Hola spring! It's getting warmer, and I'm getting happy about that. The winter doldrums are going away, and the warmth is starting to creep in slowly. When it does, Northern New England will be a much better place.

April was just awesome. I miss it already. I spent the first week at Rascal's in Ocean Township, New Jersey for a string of shows, and I also slipped down to Atlantic City for some fun. Once I pulled in to my hotel, I realized that the Ocean Township was rather dull, and I may not be able to find mischief. I was mistaken. I had a blast. The shows were fun, the staff was great, and everybody involved made it a week to remember. Thanks Rascal's!

After the shows, I wandered into New York City for a few days. My cousin Nate lives in the Upper west side of Manhattan, so I crashed with him for a few days, and helped him move to a new apartment.

On the first night, I hooked up with comic friends Al Ducharme and Kevin Flynn for a couple of toddies. It was good to see them, and I owe them each a beer. Thanks guys.

I spent one of the days down at ground zero. It was pretty heavy stuff. It was very difficult to put my emotions together it was that surreal. It was hard to believe that just seven months prior to my visit was when the whole world changed. I stood in awe of the site, and all the workers cleaning up and pulling bodies of the fallen out. It was saddening, but empowering. There truly is nothing more resilient than the human spirit. We shall overcome.

The next day was moving day. Nate rented a Ryder van, and we hauled all of his belongings out of one place and into another. What a joy. After the last load of crap was emptied, we parked the van in front of his pad, showered up, and ventured down to Times Square to see In Flames and Jag Panzer. I felt overdressed, wearing a token Shaner shirt and jeans with a dressy leather jacket. Nate however, was wearing slacks and a tweed jacket. What an asshole. He raced to the merch table to see if he could buy earplugs. I joked all night about “the guy in the tweed jacket who wants some earplugs.” He is a terminal victim.

The show was a blinder. I won't bore you with the details, but I'll post a link of a brief review I wrote here.
After the show, I was having a metal meltdown on the subway. My head was buzzing like a hive of bees, and just thrilled at what I had witnessed. Life was really good. It was about to change for Nate.

We go back to his new pad, only to find that the rented van had been stolen. Yikes. The NYPD shows up, throw us in the cruiser and we comb Manhattan for the estranged van. No such luck. We head to the station, and our officer seems more interested in the hooker with the tight butt that someone else had arrested than a guy in a tweed jacket with toilet paper crammed in his ears and a half in the bag rivet head transcribing Swedish metal lyrics. I don't blame him.

We sit there until the wee hours, and headed home with zero results. We wake up in the morning late, and I realized that I have twenty minutes to get to Penn Station. I said screw it and took a later train back to my car in Jersey. Nate called Ryder, and they immediately tried to screw him by whacking his card for five grand. His card company denied that access, but to sum it up, he's over a barrel here. They're going to try to get it out of him anyway they can, but he's got a lawyer to help him sort it out. I feel bad for the kid; he or nobody deserves this, especially when he doesn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. It sucks.

The rest of the month was spent in Boston and the surrounding areas performing my act, and preparing for the Boston Comedy festival competition, which I'm to perform in on April 29th at the Vault. To be honest, I'm not looking forward to it; my set consists of tried and true material that is tired to me. I'd rather go up and do my new set poorly than the older set and do well. I'm not looking for anything out of the festival other than a chance to see some friends. That's the fun part.

I did a lot of joke writing in April, and have performed some of the material sporadically around clubs, but I haven't had many chances to devote most of the stage time to the new act, because of prepping for the festival, auditions, and club work. I'm looking forward to dedicating most of May to developing a new 10 to 15 minutes. I'm excited for that. To be honest, my favorite show all month was a Sunday showcase at the Connection in Portland where I did ten minutes of all new material. It went really well, and it was exhilarating. It was like the first time I ever did stand up before. I can't wait to do it again.