Snow Driving: It's How You Use It

The first lowland/suburban snowfall has come to us here in the greater Puget Sound area, covering the hills and side streets with nearly 1/6th of an inch of slushy snow and the screams of adults, freaking out because they have to get from Costco to their 2nd home... in a fully-loaded, full-sized Sport Utility Vehicle... AND THE KIDS ARE KIND OF HUNGRY!!!

ssNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOw!

So yeah, first things first. How to drive in the snow.
1) Leave the liquor store, bags in hand.
2) Make sure you have some mixers and microwave meals at home, you don't want to make too many trips out once you're in and boozin'.
3)
(SSSRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE RECORD-STOPPING NOISE)

Okay, here's the deal...

Last night I had a private party to perform at in a sub-suburban area north of Seattle.

On the way to the gig I passed a number of spun-out, ditched, sideways cars (mostly very expensive sedans and a couple of street-racers). The real beauty of snow-driving, besides whipping monster-ass brodies in the playfield at Darryl Blattfeld Middle School, is that it sets everyone back to ZERO on the Good Driver scale. Those folks who zipped in & out of traffic on a daily basis, tailed others, sped, ignored the use of and ignored using blinkers, and those of us who CAN drive? We all get the reset when the snow's a-fallin'.

With snow, SKILL comes into play. You have to know about momentum, physics, continuity, tracking, and brake-tapping. If you ain't got it, you're gonna end up outside your Acura making that "OH COME OOOONN!!" motion you make when you realize, HA, you're gonna have another baby!

So again, I passed a lot of people who thought they had "skillz" to snow-drive. Nuh-uh. Sorry froots, I have a gig and my empathy for humanity takes a Greyhound seat to craptown when I have to venture among the untrained masses for a gig and a phat payout. I kept repeating to the people ahead of me "Don't look over there, not a concern. Forward, just keep going, NO NO NO BRAKES, NO NEED TO BRAKE, just keep going, you have a FORD... EX-PLO-RER, you need to GOOOOO."

Long story shortened... There were three snowy ways via hills to the venue I was supposed to perform at. All 3 were blocked by large vehicles driven by people who decided to stop and "renegotiate" the attempt on the hill, WHILE STILL ON THE HILL.

Snow Driving comes down to this:
You stop, you stick, you're done.
You speed, you spin-out, you're done.
You slow, you slide, you're done.

Keep your foot in it, pump your brakes, and keep it moving.
I could not get to my gig, nor my check, because of roads blocked by idiots.
ADULT idiots.
LICENSED adult idiots.

I drive a sedan. 4 doors, front-wheel-drive, 1999 SEDAN. There and back, one minor slip, no gig, no paycheck, and the Huskies lost. I hope those cars are still in those ditches, paint-jobs scratched by brambles and barbs and barriers. Idiots.

Oh, and another thing...
Bank of America can kiss my ass.
And when you ask for a number to reach me at, and I give it to you, and you call and leave a message on another number and leave me in the lurch for contacts that don't stick to my eye-lid inners? Yeah, Dr. Golitz's office lady, you're to blame for my not ordering through you anymore. I'll get my hash elsewhere.


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Take Me Home

My Blog About My Dad

SICC and Tired

This is the last I can speak of this for a while.
First because I'll be interrupted in a moment for a very sweet reason, by my very understanding wife.
Second because I've talked at length about it already to many folks. I just can't keep rehashing the same old roads just yet.

I've been pleasantly marked by the experience of the Seattle International Comedy Competition (SICC) 2007. I feel it is a fresh memory, a bit painful, a group of muscles that have been broken down so often that they need time to heal. To be replenished (with Gatorade? or with Water?), stretched, massaged, and flexed back into a pliable and useful accumulation of strength and shape.

The past month of my life has been emotionally, physically, and mentally consumed by the SICC. I had not planned on doing it this year. My last trip through was abysmal, taking nearly last in my preliminary week. Oddly enough, there's a tip of the finger to impressions in that blog linked there, something I must have had issue with at the time.

This trip through I told myself if I was gonna do it, I was going to be even-keeled. That helped. The entire time I had one score that I thought was such utter bullcrap I wanted to backhand the judges, and not in a good way. But every other night I just went out and did the best I could and didn't worry about the numbers.

When you stop fretting over numbers, you start being able to enjoy the moments. The SemiFinal week was a lot of fun for me. Starting in Walla Walla on a Tuesday night wasn't so keen for the sleep skej, but we got it done for a bunch of college kids. The week progressed and my scores did as well. The shows got better, bigger, weirder. And I stayed consistent. The material may have moved around a bit, but the pace, the energy, the emotions I carried with me? All baselined. I wanted to just keep going forward.

