Thu Oct 1 = Trip Prep: Got up early to take the van into C&R tire for a free oil change, helping them celebrate their 20th year anniversary, then to Discount Tire to get the rear tires rebalanced (they were out of balance), then home where I reinstalled the right backup light bulb so it works at full brightness now.
Fri Oct 2 = This morning I headed my van to the northwest for the Laughlin, Nevada Comedy Festival. This, my first festival, was very well organized and one by which I will gauge all future ones. Tonight's big event was seeing Gabriel Iglesias, probably the top touring comedian in the US at this time.
Sat Oct 3 = Today's activities started out at the Pioneer Hotel where I am staying and then moved to Harrah's, which, it turns out, has two parking garages to keep me in suspense when looking for my van.
Here's the way the schedule looked:
11:00 Business Seminar at the Pioneer, included a panel of industry persons - excellent
1:00 New Faces at Harrah's (I only watched the first part then went for lunch and to bring video equipment in from my van, which it turns out was in the higher parking garage.
4:00 Set up my equipment while watching Ron Stubbs, Hypnotist
5:00 Quinsy videoed my set in the Wild Card show (3-minutes for each of 10 comedians). Host: Jay Berg. Breanna at the bar helped me by stashing and watching my camera bag, tripod and Arizona Lou T-shirts. Thanks, Breanna! At the beginning of the video, here, they are saying, Lou not BOO. At least that's my story.
6:30 Buffet at Harrah's with Jay Berg and 2 other comedians.
8:00 Funny show with feature George Kanter and headliner Frank Callendo who did an hour of excellent comedy. The best part was his hilariously accurate impressions of Presidents (Clinton; GW Bush; Obama), sports stars (Charles Barkley etc.) and movie stars (Morgan Freeman commenting on the show etc).
10:30 Got my picture with Frank Callendo and visited with other comedians and comedy fans.
(photo coming)
Got to bed early (before 12:30am)
Sun Oct 4 = Interesting Q & A session with the experts from yesterday morning.
- Shows, included Wild Women of Comedy, Sinbad with 2014 Laughlin LaughFest Winner Dale Jones (excellent) and the Semi Finals/Finals Comedy Contest for $10k plus various appearances. All the finalists were excellent. The winnerJonh Novosad (hippieman.com) was really excellent and, by far, the best.
(photo coming)
- The judges, all industry professionals, did a fine job.
Mon Oct 5 = On the way home I stopped by the Route 66 Electric Vehicle Museum in Kingman to see the world's fastest electric car.
(photo coming)
Tue Oct 6 = Designing and printing new business cards - kinda complicated since the software on which I created the front of the cards does not work with my new computer.
With my old eeePC-9 with Windows XP, I printed the front of the card to a PDF file
With my new
Vaio
Sony Vaio Duo 11 computer with 11.6" touch screen, Windows 10, 8gb memory and 256gb SSD
I created the B&W back of the card with free software I downloaded from Avery
Jumped in the van and bought two new tri-color ink cartridges from Office Max for my HP OfficeJet-100 portable printer
Used my Vaio to print out the backs and fronts of the PDF files, 10 per page
Cut the pages into 108 business cards with my 300-page paper cutter
- I worked up an idea to do a Safety Comedy show for Eaton Corporation in Hutchinson until
Stan
Stanley, my older brother who is a machinist for Eaton Corporation in Hutchinson, KS
informed me that the plant wil be closed when I am in Hutchinson.
- The rest of the day I spent packing for tomorrow's big flight
Wed Oct 7 = It started out as a good day with my getting up at 3:15am and getting to the Airport Days Inn where I was informed that the airport parking was closed, being full. The gentleman went ahead and let me park after I mentioned I had confirmed twice yesterday by phone. I did not think anything of it when I was driving that my phone vibrated.
- When I got to the airport I checked my text messages (the vibration) which said that my flight to Dallas had been cancelled due to a mechanical problem and that I had been rebooked to arrive in Wichita, KS tomorrow - not a very good plan for doing comedy at the Loony Bin Comedy Club in Wichita tonight. The counter agent put me on standby, connecting in Chicago, the only other option. I made it on the full flight and arrived in Wichita in just enough time to rent a car and rush to the Loony Bin.
- The Loony Bin was nearly a packed house of 78, including two of my old high school classmates and their spouses who drove over from Newton for the show. The Loony Bin was having a comedy competition so I got to go up last as the headliner with 10 minutes. Everyone else got five minutes. Jean Hoot, the winner of the competition was, by far, the best.
