Summer Update. Part I.
Sorry I haven’t posted in a while.
Not that I haven’t been busy; in fact, this has been the most eventful summer of my career in many ways. I’m going to try and chronicle everything that happened in a three-part blog series. I know, I know: I can’t wait either.
Lounging backstage.
The summer started out with me going up to do shows in Wisconsin as part of the “Bob & Tom Comedy All-Stars” theater tour with Kristi Lee, Tim Wilson, Costaki Economopoulos, Tim Bedore, Donnie Baker and Jimmy Pardo.
Checking my notes for no reason right before my set.
These shows are always a blast, and on this particular weekend I was recording the shows (thanks to Costaki for letting me use his camera) as per my management’s instruction in order to submit to Comedy Central for a thirty minute special. They should be deciding on that soon…
Those were my last shows before my wedding in May. For our honeymoon we went to a “Sandals” resort in Antigua. My sister-in-law thinks that “Sandals” is ironically bad because of “The Office”, but at 65% off, I found it quite un-ironically affordable.
Not natural.
Granted, the calypso-music-infused pre-packaged atmosphere was a bit much to take, but nothing that the beach and endless, free alcohol couldn’t cure. One highlight was a visit to “Stingray City”, which — despite sounding like the most bizarre installment of “Grand Theft Auto” — is actually a cordoned off area of a coral reef where semi-domesticated stingrays swim up and let humans pet and feed them. Watching the Antiguan guides kiss their stingers to show how harmless they are was especially unsettling.
Right after I got home, I got the chance to go to London to be a guest of the MCM Expo 2009, which is like the U.K.’s version of ComicCon. It hasn’t quite reached ComicCon scope yet, but it was still a pretty massive event that took place at the Excel Center in the Docklands. I was there not as a stand-up comic, but rather as a Voice-Over Actor for anime, something I did quite a bit of in a past life. Some of the titles I did back in the day are apparently quite popular among anime fans in Great Britain, so the organizers of the event saw fit to fly me out and put me on their celebrity roster along with Tony Curtis,
At the London Novotel with Neil Grayston of "Eureka"
Linda Hamilton, Lindsay Wagner, the cast of “Merlin”, and Joe Morton and Neil Grayston from “Eureka”. All I had to do was sign stuff for fans and do a Q&A about doing VO for anime — pretty easy, but a little nerve-wracking at times because I remember little or nothing about the plots or characters from these things. And you can’t really tell them that. Here is a video of my speech.
And then I was also asked to judge the “cosplay”. Simply put, this is when young fans dress up like their favorite anime or fantasy characters and have themselves a bit of a fashion show. However, words don’t really do it justice. Here is a video of what I “judged” like a stupefied Simon Cowell. I’m sitting at the front of the runway and at one point almost got stabbed in the eye with a homemade scimitar.
Wow. Careful what you do voices for.
Anyways, I had a little extra time to do some sightseeing in London on my own. I managed to catch the Tower, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the remains of Whitehall, Jongleurs Comedy Club in Camden, London Bridge, and few other things before I left.
More to come.
Thanks to Jessica Hooker from “The Bob & Tom Show” and Ian Mullen of visiteureka.net for photos.