(To see a much big version of these cartoons, click them why don’t you?)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Where Have I Been?

Good gravy, Jazz Pickles, it has been a long time since I posted on my blog. I’ve been running around the Non-East Coast on a small comedy tour and that stuff is time-consuming, brain-eating, and deadline-threatening. But I’m almost caught up on life so I’m back to posting. Here now are a jilliondyfive cartoons to get you caught up on everything that has published since I last posted. Whew!

If you care, the shows went well and it was most gratifying to commune in person with so many of you. All three of my California shows were sold out, which is what performers hope for. Not being sold out means that there are empty seats in the room from which it is virtually impossible to solicit a laugh. As a performer, my self esteem is integrally tied to my ability to gain the approval of strangers. When they laugh, I feel noticeably less suicidal instantly. When they don’t, I begin nervously fingering the cyanide buttons on my shirt. Thanks for keeping me alive, kids!

My live comedy shows are a combination of visuals projected on a big screen behind me (cartoons, photos, etc.), songs that I play and sing live, some stand-up comedy, and a little interaction with the audience. But most of the laughs in every show come from my comments on the images projected behind me. I mention this because at my show in Mill Valley, a big theater that seats around 300-or-so, the projector stopped getting along with my laptop computer about 10 minutes into a 90-minute show. Whoops. I’ve always known this would happen one day and it turns out that day was April 27th, 2012.

The first impression I had when the tech guy told me from the booth that it was hopeless was how similar the situation was to that recurring nightmare so many people have where they are onstage in their underwear or can’t remember their lines. I wasn’t wearing underwear, so I did what any performer would do, I panicked. Then I cried. Then I pooped my pants a little bit (wish I’d been wearing underwear), then I ad libbed the rest of the evening.

As it happens, I was better at this than I thought I’d be and the evening was saved. In fact, it might have been one of my funniest shows ever. If people weren’t expecting to see cartoons at my shows, I’d be tempted to leave the computer at home and do them all this way. I routinely made a joke out of how poorly the technical aspects were going and it went over so well that many audience members asked me after the show if it was intentional. Perhaps that’s an angle I should pursue in the future; a show that intentionally looks as though the computer is failing and I have to cope. People seem to enjoy watching others struggle on stage.

Overall, a very enjoyable tour and one that gave me more confidence for the future. If I can make people laugh without my cartoons behind me, I won’t sweat the technical aspects anymore. I’ll just roll with the punches as they come and mop up the blood later.

My fondest dream is to be doing this show more in the near future and I hope to see plenty of you Jazz Pickles there.

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