- Video by Dick Winter:
- I spent the night at the Airport Motel 6.
Thu Oct 8 = I fixed breakfast in my hotel room then drove to Hutchinson, and spent the afternoon and evening with
Stan
Stanley, my older brother who is a machinist for Eaton Corporation in Hutchinson, KS
.
For some strange reason he kept directing our focus to religion and I kept directing it to comedy. Of course we talked about a lot of other things also. I spent the night at the Budget Host Motel in Hutchinson. Not fancy, but economical with stuff like a big easy chair, microwave, refrigerator, coffee maker, flat panel TV, iron and ironing board.
Fri Oct 9 = I drove from Hutchinson to Harvey County East Lake Park east of Newton where my high school classmates and I had a lunch celebrating our 55th graduation reunion.
- This afternoon I checked in to the Newton Comfort Inn. They refused to honor the price match advertised on their website, which, if unchanged, will cost me more than $60 additional for the two nights.
- At at 11:00 pm tonight I had another visual anomaly, both eyes (probably an ocular migraine without the headache) - the first since about four months. It was unusually brief, gone in 30 minutes. I don't know if it is related, but shortly after its onset, I walked down from my Comfort Inn room on the third floor to the first floor fitness room and did a medium-weight workout for about 10 minutes (avoiding my usual inverted shrugs), then back up the stairs to my room. I took it easy on the stairs, walking up rather than my usual running up, but still two steps at a time.
Sat Oct 10 = Good breakfast courtesy of the hotel this morning. I spent most of the rest of the day working on a full-length comedy routine for this evening... just in case.
- This evening's class dinner was neat with my old classmates. I put on an eight-and-a-half minute comedy show. It went fairly well, considering it was in a big metal warehouse with a PA system that hardly worked. The people said they couldn't hear, but did enjoy what they did hear.
- After the dinner and show, Al Dietrich asked if I would take pictures of the class, grouped by elementary school attended.
Sun Oct 11 = Breakfast at the motel this morning. Packed up and fixed lunch to take with me. I drove by some of my childhood haunts
and ate the lunch in Military Park beside the big old 1907 vintage 1880 Santa Fe steam locomotive (Prairie 2-6-2). Then drove on to the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport. While waiting for the plane I purged and emailed last night's pictures to Al.
- I've never had a plane grounded before, but it happened a second time - today. Our plane from Houstn to Phoenix had had a lightning strike. So, after already moving us from gate C8 to gate C9, they moved all of us to gate E16 where they had, fortunately, a similar plane ready for us.
- I got home about midnight, which was 2am according to the time zone in which I got up this morning.
Mon Oct 12 = Today I outlined a Comedy program for Safety as a follow-up to my my idea last Tuesday.
- I went shopping w Denise under the auspices of
Tue Oct 13 = I paid off, as always, my two credit card bills.
Wed Oct 14 = This morning I saw Dr Blount, my hand specialist, for the last time unless complications arise. He numbed my right ring finger and dug out the remnants of the sutures.
- On the way home I did a split arms workout at two different gyms.
- This afternoon I went to Jeff for a therapy rehab session for my right hand. When I went out to my van the right rear tire was very low. I drove slowly to a nearby Big O for air and then on to Discount Tire where they repaired it for free. It was a small piece of metal.
- For this evening's COMEDY I went to Toso's Bar to do my last "Dominican Republic SUP Hand Hotel" routine. Good group of nine non-laughing comedians for the audience.
Thu Oct 15 = Today I spent two hours on the phone with United Healthcare trying to straighten the Dominican Republic hospital billing mess - unsuccessfully.
- COMEDY at Chop and Wok went well. I think I connected with the audience better. Keeping them awake with some semi-racy PG material probably helped also.
Fri Oct 16 = I spent a long time today phoning the Clinica Especializada Internacional Las Terrenas and the surgeon in the Dominican Republic, finding no one who spoke English that I could understand. Mostly they just hung up on me. I'm still trying to get the billing straightened out for my Jul 27th accident.
What are you most likely to die from? Here, from the CDC, is a chart of the top ten causes of death, by age.
Sat Oct 17 = Today's activity was attending Dave Ramsey's all-day Smart Conference. The event, in the 5000-seat Comerica Theatre caused an eight-block traffic jam. Also people were lined up around four sides of the theater before the doors opened at 8:00am. I'll probably never again see so many national figures in one place, speaking on people, relationships, finance, religion... and doing comedy. It included:
Dr Less Parrott
Chris Hogan
Chris Brown
Rachel Cruze
Dr Henry Coud
Christy Wright
Dr Meg Meeker
Michael Jr.