Sorry, this isn't very funny yet. I'm not sure if it's going to be. I used to write funny stuff all the time. Let me turn this around.

Making the Finals was like getting a really hot friend of yours to go drinking with you. Everyone else sees you with a hottie. It feels good. You're likely to get SOME kind of love out of it. Even if you go home alone, maybe they brush by you and you stop thinking - just for a moment - about how they were born a man.

And I made it there somehow. Talent, luck, other people screaming into the walls instead of brake-tapping. I was coached up, ready, and raring to go.

Every room was a big room. Every crowd was hot. This was a ton of fun. I have no regrets. Wait... nope, none.

5th place.
That's what I take with me. 5th place out of 32. I am no longer emotionally attached to a best-guess numerical value assigned to my Presence, Material, Performance, Rapport, Technique, Flakiness of Crust, Wine Pairing, and Blood A'cohol Level. The muscle has been torn down. And is building back up. I cannot wait to get back on a stage without the mentally-amplified pressure of strangers holding a clipboard, hoping they'll like me more than another guy... why would I want to be compared to another guy? What about just being me? Why can't...

See how that goes? See why that muscle needs a rest?

Pretty soon, I'm gonna have to flex it again.
If I can't get some mutual respect now, I can always get mutual disdain.
But I prefer the former.

My thanks to my Wife, Family, Friends, Ron Reid, Peter Greyy, Pavel Simsa, Alyson Smith, Tony Boswell, Marcus, Key Lewis, Leif Skyving, Andy Peters, Rosalie Gale, Andy Haynes, Ruben, and all the venues that hosted us.

Biggest thanks goes to God for every single moment of my life that created the person that does the comedy I do. It's all becoming more clear.

The next time I want to be judged by drunk strangers in weird rooms I'll go see my family.

Thanks a lot ever'bodday, I'm Geoff Lott!
Good night.

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SICC Again; the Comics You Know

I am a finalist in the Seattle International Comedy Competition.
It hit me last Sunday in a deluge of emails, texts, phone calls, but not a SINGLE chunky muffin basket. Nor a tastefully-shot half-nude of Geoff Brousseau. Thank you very little.

I cannot take all the credit for getting to where I am. I have had the help, support, and well wishes of my wife, my family, my friends, and many of my friends who are comics. I have felt only minor tinges of pain throughout all of this. Sometimes just gas. Sometimes emotional. Oft-times the result of seeing Integrity take a rake to the back. You can't control what everyone else does. The best you can do is control your own moments, your own performance, and dumb it down so very deeply that even the most qualified of comedy judges isn't challenged by what you're doing.

But I progress. DI-gress.

Going into this final show tonight at the Comedy Underground Marcus, an impressionist with energy to burn, is in 1st. He is a stage monster. He is a one-man, live-band karaJoke jam, audiences cannot get enough of him, and he's played everywhere you can play in this state.

Close behind is Tony Boswell, an incredible writer and comedian who reminds me of a very good whiskey, a sweet and smoky warmth that doesn't quite burn. But could. It's like watching a Miles Davis solo in comedy form, laughing when the notes trail to something you thought would go one way, and just give you the chills instead. I wish I would have written a lot of the stuff Tony is doing.

Leif Skyving has impressed me nightly since the beginning with great joke-writing, great performances, and fully embracing the entirety of his life for material. He shies from nothing, and makes it all Funny. I would love to work some gigs with Leif, but that's an awful lot of Northern European man-funny for an audience to unzip for.

Key Lewis has taken rooms over with energy, and has commanded stages with coolness. This guy's got so many talents that there's no way to tell what he can do yet. But it's big. To FINAL your first time through this thing is a Feat. And he's married. With 3 kids. And a full time job that one day had him on the road to Portland at 5am, and BACK to the Vashon show on time. Impressive stuff all the way around.

I'm in the mix as well. Placings don't matter right now. Doing the best possible set I can for the last night of the competition is all that matters.

I will summarize my own feelings throughout the entire run of 18 shows over three weeks of the waning month of November 2007. As autumn has turned earnest, my thoughts of comedy, my own and in general, have been injected with respect, drive, and a focus on Doing The Comedy I Want To Be Remembered For.

I can always write more jokes. Better jokes. Better comedy. Bigger Funny.
And I will.

Oh wait, here's that Brousseau picture!


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