 and had an uneventful ride home, though there was a touch of traffic. We also listened to Rush Limbaugh ironically. Nice. And then, upon my arrival home, my Dale summer was over.

Overall, I think I am pleased with the comedy aspect of my summer. The comedy class, though not as great as the reviews made it out to be, was certainly a nice way to jump-start my comedy career. The performance, however, definitely spoiled me. Even a show at school might not be for that many people, even at its most successful. So in DC I did 24 performances in the about eight weeks after my class, which works out to about three performances a week. But I was definitely too skittish in the beginning, I should have just dived in at the beginning. But once I got into my groove, I was out four to five nights a week, which is about what I anticipated.

I don't think I realized how much of a constraint performing would be to writing. I definitely could have written more material, but then it would have just sat on my computer. Either that, or I would have been tempted to do new material each night and would have never worked on my old stuff. So I definitely thought I would be spending more time writing than I actually was. Maybe that's the benefit of writing sketches or things like that. But then you have to film them. So, it's tough. In retrospect, I wish I had taken some sort of random job at a comedy club in town. Even just calling people to remind them of reservations. I certainly had the time, and I could have made connections and even filled in for a comedian who was stuck in traffic. And then Seinfeld's agent would have seen me. And then I would have made it big. When I realized I had more free time than expected it was already too late. Oh well.

I definitely think that DC was the right place for me. I don't know about the NYC scene, but I can't imagine it would have been nearly as easy to get stage time. I never had to get places super early to sign up, I never had to bring people with me. It was also nice to have the same comedians on the circuit so I could at least form a marginal relationship with them. It was really a core group of 10-15 comics, and they all knew each other, they were all friends. Perhaps I'll hunt some of these guys down on facebook and keep marginally in touch. And make them give me an internship at their government contractors next summer.

So where do I go from here? Back to school. Where there will almost certainly be a stand-up club. I'm not sure exactly how I want it to function, but I want it to exist. I want to get a stand-up culture on campus for people who would not have pursued it otherwise. I want there to at least one or two shows a year where everyone makes their friends come and we perform for a large number of people. I want to keep getting better. As for further down the road, I don't want comedy to dictate what I do next summer. But I will certainly give it some weight if I'm deciding between jobs/internships in NYC and DC. When the time comes, I'll see how much it actually factors in.

So that's it. I am home for two more weeks, just hanging out, seeing family and whoever hasn't already left for college. I am glad to have found something that I can continue indefinitely and that I can bring back to school with me. And I'm glad it is something with basically only one goal: to make others laugh. What could be better?