Dave Ramsey
- For exercise I ran up six flights of stairs to the top balcony during three breaks and, on the way home, stopped by the West Northern LA Fitness.
Sun Oct 18 = I got up early (about 7am) so I could eat breakfast and then go out to the
RC Park
Coyote Basin Park where guys fly electric RC airplanes and an occasional helicopter - east of the 101 Pima Freeway and Cave Creek Rd in Phoenix
to network with some of the techies for my comedy and safety idea. By the time I got out there (about 9:00) none of the usuals were there, but I did meet Mike with his new, fancy, DJI Phantom 3 Professional Quadcopter Aircraft - his second day with it. Cool! Also I met David Michael, out exercising and lunching. We hit it off. He is a musician (drummer) and has written a book, A Boy Who Cried Enu.
- This evening I cycled the NmHi batteries for my
Mon Oct 19 = This moring I finished a load of laundry that I put in last night to soak: Ceaner clothes that don't wear out so soon. Under the auspices of
,
at noon, I took Jana to rehab for her knee. While she was upstairs, I was downstairs doing a relatively heavy, slow arms workout at the Mountainside Fitness Club.
- This evening I resolved my checking account... on the first try, and researched comedy festivals. I may go to one in San Diego in January, one in New York City in May and another one there in July.
Tue Oct 20 = COMEDY this evening was at The Grand Avenue Pizza Company. Kapono, the producer and the other comedians appreciated the wooden stool I took for the show. I did eight and a half minutes of my 7300 RdSea Funeral xli understand soap anemometer routine. I am right where I want to be. I'll continue practicing it at various open mikes and hopefully have it perfected for my video session at the Phoenix Center for the Arts' Third Street Theater on November the eighth.
- It's cooling off. For the first time this fall I slept with something on: a knit sheet and no fan.
Wed Oct 21 = Around noon I lay out in the semi-sun for 20 minutes. I did not go anywhere today, except to the mail box across the street. I did a thorough analysis of last night's comedy appearance. I could have been a little smoother and remembered a few more things, but DID exceed my goals of 6 laughs per minute and laughter 30% of the time.
- Tonight I flew my PhoenixRC helicopter simulator for the first tme in about seven months. I crashed a lot but did make two good landings.
- I also created and uploaded a new web page, Some of Lou's Favorite Creative Comedians. Right now there is no link to it except here. In the next couple days or so I'll replace the CREATIVE COMEDIANS list on my Comedy web page with a link to it to the new web page. Why? The list has gotten too long for an efficient, fast-loading Comedy web page. Users can still reach the list with a maximum of three clicks. The goal for my website is to get to anything with three or fewer clicks of the mouse.
Thu Oct 22 = This morning I put two more appearances on my Google calendar, added them to FUTURE COMEDY APPEARANCES on my website and made new appearance slips that I pass out, reflecting the additions.
- This afternoon I went to PT for my hand.
- This evening I drove down to Scottsdale Comedy Spot to see a special comedian. I had misread the calendar. The show is tomorrow night. Since it was only a mile south, I stopped by the LA Fitness in South Scottsdale, where I took advantage of their spa, shower, workout facilities and visiting with other gym rats.
- Back home, feeling stupid, I flew my Phoenix RC simulator, doing slow flips and orientation practice. I flew both the Align T-Rex 700E 3G and my Blade Nano CP X. I never crashed the latter.
(#9) with flat tooth picks and hot glue. This added 3% to the heli's weight, without a flight battery.
- Tonight I found my jury duty group was not called up, so I have served my jury duty for the nest 180 days.
Sat Oct 24 = I refilled the black ink tank for my HP Office Jet 100 Printer with 12.4 grams of ink. For the first time this operation went without a hitch and the printer kept working normally.
- This evening I went to the
Hamfeast
a group of ham radio operators meet somewhere every Saturday for supper
at The Original Hamburger Works.
Sun Oct 25 = About 3am, when I got up to pee, I put
batteries R Z A. D. on my iCharger so they would be ready to go
when I got up. I got out to the
RC Park
Coyote Basin Park where guys fly electric RC airplanes and an occasional helicopter - east of the 101 Pima Freeway and Cave Creek Rd in Phoenix
about 9am and hung around for about an hour, flying and having my first crash with Nano #9. The crash, in the gravel at the end of my second battery flight, chipped the trailing edge of one of my new fluorescent main rotor blades and cracked the canopy a little. I replaced the chipped rotor blade with a new stock black one and finished out the other two battery flights. My three other flights were mostly crash free. Partly because I was still doing nothing more than hover practice, although a little gusty wind made that a challenge.
- This afternoon I went to the Scottsdale Laugh Factory early to ask Tony Vicich to look over the Terms of Service for the Comedy Soapbox, which registers comedians for comedy festivals. It turns out that my concern was unfounded about losing the rights to my material. Although not officially in the improv class I stayed and participated because there were only two students.
Tue Oct 27 = My comedy was good at Dos Gringos this evening. For recording, I tried aiming my Rode Video Pro shotgun microphone off to the side where the speakers were for the PA system and the camera forward. That seemed to work out fairly well, considering the the acoustics were horrible and the HVAC system roared all the time. I got Treavor Skies set on video, but not myself. My camera battery (Battery B) crapped out in the middle of my set. The battery was so bad that there wasn't even enough power for the camera to properly close the file, so I got nothing of my set. Fortunately, I had made a backup audio recording with my C. Crane Witness and Sony ECM-DS70P external stereo microphone. I had fun, as did the audience. I did the 7300 RdSea Funeral xli understand soap anemometer routine I'm working on.
Wed Oct 28 = This morning I woke up gradually with my SleepBot smart alarm, but still tired.
I got so drowsy late this afternoon I decided to take as long of a nap as I could manage. It was about one hour long.
- This evening I made a batch of six of my cinnamon chocolate frosties, which I plan to use as Wednesday rewards for going to a gym. Since it is Wednesday and I did a heavy legs workout at LA Fitness at noon after flying my
Coyote Basin Park where guys fly electric RC airplanes and an occasional helicopter - east of the 101 Pima Freeway and Cave Creek Rd in Phoenix
,
I had a frosty - my first in about three months. It always surprises me how tasty they are.
Thu Oct 29 = This evening I stopped by Albertsons and Fry's Marketplace for some cash on my way to the Scottsdale Laugh Factory to see Jeff Altman and Jackson Perdue for $20. I invited Rich Brown, an older, local, comedian that I met on the porch before the show and Bryan Ricci from The Tempe Improv to sit with me. We all enjoyed the show.
- After the show I went to Walmart to pick up the Casio Men's W-735H-1AV Vibration Alarm Digital Watch that I had ordered on the Internet. They said their pickup area was closed, which hours were neither obvious nor correct on their website. GERRR!!!
- Then to Fry's Marketplace to retrieve the $100 cashback I left in the self-checkout tray earlier. Thanks, Heather! You're a good egg.
Fri Oct 30 = I spent way too long writing a thank you note to W. Rodney McMullen in Cincinnati, CEO of Kroger Co. complementing Heather from last night.
- I started the long, drawn-out process of testing my camera batteries. That means recording video until a battery runs completely down and the camera does an auto-terminate and shutdown.
,
Denise and I did the rounds for shopping, which included:
ATM machine for cash for Denise
Goodwill for their half-off Saturday
Dollar Tree (just me) for AAs to test an alarm/calendar clock I found at Goodwill
Back to Goodwill for the cock etc. and to pick up Denise
Post office to mail yesterday's thank-you note
Winco Foods for our usual grocery shopping where we combined our purchases to total $50 for $10 off
Stopped by her sister's to drop off a gift
Back to Denise's to deposit her and her groceries.
- It was about 1:30 by this time so I did not go by the gym. Never did make it to the gym. Had to prepare for the trick-or-treaters. My rig was simple but effective. Just about every kid coming to the door jumped out of their skin.
- Here's how it worked: I had the inside of my house dark and a turned-off bright LED spotlight mounted above and behind me about where the headlight of a railroad locomotive would have been. I'd open the door, say, "Look out for the train," and press a foot switch, blinding them with the light and blasting them with my finely tuned train horn. Of course, after scaring the wits out of them, I'd give them a piece of candy and, for their parents, a list of some of my comedy appearances.
- Packages, packages! Today I received the extra large Arizona Lou Comedy T-shirt I ordered about 7.5 weeks ago as a test (too slow, but they did give it to me at half price due to the delay), received the camera cold flash shoe swivel to use with my Rode shot-gun microphone and received the 3/8" male to 1/4" female adapters to make the microphone compatible with the flash shoe swivel and my tripods.
- EARTHQUAKE I felt the house shake at 11:29pm. It was a vertical shake. I said to myself, "That was an earthquake." The last earthquake I felt was a horizontal shaking when I was in California. It turns out that this one was 4.1 on the Richter scale and centered about 7 miles north of Black Canyon City, which is about 35.8 miles NNW of my house.
